ABSTRACT
Security Sector Reforms (SSR) attempt to reach beyond restructuring of the individual institutions of the state: the judiciary, the military, police, border control and (if at all within reach) the intelligence services. The aim of this networked policy approach that links development and security provision is to improve public and political stability and establish a mode of good security governance that meets the norms of human rights protection and is accountable to civil society.1 Given such high ambitions, the donor label of SSR has come to embrace an ever more diverse field of activities over the past 20 years and to incorporate a range of goals that may actually never be met.2 Contemporary measures in the SSR frame range inter alia from the demobilization and socioeconomic reintegration of former combatants following internal armed conflicts to training programmes for state security forces, and to the creation of public discussion forums on practical questions of the rule of law, access to justice, civilian oversight and democratic controls of the executive. However, hardly ever are all of these integrated into one SSR package, or coordinated comprehensively under one roof. Moreover, the complex endeavour of SSR involves the interaction of heterogeneous actors at various levels, and affects social and political institutions and relationships that are rarely equally represented, neither in the design of SSR programmes nor in the implementation of them. Thus, in spite of the more or less unchallenged noble aims that mark its normative agenda, SSR has had very mixed results in practice, and SSR initiatives have remained as contested external aid interventions.
