ABSTRACT

The security sector reform (SSR) model and its impacts on fragile, failed and conflict-affected states can only be understood in the wider context of the liberal peace project, comprising the interlinked liberal statebuilding and peacebuilding agendas. SSR is a device of the liberal peace, a means to project liberal order from the Western ‘core’ of the international system into the ‘unstable periphery’. Madhav Joshi, Sung Yong Lee and Roger Mac Ginty show how ‘SSR finds its way into all of the . . . pillars of the liberal peace.’ SSR is ‘crosscutting’ they say, ‘because social, economic, cultural and political reforms often rely on a secure context.’1 By consolidating security and stability in accordance with liberal norms, SSR is intended to serve as an enabler for wider processes of democratisation and liberal economic development in recipient countries. Its role is to secure the liberal peace, providing it with security space to take root and thrive. The liberal peace like the SSR model is not neutral when it comes to the position of the state, which it sees as playing a crucial guardian or praetorian role when it comes to liberal principles. While the peacebuilding and statebuilding agendas have unique elements and tasks, they are part of a common change framework under the banner of liberalism. SSR represents a point of convergence for the two agendas, as it is fundamentally wedded to strengthening the state in accordance with liberal governance principles in order to consolidate peace and stability. In light of their symbiotic relationship, it is unsurprising that the evolution of the SSR model has mirrored that of the wider liberal peace project. Enthusiasm with liberal interventionism in the aftermath of the Cold War gradually gave way to uncertainty and pessimism on the part of its champions. The lack of clear success stories for Western peacebuilders and statebuilders, generated a vigorous critical discourse in academia that has challenged some of the fundamental objectives and assumptions underlying the liberal peace. At the root of the critique is the paradox that the liberal peace project is, in many cases, producing illiberal outcomes. This paradox and many of the core strands of the critical discourse are directly germane to the experience of the SSR model. There is a tendency in some of the policy literature to frame SSR as a standalone, technocratic project, separate from wider change processes in

and contributed to the acute implementation challenges encountered by its stakeholders and advocates. SSR is locked into the logic of the liberal peace project; to view it any other way is to ‘miss the forest for the trees’. This chapter will provide an overview of the liberal peace, and the peacebuidling and statebuilding agendas it frames and inspires. It will detail the vibrant critical discourse of the liberal peace and some of the different viewpoints on how its flaws can be addressed. By outlining the theoretical foundations of the liberal peace project that gave birth to SSR, the chapter will set the stage for a thorough deconstruction of the SSR model in Chapter 2.