ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the traditional security governance and the security sector reform (SSR) process in relatively new democracies in Southeast Asia, with a focus on the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste. It investigates how state security institutions, governing elites, civil society organizations, local populations, and international donors have worked with non-state armed actors during the transition from the traditional practice of patronage-based local security governance to that during the post-democratization period when SSR initiatives were adopted by governments after the 2000s. Without significant external pressure to impose drastic reform, the SSR programs in the region have been criticized as undermining institutional reform to ensure civilian control. However, they have achieved a certain level of success in terms of sensitizing state and non-state stakeholders to the need to share common purposes on how to maintain community security and local order in the long term.
