Security Sector Reform and the Stability of Post-War Peace

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Reducing different manifestations of collective, political violence after the end of intrastate war is an important condition for the stabilization and development of post-war societies. Scholars and practitioners alike thereby agree that security sector reform (SSR) that disarms and demobilizes ex-combatants and that alters structures and conduct of the military, police, and judiciary is among the most vital elements to ensure reducing violence and contributing to post-war peace. However, SSR has been more successful in some cases than in others. The proposed research project thus asks under what conditions SSR increases the stability of post-war peace. We argue that previous research on post-war SSR is thus far insufficiently equipped to answer this research question due to three shortcomings. Theoretically, peacebuilding research on SSR is little embedded in the wider political science debate of post-war institutional reform and thus misses out on important explanatory factors of post-war peace. Methodologically, past research predominantly employs single-case study research designs and thus rarely allows for formulating generalizations of findings. Empirically, those studies that do compare SSR in different cases, often stay within one world region, and are thus inapt to discover mechanisms of SSR that work across cultural contexts.This project addresses these shortcomings. In answering the question under what conditions SSR does increase the stability of post-war peace, it focuses on the central question of political control that is at the core of the institutional reform debate, but that has not been captured adequately by past research on SSR. We argue that key to the effect of SSR on post-war peace is the question of how domestic conflict parties and international actors control an SSR process in the aftermath of a civil war. Methodologically and empirically, the project will thereby make use of a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the role of SSR for the stability of post-war peace. First, it uses inductive, theory-building case studies with fieldwork in El Salvador, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Nepal to refine hypotheses, identify causal mechanisms, and select more specific variables for the statistical analysis. Second, these case studies will be complemented by statistical survival analysis on a novel, global dataset on features of SSR in post-war countries that will be used for theory testing and for formulating generalizations of our findings.