EU and Security Sector Reform: Tilting at Windmills?

EU and Security Sector Reform: Tilting at Windmills? Dr. Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits Dr. Lisa Schirch Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict

Colophon

EU AND SECURITY SECTOR REFORM: TILTING AT WINDMILLS?

30 November 2015 Deliverable 2.6: Scoping Study on SSR and Civil-military Synergies Dr. Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Dr. Lisa Schirch Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict

Whole of Society Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding This scoping study was produced as part of the project “Whole of Society Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding”, which aims to enhance the EU’s peacebuilding and conflict prevention capabilities. It is one of the seven scoping studies that aim to define the state of the art knowledge about civilian means for conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and identify research gaps in relation to several cross-cutting themes and clusters that the project focuses on. More information at www.woscap.eu

This project is funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant agreement no. 653866

Contents 1. Preface ........................................................................................................................................................... 2 1.1 Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................. 3 1.1.1 Organisation of the paper ................................................................................................................... 5 2. Security Sector Reforms: Tracing the trajectories of development of a discourse and unpacking the concepts, assumptions and their functions ..................................................................... 6 3. SSR Policy Developments: EU and Beyond ....................................................................................... 11 4. EU-SSR Knowledge Production: A snapshot of two decades of research, with a reflection on methodological contours ............................................................................................................................. 15 5. Operationalising EU-SSR: Main Gaps and Challenges ..................................................................... 20 6. Concluding Remarks and Questions for future EU-SSR research ................................................. 30 References ...................................................................................................................................................... 32

1

1. Preface Since its formation in 1993, the EU continues to contribute to the global peacebuilding agenda, by undertaking various activities including the development of relevant policies and carrying out peacebuilding missions in the field. Especially since the last decade, EU has decisively contributed to the development of key policies, range of instruments and operational missions in the area of security and justice. Part of this undertaking has involved activities related to Security Sector Reforms (SSR). These activities have gradually gained momentum and prominence, such that SSR now serves as an important cornerstone of EU’s external interventions. As the dynamics of the global and regional security scenarios affect the EU and the security situations world at large – as reflected in EU’s various policy pronouncements – it has aimed to establish a more comprehensive security policy, including an improved security strategy and a set of instruments in realizing internal and external security needs and interests. To date, following up on its “comprehensive approach” and “sustainable civilian means of peacebuilding and crisis management”, the EU has undertaking 27 SSR missions, 10 of which are ongoing. Although these missions are not always formally labelled as SSR, most civilian crisis management operations under ESDP are situated in the domain of the security sector, encompassing support to the military structures, police and judicial sector (for an overview see Nowak 2006; Spence and Fluri 2008). In light of the above developments, the main objective of this scoping study paper is to provide an initial orientation to EU’s Security Sector Reforms, with a focus on SSR related policy developments and scholarly knowledge production. Further, through a review of a few illustrative cases from the EU-SSR operational contexts, this paper highlights a few key challenges and gaps that the EU faces in realizing its SSR goals and, more generally, its civilian peacebuilding and crisis management goals. This paper is written based on a desk review of literatures, mainly comprising of academic texts and grey literature (policy papers), as well as information gathered by attending recent EU-SSR policy related discussions held in The Hague. Being aware of the fast moving dynamics in the field of security, this paper attempts to capture the current state of EU-SSR, through primary consultation of the literatures written during the last decade (since 2005). Although the primary actor under review here is EU, given the wide range and diverse nature of actors, their interests, embeddedness in the field of security and the mutual influences all of these actors have on each other, this paper also consulted literatures beyond the EU to draw insights from SSR operations beyond the EU. Therefore, the key findings in this paper may have an applicability to the security actors beyond the EU and vice versa. The paper to follow is structured along normative, conceptual, strategic and operational axes, which aim to succinctly illuminate some of the major challenges and gaps in EU-SSR.

2

1.1 Executive Summary The EU’s overall thinking and approach to civilian peacebuilding and crisis management explicitly – and, as a result, the security sector reforms (SSR) which are instrumental in this wider project – hinges on the dominant notions of Liberal state-building, Liberal peace-building and Liberal Peace Thesis. One of the key assumptions made with regard to SSR is that ‘democratic civil-military relations foster stable societies’. In the Anglo-American context, after decades of social engineering, this assumption became a fact of life. However, outside of these regions, the liberal state and liberal peace project – and the SSRs which play an important role in these processes – continue to be received with suspicion and hostility. The normative underpinnings of the Liberal Peace building project – and thus, the role of SSRs – are shared by the major international security actors, namely, the EU, United States of America, United Nations, OSCE and the World Bank. However, the EU often faces enormous challenges and resistance in its attempts to translate the key liberal 'norms' to other security actors outside of the EU, creating a 'shared consensus' with the actors therein at national, regional, sub-regional, state and non-state levels. This absence of a shared consensus around the main normative tenet underpinning EU-SSR missions means that they often end up being less inclusive, top down and unsustainable in the long run, leaving room for the emergence of potential ceremonial, hybrid and disappointing security institutions and practices that are wholly or partially contradictory with the goals of EU-SSR policy. The EU’s main approach to SSR heavily relies on the OECD approach, that is defined as “seeking to increase partner countries’ ability to meet the range of security needs within their societies in a manner consistent with democratic norms and sound principles of governance, transparency and the rule of law”. This definition extends well beyond the narrower focus of more traditional security assistance on defence, intelligence and policing, thus leaving a lot of room for devising new policies, instruments and institutions. Although the EU has thus far been able to impress with the breadth of its SSR related policies, instruments and institutions, it has failed to match this with the depth of the OECD-principles in SSR operational missions. Although civilian means lie at the heart of EU’s SSR policy, in actual operations, EU-SSR still shows a tendency towards applying the traditional “train and equip” approach, which focuses on improving the technical capacity of the security forces (who are identified as legitimate security actors). This is in contrast to the OECD’s “governance-development” approach. The train and equip model is often presented as a technical approach, and is often more successful in engaging local elite political support for SSR operations. However, because this approach alters the underlying power relations and structures of accessing resources among the competing local security actors, it cannot escape becoming embroiled in governance/political outcomes. Therefore, acknowledging and engaging with the 'political’ aspects of this “train and equip” approach to SSR in EU operations is essential, if EU-SSR is to be sustainable. Contrary to the commitment the EU shows on building legitimacy from the bottom-up to its SSR, EU attempts to ‘buy-in’ legitimacy from the top-down, to its operational missions by offering various incentives (i.e. aid, EU membership) to potential security counter parts, who often happen to be the political and military elites in the state system. To a certain extent, this 3

buy-in approach seems to work in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, where the opportunity and the incentive of gaining EU membership functions as a tangible and desirable incentive for national politico-military elites. However, in contexts where there are no such concrete dividends on offer, especially in fragile political contexts located outside the European neighbourhood, EU’s SSR interventions have a less of an appeal. This raises the question, how can the EU build bottom-up legitimacy for its SSR interventions in fragile contexts, where threats to security loom large? Compared to no-conflict situations or stable political environments, there is a marked lack of acceptance and legitimacy for EU’s SSR interventions in post-conflict, on-going conflict and complex fragile political situations. Distinguishing these contexts from each other, and being aware of the specific dynamics underlying each of these contexts, is crucial for undertaking successful, relevant and sustainable SSR missions. Further, SSR is often an official process that takes place in a post-conflict setting where there is a formal peace process and peace agreement. When SSR takes place in a context without a peace agreement, it is more difficult. In Afghanistan, for example, General Petreaus described the SSR process as “repairing an aircraft while in flight-and while being shot at.” Undertaking of in-depth conflict assessments, engaging with different stages of conflicts and making context specific SSR interventions is crucial if EU SSR interventions are to produce sustainable security environments. In the terrain of EU-SSR, which encompasses a wide range of actors, we can identify a swathe of activities that cut across a number of different policy arenas, sectors and communities of practice. On the one hand, this diversity of actors, policy arenas and activities has resulted in producing a range of different sub-approaches to SSR. SRR is approached differently by the various European Union member states; these include 'top-down' or 'bottom up' approaches, as well as the GSSR favoured by the Netherlands, UK and Sweden. Further, based on past colonial divisions between English and French speaking EU members, there are both Francophone and Anglophone variations of SSR. What is important to note is that these sub-approaches result in different outcomes in different contexts and importantly making it difficult to assess and measure the success of EU’s SSR interventions. The EU can measure the success of SSR in many different ways. For example, when dealing with a 'top down' approach, we might ask, how well does the security sector maintain the monopoly of force by overcoming non-state armed groups, and how efficient is the security sector? By contrast, with a 'bottom up' approach, we might ask, do civilians feel safe? The EU has a notorious reputation of being incoherent and for lacking in coordination, mostly blamed on its institutional structure, and the split between the commissions and the council. Various EU-SSR operational missions continue to demonstrate the coherence issues and co-ordination issues playing an important role in undermining the EU’s overall capability, seriousness, and ‘actorness’ in global security governance. Regardless of the EU’s expressed commitment to a comprehensive approach, the horizontal incoherence between the Commission and the Council- the groups responsible for development policy and security policy respectively- suggests the EU still has much work to do. Since the establishment of the EEAS in 2010, and the current process of developing a European SSR strategy, it is hoped that the EU will be able to more effectively enable clear identification of priorities and make better use of its resources and policy instruments, overcoming the horizontal as well as the vertical incoherencies in the Union as well as between the EU and its individual member states. 4

Overcoming these 'vertical' and 'horizontal' inconsistencies is important so that EU-SSR can avoid being a deliberate target of the local elites with narrow power interests, who use such incoherencies in SSR missions for instrumental gains. In the last two decades of scholarly knowledge generation on EU-SSR, a significant gap is left in terms of theory building and development of robust conceptual and analytical frameworks. Although there is a large amount of empirical evidence gathered on EU-SSR operational missions that points to the importance of engaging with the political factors and politics of SSR, two decades of EU-SSR research has not offered much promise in turning this evidence into a systematic SSR theory that illuminates its inherently political dimension. We believe that one possible way to overcome the current theoretical and analytical deficits in SSR scholarly research, and to provide a promising ground for future EU-SSR academic inquiries, is to include two dimensions in the analysis: 1) A nuanced political analysis that focuses predominantly on power; and 2) a robust political theory of change as informed by Hudson and Leftwich (2014), drawing on debates in the field of politics of development.

1.1.1 Organisation of the paper In the realm of security, the EU has a long track record of contributing to the development of the global security agenda, alongside European-wide security, effectively operationalising EUSSR around the world. These endeavours have been subjected to much scrutiny, which this paper attempts to acknowledge and investigate. In the next section, this paper traces the genesis of SSR as a concept, unpacking the OECD definition of Security Sector reforms borrowed and applied by the EU. It features a brief elaboration of the main actors in SSR, and the processes, normative underpinnings, functions and goals. Next, the paper presents a short trajectory of SSR policy developments in the EU, with reference to an extensive desk review conducted on EU-SSR featured literature. In parallel to EU-SSR policy developments, this paper then offers a brief overview of the trajectory of EU-SSR scholarly knowledge over the past two decades, using a broadly drawn methodological map to assess the strengths and weaknesses of existing studies. Then, using a few illustrative examples, the paper discusses a few key gaps and challenges in operationalising SSR in the field. Finally, the paper offers some concluding remarks and some guidance for future EU-SSR research.

5

2. Security Sector Reforms: Tracing the trajectories of development of a discourse and unpacking the concepts, assumptions and their functions The origins of Security Sector Reform (SSR) can be traced back to late 1990s. They are informed by both security and development policy scenarios. A movement towards founding a more coherent understanding and an international policy on SSR gained momentum when a “new thinking” regarding security emerged during the 1990s (Barbe, 2012, 168). Around the same time, the study of the ‘security sector’ (as opposed to the traditional focus on civil-military relations), became a rapidly emerging field – known as the ‘new aid paradigm’ (Bellamy 2003, 105) – which had its roots in development studies, security studies and practical policy. The outcome of new ways of pursuing and thinking security laid the foundation for the current depth and breadth of SSR missions that are being deployed by multilateral and bilateral donors within and outside the EU. This emergent SSR model came to be exported as a mainstay in international state-building policy and practice and was increasingly utilised as an approach to effective conflict resolution, post-conflict reconstruction, state building, and democratisation. In the context of the European Union, it is also being utilised as a leitmotif of EU enlargement. Researchers have traced the conceptual roots of SSR to two different trajectories: the ‘developmentalisation of donor countries’ security discourse, and the ‘securitisation of the development assistance’. The first trajectory is often viewed as a result of the development community’s attempt at increasing its influence in security affairs, as well as its inclusion of the security sector for diffusing key norms such as transparency, comprehensiveness and systems thinking, for the ultimate purpose of establishing good governance. The 'securitisation of development assistance' attempts to make aid and state building more effective in the long term, by integrating the conflict-peace-development agenda and reducing the threats associated with state failures. These parallel developments have led some researchers to claim that the development of an overarching approach to SSR (particularly in the realm of EU) is important for its successful integration at different levels of policy and within different epistemic communities (Faleg 2012, 169). To date, doubts are being raised as to what exactly ‘security sector’ entails and the suitability of the term ‘security sector’ in contrast to 'security system'. Some argue, in EU’s affairs, despite the availability and interchangeable use of the terms system and sector, that there is no difference meant between the terms “security system” and “security sector” (ADE 2011, 2). Given the narrowness of both terms, in light of the actual activities undertaken under SSR missions, some authors suggest that “security governance” or “security arena” are more appropriate terms to be applied (Hills 2014, 166). Some researchers also argue that the current plethora of SSR activities should come under the overarching umbrella of “state building”, as what is done in the name of SSR often has considerable overlap with the international state building agenda in post-conflict contexts (Egnell and Halden 2009, 28; Dursun-Ozkanca and Vandemoortele 2012, 149). These different views on what SSR is (definitional), what it actually does (functional) and what it should entail (scope) have created a blurred terrain for 6

investigation, both at a policy and operational level. Many of the EU’s early interventions in the field of security did not carry the SSR label, whereas later many security related activities employed the SSR terminology, highlighting the conceptual fuzziness of SSR and the EU’s struggle to define what fits under the SSR label. Despite the lack of consensus in the definition of SSR, many international actors (including the EU) continue to build their SSR policies and provide guidance to field operations relying on the OECD-DAC definition, which attempted to provide a definition of 'security sector' and to lay out a framework for SSR activities. According to OECD-DAC, the security sector comprises the “the core security actors (e.g. armed forces, police, gendarmerie, border guards, customs and immigration, and intelligence and security services); security management and oversight bodies (e.g. ministries of defence and internal affairs, financial management bodies and public complaints commissions); justice and law enforcement institutions (e.g. the judiciary, prisons, prosecution services, traditional justice systems); and non-statutory security forces (e.g. private security companies, guerrilla armies and private militia)” (OECD 2005, 5; Dursun-Ozkanca and Vandemoortele 2012, 142-143). At present, SSR is featured in two key EU policy documents. The first of these is the EU Concept for ESDP Support to Security Sector Reform (2005) – also known as the Council’s Concept – and ‘A Concept for European Community Support for Security Sector Reform’ (2006), known as the Commission’s Concept. Here SSR is defined as “the process of transforming the security system of a state in a manner that is consistent with democratic norms and sound principles of good governance, and thus contributing to a well-functioning security framework”. Other strategic documents that share a similar definition of SSR are found in the 2003 European Security Strategy and the internal 2010 EU Concept for the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) Justice Missions (DECAF–IISAT 2015). The frequent references made to the OECD-DAC Guidelines on Security System Reform and Governance (2005), and the guidelines laid out in the Handbook on Security System Reform (2008) therefore serve as the blueprint of SSR thinking and practices of many international actors, such as the EU, UN, OSCE and USA. Researchers identify two elements in the pioneering OECD definition, which are both shared by the international actors of SSR: 1) democratic and civilian control of the security sector, and 2) encouragement for developing effectiveness and efficiency in the security sector (Hanggi, 17). Scholars have argued that the adoption of the OECD terminology has given rise to a specific variant of the EU’s contemporary understanding of SSR, in which ‘multilateralisation’ is identified as an important element (Albrecht 2012, 172). Moreover, the OECD–DAC definition of SSR leaves out both the non-state, informal security actors and institutions as well as the localised and scattered, hybrid forms of security arrangements and practices. As a result, the EU’s SSR policy development processes and SSR operational missions that are heavily influenced by the OECDDAC and EU’s liberal democratic state-building model are bound to experience challenges from the non-state actors and those in fragile political contexts, where the security sector presents a more dispersed and a chaotic picture than within the EU. The OECD-DAC states that the main objective of SSR is to “create a secure environment which is conducive to development, poverty reduction and democracy” (Skeppström et al. 2015, 355) and that “processes and procedures dedicated to the reform of the security sector...include all the actors, their roles, responsibilities and actions working 7

together to manage and operate the system in a manner that is more consistent with democratic norms and sound principles of good governance, and thus contributes to a wellfunctioning security framework” (OECD 2005, 20). Unpacking the above OECD definition further, Chanaa claims that SSR contains four key dimensions: political, institutional, economic, and societal (Channa 2006, 324). If we adopt Channa's model, it appears that the institutional dimension overshadows the EU’s SSR interventions, while the societal and political dimensions are less prevalent. Dursun-Ozkanca & Vandemoortele have noted that the EU is “potentially the most important resource provider for SSR programmes” (Dursun-Ozkanca & Vandemoortele 2012, 139). Since the early 2000s, the EU has undertaken SSR activities in its immediate European neighbourhood as well as in faraway corners in Africa, the Middle-East and Asia. The EU’s contributions to SSR in these regions include training police forces, border guards, and enhancing rule of law (Dursun-Ozkanca 2015, 353-354). In addition, SSR missions also include training missions that often target important defence sector buildings during ongoing conflicts (Ibid). These training missions – one element of the aforementioned traditional 'train and equip' model that has become far more prevalent in SSR missions – have come under criticism from scholars, as they seem to undermine the overall SSR objective to “reform and develop” as defined by OECD. Another variant of the train and equip approach – “train and equip security force assistance” programmes – tend to focus mainly on helping the security sector achieve a monopoly of force, particularly for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts. These missions place little emphasis on whether the public views the security forces as legitimate or whether those security forces understand how to protect civilians. These programmes primarily provide training in weaponry, intelligence and enemy targeting, with comparatively small efforts to improve protection of civilians and human rights. Some countries refer to this as 'foreign security assistance' or 'foreign military financing'. Evaluations of these train and equip programs demonstrate that they can help democratic states achieve a monopoly of violence. But in nondemocratic states, train and equip programs can have a range of negative impacts such as providing weapons and training to abusive security forces that lack public legitimacy (McNerney et al. 2014). 'Train and equip' and 'reform and develop' are two ends of a spectrum of approaches for improving the security sector. While both aim to improve the security sector, their analysis of the underlying problem and intervention goals are different. Compared to the ‘train and equip’ security assistance programmes, the contemporary OECD SSR model differs mainly with respect to its prioritisation of governance, respect for universal human rights, sustainability and democratic civilian control of the armed forces. For this reason, some refer to SSR as the “linchpin” of the liberal state building project (Sedra 2013, 271). More critical scholars refer to SSR as a vehicle for moving a state’s armed forces – its practices, doctrines and management structures – towards Western norms of behaviour (Bellamy 2003, 106). Over time, as the EU’s crisis management missions became more complex, there were demands for increased civilian-military synergy and civil-military co-ordination in the EU’s SSR missions. These included logistical support, communication and information systems, strategic and tactical transportation, security and protection, and also joint training schemes. The UN has been similarly engaged in improving its civil-military co-ordination. Although they define this somewhat differently to the EU – as “the system of interaction, involving exchange of 8

information, negotiation, de-confliction, mutual support, and planning at all levels between military elements and humanitarian organisations, development organisations, or the local civilian population, to achieve respective objectives” (Muehlmann 2009, 393) – the increased civil-military co-ordination of both the UN and EU evidences how different actors, who do not follow the same chain of command, are mixed together in a crisis area and have to work together, although they function under different lines of command. Since the unveiling of The European Security Strategy of 2003, the EU also looks for ways to enhance the notion of ‘comprehensive security’, directly linking peace, development and political stability. As made clear in The European Security Strategy, the EU is keen to use its civilian and military instruments together, prioritising the development of “operations involving both military and civilian capabilities” (EU 2003, 82). This development has brought attention to civil-military co-ordination as another important tenet of EU-SSR goals. At present, there are two concepts with regard to the interconnection between the civil and military approaches to crisis management. They are: Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC), and Civil-Military Coordination (CMCO). While the term CIMIC refers to co-operation at operational and tactical levels “with the specific aim of connecting and making use of military capabilities in theatre for the coordination of and co-operation with national, international and non-governmental civilian actors”, the notion of Civil-Military Coordination (CMCO), which is part of EU’s Comprehensive Approach to crisis management, aims to “address the need for effective co-ordination of the actions of all relevant EU actors involved in the planning and subsequent implementation of EU response to the crisis” (Council of the European Union 2003b). CMCO thus represents an attempt to create an EU-wide culture of co-ordination for EU hybrid crisis management missions (Gross 2008; Gebhard 2008, 89). As noted above, over time, the EU has progressively and systematically internalised the SSR discourse and developed practices surrounding SSR as part of the security-good governance-development paradigm, all of which enabled the Union to justify its external interventions backed by the ever evolving European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and the operations conducted under ESDP (Sabiote 2010). For decades, the dominant Euro-Atlantic framework of SSR has been applied and exported to a number of different contexts; postconflict (i.e. EU, NATO, OSCE), transition countries (i.e. Council of Europe) or developing countries (i.e. OECD, ECOWAS, World Bank) (Dursun-Ozkanca and Vandemoortele 2012). Compared to the security assistance programmes undertaken during the Cold War period, the contemporary SSR model based on OECD and European approaches to reform differs mainly with respect to its liberal normative underpinning that prioritises governance, respect for universal human rights, sustainability and democratic civilian control of the armed forces. For this reason, some refer to SSR as the ‘linchpin’ of the liberal state building project (Sedra 2013, 271).1 More critical scholars refer to SSR as a vehicle for moving a state’s armed forces – its

1 However, the principles underlying the African Union’s SSR policy, adopted in 2013, stands in contrast to this. The AU principles on SSR comprises of the following: a) African solidarity and African partnerships; b) Linkage between SSR and regional integration; c) National ownership, national responsibility and national commitment; d) Adherence to a nationally defined vision of SSR and parameters for external support for SSR; e) Tailoring SSR processes to the unique histories and cultures of the national context; f) Integration of informal and customary security providers and traditional justice actors into SSR processes where appropriate; g) Recognising SSR as part of a broader

9

practices, doctrines and management structures – towards Western norms of behaviour (Bellamy 2003, 106). Given these insights, it becomes apparent that since its inception, EU SSR endeavours, both in the policy and operational domain, are starkly normative. When looking at the development of the various SSR definitions, the SSR operational guidelines and the general discourse in the field, it is evident that there remains a 'fuzziness' surrounding the very definition of SSR. This seems to stand in the way of giving clear policy direction for undertaking SSR missions abroad. Given the various definitions of SSR, there is room for approaching, perceiving and assessing SSR as an idea, norm, agenda or as a programme. As such, a variety of perspectives on SSR are adopted by different actors; from a development perspective (i.e. World Bank), security perspective (i.e. OSCE, NATO, EU) or democratic perspective (i.e. Council of Europe). It is approached by other actors with a predominant focus on geographical factors; globally (i.e. UN, EU, OSCE), regionally (i.e. African Union, Council of Europe) or sub-regionally (i.e. ECOWAS) as well as from the angle of functionality, such as capacity building and technical assistance efforts (i.e. Council of Europe), norm development or transfer efforts (i.e. OECD) or both (i.e. EU, OSCE). These different perspectives are based on different ranges of assumptions, theories of change, and assessment criteria, which by and large do not gel together. Although the overall SSR policy appears the same on paper, the above differences between definition and approaches, that have been highlighted, generate different outcomes when applied in diverse operational contexts.

democratisation and reform process; h) Adherence to the principles of accountability and transparency; i) SSR will aim to bring about transformative possibilities for gender equality within the security sector; j) Primary responsibility of Member States for the co-ordination of SSR assistance (DECAF-ISSAT 2015).

10

3. SSR Policy Developments: EU and Beyond The EU is not a newcomer to the security arena globally; indeed, it has been instrumental in shaping the post-Cold War security architecture. Furthermore, the reforms of the Treaty of Lisbon and the new 2010–14 Stockholm Programme adopted by the European Council in December 2009 opened up new opportunities for the EU to play a serious role as an international actor in the security arena (Monar 2010, 24). The EU’s overall security policy – and its SSR related policies in particular – are drawn from many sources and have taken inspiration from a number of parallel policy developments both within the EU and from other major international organisations (i.e. UN and the World Bank). For example, the UN’s recent efforts at developing a coherent and comprehensive approach to SSR – as reflected in the UN Secretary-General’s report released in January 2008, entitled ‘Securing Peace and Development: The Role of the United Nations in Supporting Security Sector Reform’ (Ebo and Powell 2012, 45)- has been instructive for the EU. A second UN report, compiled in 2013, focuses on three areas of UN engagement – partnerships, regional SSR efforts, and the first stand-alone Security Council (SC) resolution on SSR in April 2014 – was also a major influence on the EU's for development of its own SSR policies. Particularly since the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in 2010, there are signs of increased mutual learning and influence between the UN and the EU. With the implementation of the EU Plan of Action for CSDP Support to UN Peacekeeping from July 2012 until the end of 2014, as well as the recent adoption of the UN guidelines on Coordination between the UN and the EU during the planning of UN missions and EU civilian missions and military operations in April 2014, both organisations show signs of striving for closer forms of co-operation between the two bodies (Madsen and Pietz 2014, 1). The EU’s experiences in security matters and its SSR policy-making is shaped by interacting with and taking part in security-related discussions with other international organisations, such as OECD, OCSE, and NATO and the Council of Europe, which stands as the foundation for its current security policy, hence SSR. This is evidenced by the EU adopting the code of conduct of OSCE for democratic oversight of the security sector (in 1994), its active participation and regular consultations with NATO under NATO’s Berlin Plus agreement, as well as Member States’ continued involvement in OECD-DAC meetings. Further, the realities of failed and collapsed states during the 1990s was also a point of concern for the EU to develop a new security policy framework for its future activities. This was initially facilitated by the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) that allowed the EU to become involved in security matters in third countries. More recently, EU pre-accession assistance, democratisation and development cooperation, and the deployment of civilian and military missions under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP used for supporting JSSR activities) have all highlighted a more focused conceptualisation of SSR in it institutionalisation. Currently, the EU's various community instruments, which “fall under Development Co-operation, Enlargement, the Stabilisation and Association Process, the European Neighbourhood Policy, Conflict Prevention and Crisis Management, Democracy and Human Rights, and the external dimension of the area of Freedom, Security and Justice”, are being utilised to support SSR processes in different parts of the world (Commission of the European Communities 2006, 3). The EC has been eager to distinguish the military means of peacebuilding from the civilian within its SSR missions, 11

highlighting that “military is only one instrument for providing security for the population”. In supporting the development of SSR according to the democratic norms and principles of accountability, transparency and good governance- in which direct support for the military and non-statutory security forces is explicitly excluded- the EC has illustrated its attempts to enhance the civilian aspect of peacebuilding through SSR. By extending Official Development Assistance (ODA) eligibility to the area of security, as agreed at the OECD/DAC High-Level Meeting in March 2005, the EC was able to achieve funding from development co-operation for a wider spectrum of SSR activities than before. These encompassed all civilian aspects of SSR, as well as activities in relation to democratic and civilian control of the military parts of SSR, including financial and administrative management of defence issues (ibid, 7). In 2000 during the Feira Council, the EU focused on four areas for developing civilian capacity, which have since provided a foundation for undertaking subsequent SSR missions. These four areas are: police capabilities; rule of law; civilian administration; and civil protection. These priorities eventually shaped the EU’s approach to the development of civilian capabilities (Gourlay 2004, 413-414). Regionally, the EU also developed targeted policy frameworks enabling SSR related activities in third countries. The Cotonou agreement (2000) that established a 20 year-long partnership with the Asia Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP) is one important example in this regard. Using this agreement, the EU imposed a number of conditions on the ACP countries that targeted their co-operation in the field of SSR. Contrary to the organically evolved SSR activities in the late 90’s and early years of the 21st Century, the first European Security Strategy (ESS) – presented in 2003 by European High Representative Javier Solana – aimed explicitly to shape the new generation of SSR thinking and activities at the EU. For the first time, the EU's new security strategy, entitled ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World’, analysed the EU’s security environment and identified key security challenges and their political implications for the EU. The original strategy (which was revised in 2008) was a clear indication of the EU’s ambitions of becoming a global player in the security sector as well as its intentions of using SSR as a key tool of the EU’s external action. The document clearly underlined how and why SSR should be “part of a broader institution building” process (Council of the European Union 2003, 5; Dursun-Ozkanca and Vandemoortele 2012, 139). As Hout has observed, “the European Security Strategy came to be quickly turned into a policy on fragile states. The linkage of the EU’s policy on fragile states to security concerns has led to an emphasis on a wide set of policy instruments that make an explicit connection between development, humanitarian, military and security aspects–sometimes referred to as a ‘whole-of-EU approach’, within which the governance dimension came to be emphasised” (2010, 142). Following these developments, Sabiote notes how the EU uses the SSR discourse in relation to the evolving European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and uses the operations conducted under ESDP to justify its external interventions, under the auspices of the security-good governancedevelopment paradigm (Sabiote 2010). The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) unveiled in 2004 is the next major official reference point made on SSR as a key instrument of EU foreign policy. ENP was followed by the EU’s strategy for Africa (Dec. 2005). The EU's African strategy included SSR as a tool of post-conflict reconstruction and identified seven policy areas where SSR-related actions will be undertaken: Development co-operation, EU enlargement, European Neighbourhood policy, conflict prevention and crisis management, democracy and human rights and Freedom, Security and Justice. Given the nature of the content and the modalities of the ENPs implementation, 12

some researchers refer to the ENP as a model for the ‘‘export’’ of key elements of EU internal security governance to other countries, which reflect the objectives, legislative and organisational approaches of the EU. Similarly, Monar (2010, 26) has argued that the eastward and south-eastward expansion of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) – facilitated in 2004 and 2007 – was simply an attempt of externalisation of the AFSJ internal security rationale under the ENP label. Although having made no direct reference to SSR, the next major policy pronouncement, the ‘European Consensus on Development’ (2005), provided fertile ground for SSR to flourish. By making the security and development nexus explicit, ECD paved the way for undertaking coherent and co-ordinated SSR related activities. The ECD states that “coherence seeks to take account of development objectives in all its policies that are likely to affect developing countries. Further it aims at minimising contradictions and building synergies between different EU policies to benefit developing countries and increase the effectiveness of development cooperation” (European Commission 2015). In the same year, a legislative framework was introduced to facilitate financing the SSR activities (for the period from 20072013), which were previously scattered between a number of EU departments. In June 2006, the first overarching SSR framework of the EU was unveiled, providing recommendations to strengthen the EC contribution to overall EU support for SSR. It laid down a list of key competencies and aims to be developed so as to undertake SSR activities abroad, which included: strengthening policy and programming dialogue; integrating SSR into both Country Strategy Papers (CSP) and their Regional equivalents (RSP); action plans and programming tools; ensuring co-ordinated planning; strengthening overall implementation of EU support; developing tools for planning and implementation; developing SSR-specific training for the mainstreaming of SSR; prioritising SSR under the new Financial Instruments; and, strengthening co-operation with international partners (Commission of the European Communities 2006, 1012). In 2005 and 2006, two separate concepts of security were adopted by the Commission and the Council. The two concepts focus on their respective institutional competences: the Council on CSDP missions, the Commission on Rule of Law (RoL) and the long-term impact of SSR activities. Both of these have had consequences on the development of SSR policy and its continued implementation. Similarly, the European Commission’s Instrument for Pre-Accession, launched in 2007, provided assistance for political reform, particularly institution building, strengthening the rule of law, human rights, protection of minorities, and the development of civil society in countries engaged in the EU accession process, with direct and indirect implications on SSR in pre-accession countries. The Lisbon Treaty that came into force in December 2009 stands as a cornerstone in the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The treaty includes both a mutual assistance and a solidarity clause and allowed for the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) under the authority of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP). The two distinct functions of the newly created post give the HR/VP the possibility to bring all the necessary EU assets together and to apply a "Comprehensive Approach" to EU crisis management (EEAS 2012). This is a development which addressed the long-standing criticism of the EU’s overlapping and incoherent external actions which undermined its credibility as a 13

serious international actor, particularly in security governance. In 2010, the Council adopted an internal EU Concept for CSDP Justice Missions, to which both the European External Action Services (EEAS) and European Commission contributed (Madsen and Pietz 2014, 2). The launch of the EEAS and the recent formulation of an overarching Comprehensive Approach to crisis management represented an opportunity to achieve more coherence in the practical implementation of crisis missions, including justice and security related activities in the field. The most recent developments for SSR policies and operational instruments came in 2015 when the European Council reiterated the need to fully implement the Civilian Capability Development Plan. It also invited the High Representative and the Commission to develop – in consultation with the Member States – an EU-wide strategic framework for Security Sector Reform by mid-2016. Alongside the need for further development of civilian measures and the capabilities and capacities of CSDP, the list of conclusions published on 18 May 2015 in the 'Council Conclusions on CSDP', “underline[d] the need to further strengthen the links between external and internal security. The aim is to increase synergies in the EU response to priority horizontal issues such as terrorism, organised crime, foreign fighters, smuggling and trafficking in human beings, irregular migration, hybrid threats, border management, energy security and cyber security, taking into account i.e. the ongoing revision of the European Agenda for Security’ (2015, 3). It is entirely plausible that the Council’s conclusions regarding international security and defence are likely to become the dominant focus of on-going and future SSR activities. Presently, 'security' as reflected in security policy is identified as one of the most important cross-cutting themes of EU affairs. Amongst many other policies and activities related to security, SSR in particular is growing to become a hugely important tool of the Union’s external action. Fluri and Spence concurred with such sentiments in 2008, stating that: “Security policy is one of the most promising policy instruments of EU”. According to Monar, “in the ten years since the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice' (AFSJ) has been the EU’s fastest expanding policymaking domain with over 1200 texts adopted by the JHA Council and a more than twentyfold increase in EU budgetary expenditure” (2010, 23). Some scholars have referred to EU SSR as a process of “epistemic learning” and “learning by doing” (Faleg 2012, 147-48). However, the various case studies of SSR operation missions highlight that, more often than not, ‘doing’ seems to trump 'learning'. As a result, the ongoing EEAS initiative for development of the European Security Strategy and SSR remains under close watch by many epistemic communities.

14

4. EU-SSR Knowledge Production: A snapshot of two decades of research, with a reflection on methodological contours The first mention of the concept of SSR was in Eastern Europe in the late 1990s. Since then, the concept has attracted the attention of many academics, working in a diverse range of subject areas. Initially, SSR was a topic dominated by researchers from political science and its sub fields of International Relations and security studies. In these fields, there was a natural inclination to focus on generating structural explanations on SSR, privileging state centric, institutional and international and transnational relations based explanations. The vast majority of these SSR studies focused on single cases, often only superficially exploring the dynamics of security governance over long periods at the macro-national level. By so doing, these studies have overlooked the political aspects of SSR, thus becoming an ally of donors’ technocratic approach to SSR. One of the major drawbacks of employing a single case study approach was turning a blind eye to local security governance arrangements. This case study method also allowed researchers to focus their analyses on the implementation of existing policies, and finding ways to improve external strategies within the existing approach. As a result, after more than a decade of convergence of concept and policy, relatively little is understood about how SSR is actually implemented in practice, and what effect that they have for local-level security governance. Conducting an exercise of methodological mapping on previous SSR studies, Jackson notes that the bulk of the research ended up being decoupled from the debates about state-building and liberal peacebuilding. He argues that this resulted in them being uncritical of the 'big picture' and becoming an indirect ally to the promotion of the liberal peace narrative, exporting ideas of the western liberal state model and the Weberian bureaucratic state ethos to totally different contexts through SSR programming (2011). One of the major positive contributions made by the earlier generation of SSR researchers is identified as what Chanaa coined “conceptual-contextual divide” (Chanaa 2006, 13). This specific divide helped identify the gaps and challenges of operationalising the SSR concept in local contexts and stressed the need for regularly adapting it to local contexts. Following these gaps identified in early generation SSR research, Schroeder & Chappuis suggest that the early generation of researchers failed to capture the intractable disconnects between external reform efforts and domestic orders of security governance (2012, 135-136). Following the same line of critique, they further find that the bulk of SSR related research in the past has been faulted for its biased focus on external interests, while neglecting the agency and power of domestic actors. As a way of concluding their overall findings, Schroeder & Chappuis note how “asymmetric power relations, measured both in terms of political and material resources, expose external actors to accusations of neo-colonialism, imperialism, paternalism and self-interested imposition” (2012, 136). Given the 'top down' and state centric nature of the first generation of SSR research, the new generation of SSR scholars was inspired to conduct a more 'bottom up', society centric, non-institutionalist approach, focusing more of their analyses of SSR programmes and policy implementations on the sub-national level. These scholars attempted to develop an 15

understanding of the exigencies of context and to offer general insights into the nature of security governance and reform at the local, inter-personal level of interaction, by using microfocused empirical data. In order to do this, the new generation of SSR scholars chose to apply methodologies beyond the traditional set of methodological ‘tools’ available within political science. Their objective was to better grasp and enhance understanding as to how adaptations of the SSR concept were applied in real contexts (Schroeder and Chappuis 2014, 141). In contrast to this inclination, as Darzun-Ozkanca and Vandermoortele find, a major part of present academic knowledge on SSR came to be heavily based on policy studies and policy analyses. According to Dursun-Ozkanca and Vandemoortele, one of the drawbacks of policy studies is that they provide a limited focus on description of cases under examination, and overlook critical factors that explain the processes and outcomes of SSR (Dursun-Ozkanca and Vandemoortele 2012, 146). Further, more recent reviews of the academic literature on SSR also indicate that, despite the level of attention SSR has received, the overall body of SSR literature is still light on theory, operating within a limited conceptual terrain, highlighting the need for increased scholarly attention to SSR (ibid). More contemporary scholarly contributions (from 2005 onwards) demonstrate attempts to overcome the gaps left by the previous generation of SSR studies, at the methodological, conceptual, theoretical and analytical levels. The newest generation of researchers belong to numerous subject areas, as diverse as Governance Studies and Public Finance Management, and draw their theories from resource dependency theory, sociological organisational theories, policy transfer research and post-colonial approaches to the study of governance. These scholars aspire to make the knowledge base on SSR more comprehensive and analytically sharper. For example, by applying the resource-dependency theory (with a perspective on governance), some researchers have attempted to bring the multitude of public and private actors involved in SSR into a sharper focus (Justaert 2012, 219). The resource dependency theory is a contrast to the conventional state centric studies on SSR where formal institutions and actors occupy the centre stage of analysis. Moreover, in contrast to the perceived idea of a unified state sector, scholars applying sociological organisation theories to the study of SSR were able to trace different types of ‘hybrid security orders’, which they identify as an outcome of encounters between international and domestic models of security governance in SSR processes (Schroeder et al. 2014, 214). One of the major contributions of the sociologically inspired studies on SSR was raising awareness about several patterns of SSR realisation, which are viewed as the result of selective adoption of SSR components by local actors, and tracing the origins and evolution of these realisation patterns. Moreover, sociological researchers have identified several ‘ceremonial SSR structures’ of SSR that are being realised in local contexts. As they note, these so called ceremonial structures seem to create a gulf between specific external norms and standards and actual practice of these norms. Going a step further, in the words of Schroeder, “these ceremonial SSR structures effectively shield an organisation from the effects of externally induced processes of change, these instances of ‘loose coupling’ between an organisation’s formal structure and its actual day-to-day activities allows an organisation to formally adhere to the specific normative requirements of its institutional environment, yet without necessarily changing its routines and practice” (2014, 217). Schroeder & Chappuis 2014 argue that scholars studying security governance from a post-colonial perspective mainly focus on questions around local agency, the relationship between local-external actors, asymmetrical power relations, and the processes of translation, 16

appropriation and resistance that shape SSR outcomes through interactions (Schroeder & Chappuis 2014, 143). Such studies offer important insights into localised instances of security governance. These local instances are identified as realising new forms of modernity, which researchers claim provide important insights on non-official, the informal and the uninstitutionalized forms of influence and interactions. The newest group of SSR studies is situated in the realm of ‘transfer research’. These studies attempt to bring new theoretical perspectives to the study of state-building and thereby hope to bring new insights into how the practice(s) of international interventions can be studied (Schroeder et al. 2013, 386). Transfer research is a promising ground for assessing substantive and procedural changes in international actors’ interventions in the arena of security governance of fragile or post-conflict states. By comparing transfer processes in diverse contexts where SSR missions and activities have taken place (i.e. Liberia, Timor-Leste and the Palestinian Territories), ‘transfer’ researchers claim that, despite the numerous variations identified across political, economic and strategic factors in each domestic context, external SSR interventions also produce distinct similarities. As Schroder et al claim, the findings based on transfer research on SSR show an encouraging sign of future theory development and potential avenues for generalising SSR research (Schroeder et al. 2013, 381). While battling to sustain a revisionist and post-liberal approach to SSR studies and practice (i.e. by introducing concepts of local ownership, human security, in particular), transfer researchers usefully expose the deeper normative underpinning of SSR as an agenda and its highly interventionist character (ibid 382). Moreover, transfer researchers also claim that their contributions help uncover mechanisms and processes that drive the international transmission of security norms, institutions and practices. By focusing on the procedural aspects of peacebuilding and statebuilding in general, and SSR in particular, transfer research hopes to dig deeper on the questions of ‘how international donors are turning SSR policy into practice' as well as to what extent the donor commitments reflect substantive new approaches or merely ‘business as usual’. By going beyond the ‘supply-side’ analyses of interventions that focus exclusively on the nature of external support, transfer researchers hope to analyse relationships between senders and receivers of external assistance and illuminate how the relationship between the senders and receivers develops and changes over time (Schroeder et al 2013, 384). Within the current body of literature dedicated to the study of SSR, political-economy (PE) analysis appears most useful. Although it seems scarce in contrast to other approaches, it appears more developed in terms of analytical rigour. PE analysis is identified as a promising an analytical approach for understanding the local contexts of SSR operations and assessing how and why certain reform processes have failed. Since the majority of the SSR missions are deployed in what Egnell and Halden have called “society-less contexts” (Lien undated, 4) – i.e. places where there is limited statehood or hybrid governance- PE analysis on SSR can advance our understanding on SSR in each context. PE analysts challenge the basic assumptions of state-centric explanation, including the idea that all actors (society, economic actors and politicians) want a strong state structure similar to that in the West, as well as the notion that there always exists a state-society relationship. According to PE researchers, in many postconflict settings, low state capacity is seen as a desired outcome in “society-less contexts”. In such instances, there exists no political community or political elite groups demanding a state, which according to these researchers does not mean that these spaces are ungoverned. They find that the political and security vacuums emerging after conflict are easily exploited by 17

actors such as warlords, criminal networks and corrupt political elites. Further, there is often a tendency for traditional structures to re-emerge, therefore making the state only one among several competing organisations governing society. According to Lien, when designing security sector reforms, it is very important to be aware of these numerous dispersed structures, their relationship with each other and with the state. PE research on SSR pushes towards a more productive, comprehensive understanding of the political economy of a country. As they usefully remind us, there is no “one size fits all” in state-building, and designing SSR activities without taking into account the premises of local economic structures may only lead to shortterm “regime security” (ibid). Citing evidence from Afghanistan, PE researcher Lien shows that there are always several different layers of power in local economic structures. Warlords and other violent entrepreneurs such as the criminalised political elite in Bosnia and Herzegovina – who have little interest in strengthening the administrative capacity of the security sector – stand in the way of realising SSR because “the very norms of SSR challenge the leadership and power structures that they and the current governments rest upon” (Lien undated, 13). PE researchers hope that SSR thinking, policy and practice can be made less technocratic and more political, to include larger problems such as state capture, ethnic relations, human rights violations, social exclusion and extreme inequalities, that often challenge SSR missions, especially in areas of limited statehood (Hout 2010, 141). The academic discourse on SSR continues to strive to expand the conceptual terrain available for assessing SSR. This is particularly seen in the currently dominant debates on state fragility and limited statehood. Nevertheless, the main conclusion of SSR researchers working in diverse disciplinary and theoretical traditions tend to agree that sharply defined models, technical definitions and normative goals associated with Western-style security governance and reform projects are analytically and empirically misleading, when they are applied to areas of limited statehood (Hills 2014, 177). Advancing the notion of hybrid security governance in limited statehood scenarios, Schroeder, Chappuis and Kocak identify patterns of adoption, adaptation or rejection of international security governance standards by domestic actors. Their studies are firmly backed by empirical observations made in Timor Leste, Liberia and the Palestinian Territories. These findings are also complemented and advanced by the findings of similar research conducted by Koehler and Gosztonyi, who find external security-building interventions leading to an expansion of hybrid governance zones and zones of arbitrary rule in limited statehood scenarios (i.e. north-east Afghanistan) (Schroeder & Chappuis 2014, 141). Along the conceptual axis, researchers have begun to question the uncritical acceptance and application of seemingly neutral terms such as ‘sector’ in SSR studies and policies- a relevant question in the limited statehood debate and hybrid governance literature. According to some critical researchers, believing in one unified sector of organised institutional forms (an attribute often assigned to developed western liberal states), is not applicable to the majority of places where SSR is implemented. As these researchers observe, in many places where limited statehood has become a feature of governance, the use of conceptual terms such as ‘sector’ is unhelpful and even an impediment to knowledge production. Given these pitfalls, these researchers suggest that the security sector should be treated as a ‘political field’, an area within which diverse actors compete for influence and resources. This idea is compatible with

18

Luckham’s earlier suggestion to think of a 'shifting terrain' of security coalitions as opposed to conceiving of the security sector as a coherent and “unified” sector (Hills 2014, 166). Overall, when comparing and and contrasting the decades of various scholarly contributions in understanding EU-SSR policy developments and SSR operations, conceptual, theoretical and analytical frameworks that take the ‘politics matter’ seriously seems to lag behind. In this regard, the lead given by SSR researchers working in political economy and policy transfer research provide a promising start, although they fall short in grasping the aspect of the inner working of politics fully. As such, a political analytical framework backed by a strong political theory of change as proposed by Hudson and Leftwich (2014, 102) serves as the best route for developing a nuanced understanding of the full spectrum of politics underlying EU-SSR, and the challenges of realising EU-SSR goals in their various operational contexts. Hudson and Leftwich opined that there is a need for building analytical approaches to SSR that capture both the inner and outer works of politics, placing power at the heart of analysis and developing an approach that further disaggregates structure, agency, power, ideas and contingency. Given the theory-light nature and analytically less sophisticated nature of previous SSR research, the variant of political analysis proposed by Husdon and Leftwich seems like a promising potential line of inquiry for EU-SSR research.

19

5. Operationalising EU-SSR: Main Gaps and Challenges Although overall EU security policy and specific policies related to SSR are in a constant adjustment, the majority of the sources consulted for this paper are critical of the continuation of the concept- context, the policy-practice and ‘train and equip versus governancedevelopment divides. According to the insights drawn from two generations of SSR related research, the above mentioned divides continue to stand as major barriers for the full realisation of EU-SSR goals. As illuminated in several case studies, the gap between the governance-development approach and technical train and equip approach of EU-SSR interventions is notable. The EU’s contributions to SSR include training police forces, border guards, and enhancing rule of law (Dursun-Ozkanca 2015, 353-354). In addition, SSR operations also include training missions that often target capacity building of the defence sector during ongoing conflicts (ibid). As the recent cases in Somalia and Mali demonstrated, soon after EUTM missions left, military trainees began to combat local insurgencies. This scenario raises the question whether the EUTM missions are consistent with EU’s long-term governance-development approach. As the cases of Mali and Somalia demonstrate, train and equip missions do not necessarily create a security sector that is legitimate, sustainable, and under civilian control, and they sometimes even inadvertently risk contributing to negative side effects in the medium term (ibid 353). Upon observing similar outcomes in other SSR operational missions, researchers argue that shortterm train and equip missions continue to feed the policy and practice divide (Skeppström, Wiklum and Jonnson 2015). Based on previous studies on SSR operational missions that point to a tension between the EU’s dual approach to SSR, it is fair to state that the train and equip approach reduces space for realising inclusive and sustainable processes negotiated and owned by local security actors and local communities. Researchers also warn of an expanding gap between EU’s actual practices of SSR drawn from the traditional state centric notion of security and its rhetorical commitment to Human Security (reflected in the Lisbon Treaty Article 21.1). EU-SSR operational missions suggest the EU’s tendency to prioritise traditional state security. This development was especially noted after the September 11th attacks. As Sedra points out, the promise of human security in security governance was severely undercut as the end goal of international interventions is nothing but establishing a liberal statehood and protecting it from any form of threat and risk (Sedra 2010, 19). The blueprint liberal state model falls short in representing the needs of the individuals. Compared to the Human Security approach, the liberal state model is accused of not offering enough capacity to resolve even the fundamental existential dilemmas of people. The security sector related intervention made in Iraq (since 2003), and the early case of SSR intervention in Bosnia (i.e. police force reforms) stand as two striking examples where liberal statehood and liberal peacebuilding were attempted by prioritising a state centric notion of security, and thus, paradoxically, ended up creating the opposite conditions, sometimes even putting individuals’ security at risk by serving the interests of powerful national elites. As was the case in certain local settings, the EU and other externally/donor-driven SSR interventions 20

that fit the liberal state model have ended up establishing new hierarchies, or validating and legitimising the older hierarchies of oppression and insecurity (i.e. Afghanistan). Paying attention to the dynamics of the SSR in the OPt, researchers have explored how SSR interventions function to perpetuate rather than weaken authoritarian retrenchment in recipient states. As Mustafa claims, in the case of OPt, “the international SSR interventions created a socio-political paradox on the ground that diverges substantially from conventional understandings of security and statehood, producing a conflicted authoritarian system of governance in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and entrenching rather than challenging or tempering the paradigm of Israeli occupation” (Mustafa 2015, 212). Taken together, what the above examples illustrate is that when SSR intervention hinges on the liberal state model where state security is prioritised (often serving the security needs of the politico-military elites), these elites become more accountable to the external donors than to their local constituencies. In Afghanistan, local elites were held accountable to the EU, not to the local constituencies. Similarly, the police reforms undertaken by the EU in Bosnia also revealed how the underlying liberal state model and top-down reforms targeting elite security needs undermined realising inclusive, sustainable and legitimate reform processes. The incentives put on the table (i.e. EU accession) to gain support for the police reforms in Bosnia were reported to have even faced a backlash from the Bosnian people, who viewed the entire reform exercise as an instance of fostering ‘elite peace’ and ‘top-down’ reforms. Some researchers claim that the EU’s approach to SSR in Bosnia contributed to the weakening of the Bosnian state ‘by increasing the domestic legitimacy of anti-state forces’ (Juncos 2014, 57). In Bosnia, SSR did not factor in a discerned lack of inter-ethnic trust, and the EU’s technical topdown SSR reforms simply ignored the context specific ethno-political-economy factors. It resulted in intense competition between different ethnic groups for securing the lion's share of state power and access to state resources through establishing zones of influence, security and control over the police. Eventually, this eroded local people’s trust of state institutions. In this case it is correct to state that the security institutions after SSR only reproduced the old institutions, which were legitimised by external actors. We can see with the case of Bosnia in particular, that the top-down nature of the reforms which were based on a state-centric approach to security could easily make ordinary people withdraw from taking part in the reform process, eventually isolating the entire reform process from the society. As such, it seems appropriate to question the effectiveness of the EU’s rhetorical commitment to local ownership, inclusivity and sustainability as cardinal principles of SSR. Another key challenge faced by the EU is creating an EU-wide culture of co-ordination, which was deemed important for EU hybrid crisis management missions (Gross 2008; Gebhard 2008 in Hynekab 2011, 89). With the establishment of the European External Action Services (EEAS) by the Lisbon Treaty (2009), hopes for effective and efficient co-ordination between civil and military missions and the improvement to strategic co-ordination between these two structures are being renewed (Hynekab 2011: 84). However, as researchers show, the EU continues to struggle to overcome the co-ordination issues that are largely blamed on the EU’s organisational culture (as opposed to the usual suspect of the EU’s institutional separation). There are examples from the EU’s SSR missions that the co-ordination between civil and military was attempted and showed improvement amidst mounting difficulties. The EU's two 21

missions to Bosnia, namely EUPM and EUFOR, which were launched to combat organised crime, is an illustrative example of civil-military co-ordination for many other EU missions. First of all, as the case of Bosnia illuminates, two EU missions adopted very different approaches to the same problem, and they were planned and executed in a mutually-exclusive way. EUPM’s mandate was a non-executive mandate that came to be undermined by the EUFOR mission that was an executive mandate drawn directly from the Dayton Agreement. Logically, this led to uneasiness in their relationship and made civil-military coordination between the two components rather difficult. Further, while EUPM followed a long term sustainable capacity building approach totally devoted to local ownership and trusting the local police, EUFOR – which was eager for quick results – began to put pressure on organised crime networks and began circumventing local authorities whom they perceived as corrupt (Muehlman 2008, 287). Although the establishment of the EEAS in 2010 is welcomed as a positive measure for improving civil-military coordination at EU level, some scholars warn of the possibility of realising an informal "culture of co-ordination" (Norheim-Martinsen and Martin 2010, 1). Besides, there are doubts raised as to how and what plans the new EEAS will develop to avoid the influences of more resourceful and militarily powerful EU members (Germany, France and UK) in the Council’s decision making processes, to ease the complexities involved in the chain of command in SSR missions and avoid the military dominating the civilian aspect of the EU missions (Hynekab 2011, 83). Building local ownership is another major challenge faced by international donors, a challenge identified in EU-SSR operational missions. The concept of ‘local ownership’ has become a cornerstone in SSR donor policy: every major donor statement on SSR thus contains some kind of incitement for external actors to consult a broad range of actors as stakeholders in security provision, to adapt to local context and to seek ‘local’ or ‘national’ ‘buy-in’ or ‘ownership’ (Schroeder and Chappius 2014, 137). Key dilemmas faced by EU-SSR missions encompass a range of questions, such as: which state or institutions to build; which capacities to reinforce; should the development of non-state security practices be encouraged; and, whether or not these practices can truly contribute to upholding the principle of local ownership, although they tend to fall outside the central state apparatus and perhaps contradict the blueprint liberal state model, (Mitchell 2011; Richmond 2010 in Dursun-Ozkanca & Vandemoortele 2012, 152).

More critical research identifies that one of the major impediments to realising local ownership is the guiding set of assumptions of this principle. These assumptions allow the donors to act with some degree of certainty about who is local, what ownership means or looks like, and how to get more of it, despite the fact that a number of discussions have detailed the vague and often conflicting nature of the concept. Such remaining questions in the SSR discourse of local ownership mask a deeper ambivalence about whose interests and agency should be central to the analysis. Further, these assumptions seem to inevitably place external interventions at the centre of the analysis, yet again marginalising what is 'local' as understood by the locals themselves. As scholars have pointed out, once the analysis is done from the point of view of the external actors, local actors get treated as supporting cast in alternating roles as partners, heroes, victims or spoilers (Schroeder and Chappius 2014, 136). There is no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to local ownership, therefore in different contexts donors will have to dictate different strategies, based on the needs, the willingness, 22

the capacity and the legitimacy of local institutions (Oosterveld and Galand 2012, 205). There are fundamental dilemmas in the concept of local ownership and how to operationalise it in EU-SSR. The flatly failed JSSR reforms in Afghanistan are one useful case in point. In this case lack of local ownership for JSSR reforms came to be highlighted through the processes lead to the drafting of Afghanistan’s new law of criminal procedures. First of all, the new draft was a brainchild of Italy, which consulted no one other than the international donors. As a result, the new criminal law procedures showed no regard or respect to the previously locally drafted procedures, that also exposed the unresolved tensions between international and local norms which underpinned the two documents. A similar situation is reported from Timor-Leste. Again, when drafting the procedures for judicial reforms, the EU-SSR mission did not consult the local communities. As a result, local communities completely ignored the UN revamped courts system run by the Indonesians as they did not trust them. Regardless of the unveiling of a new court system, locals continue to rely on their traditional justice mechanisms (ibid). The two examples from Afghanistan and Indonesia are illustrative of the continued tensions between international norms and local norms – linked to the liberal state blueprint – that continue to neglect involvement of local actors, sometimes even manipulating them in J/SSR undertakings. According to Caprini, local groups have much to contribute in conceiving a meaningful SSR in their local settings (2002). However, romanticizing local agency and local ownership to the point of abstraction, whereby non-state and local actors are imbued with a legitimacy that they do not possess among local constituencies, or overwriting their interests with ill-fitting notions of liberal civic motivation derived from Western political experience and contexts is warned of (Schroeder and Chappius 2014, 137). To these critics, the term SSR is difficult in itself because it implies an unequal power relationship between external actors who work towards reforming local society. Along the lines of inclusivity and local ownership, operationalising the principle of gender (equality, sensitivity, mainstreaming) is one of the main areas where EU-SSR seems to struggle to make an impact and positive impression. One of the key issues related to this is the perception of gender as a western imposition and a western norm. As Kunz noted, in operational terrains, much to the dissatisfaction and to surprise of many scholars, in the gendered SSR (GSSR) discourse, gender is still a marginalised issue – often mistaken as ‘adding women’ – and so continues to receive inadequate attention in SSR planning and implementation. Also, the assumption made in GSSR thinking, policy development and GSSR operation that all men/women want to, and should be, part of G/SSR came to be problematic. Scant attention to wider local political-economic factors and the technical nature of GSSR executions, are identified as important reasons why gender is lagging behind in actual GSSR missions. Besides, the GSSR discourse does not ask questions as to what happens to those who refuse to be part of this conversation or want to change the terms of the conversation. As Kunz usefully points out, by using women and adding them as ‘soft’ security providers in the GSSR discourse does not fundamentally destabilise the masculine connotation of the security sector and the hierarchy between the “real” security institutions and women’s “different” security provision (2012, 610). Researchers have also identified the inclusion of gender to the pre-existing technical models of SSR as another reason as to why gender still tends to take a back seat in SSR. Given the deeply political nature of gender issues, particularly in the conflict ridden contexts that are 23

often marked by deeply entrenched gender hierarchies, an ‘add-on-gender’ component to the existing technical SSR model overlooks the deep-seated political aspects of the gender relations, relations of power, therefore inhibiting possibilities of transforming gender relations by maximising the opportunities present in post-conflict environments. There is a significant demand for more resources for how to ‘do’ gender well in SSR, perceiving SSR as a key moment of transformation and a “window of opportunity” for integrating gender concerns, particularly in post -conflict contexts (Kunz 2012, 2). Meanwhile, there is a demand for gender to be treated within the broader SSR context to avoid the separation of gender from other matters in SSR and expansion of the focus from representation and retention of women in SSR under the broad banner of gender balancing to gender mainstreaming and context sensitivity, and to avoid gender getting infused into the template models for SSR. (Mobekk 2010, 278). Critical scholar Hudson points to the importance of avoiding instrumentalisation of GSSR by the liberal peace project that seeks to “enforce its norms” (Kunz 2012, 606). According to her, there is a real danger of the instrumental use of gender mainstreaming to diffuse Western liberal norms through creating widespread acceptance for, and legitimising of, these norms especially through peacekeeping and SSR interventions (Kunz 2012, 605-606). Echoing the same principles as local ownership, gender mainstreaming should occur with the leadership of local women advocating for their own voices and interests in SSR rather than being dictated by western Liberal norms. Despite the above dilemmas, gaps and the warnings from some scholars, a number of researchers still put their trust on gender mainstreaming, highlighting the transformative potential of external SSR interventions to influence social institutions and structures. However, the transformative project of gender mainstreaming requires a long period of engagement in the field (Mobekk 2010, 279-280). Moreover, gender mainstreaming requires the EU and other external actors to act as positive role models. As noted, “external actors serving as role models is often an important part of gender sensitisation and learning. However, the extent of positive role-modelling in gender sensitivity is subject to a combination of extreme macho culture exhibited by some of the police, military and paramilitary units deployed in post-conflict countries and the limited numbers of women deployed in peacebuilding operations” (Mobekk 2010, 284). As demonstrated in DRC, attempting to include more women into the security forces, as demanded by GSSR advocates, resulted in quite different results than planned. In DRC, including women in the armed forces changed their image. Female soldiers were perceived as becoming “masculinised through entering the armed forces” and after all, “a simple inclusion of women in the armed forces in order to render men less violent might not have the pacifying effect intended” (Kunz 2012, 612). What this scenario suggests is that in principle commitment to gender may sound attractive, but in practice, there is a great need for devising different strategies in different contexts when executing this principle. As the case of GSSR in DRC illuminated, there is a need to pay attention to the possible pitfalls of gender mainstreaming and gender balancing in SSR. Overall, given the EU’s preference for technical, short-term approaches to peacebuilding, let alone SSR, against a governance and development approach, realising a transformative and deeply political gender project through SSR is seriously doubtful. The arena of security governance is represented by a number of diverse actors. It usually comprises many categories of actors, including international organisations, individual 24

nation-states, non-state security actors, private actors (i.e. consultancy firms and private security contractors), regional organisations, societies, recipients and donors. These actors often have competing agendas, interests and approaches, as to how to govern security and concomitantly how to engage with SSR. Among the major players, UN, the Council of Europe, the EU, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and NATO, have developed their own frameworks for co-operation with each other on security matters (Monar 2010, 36). It is often noted that, within Europe alone, there are a number of distinct ‘European approaches’ to SSR and security governance, which makes multi-stakeholder co-ordination,2 co-operation and coherence3 challenging area of practice. On EU related SSR studies, researchers have identified incoherence and a lack of coordination as major barriers in realising SSR goals. To this effect, what researchers call horizontal, vertical and institutional incoherences are significant (Lurweg 2011, 104). Horizontal incoherences are a result of adopting different policy objectives. At the EU level, this scenario of horizontal incoherence is particularly identified between the Commission led SSR missions (under the CSDP flagship) and Council led SSR missions. As Gourlay identified, although the EU has developed a range of instruments, their decision-making processes that are divided between the Commission and the Council, are responsible for horizontal incoherences. For instance, the EU’s military operations conducted by the Council and civil assistance executed through the Commission are divorced from each other (2004, 404). This scenario has resulted in the EU’s overall approach to crisis management being a self-limiting one (ibid). The EU’s SSR missions in DRC, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Somalia, Mali (EUTM, MINSUMA) provide striking examples where horizontal incoherences (due to a lack of co-ordination and coherence between various EU departments) was on stark display. The SSR mission in Sudan shines as a rare example of multi-stakeholder coherence and co-ordination. In DRC, the EU undertook two civil missions under the flagship of CSDP – the EU advisory and assistance mission for security sector reform in the DRC, EUSEC RD Congo, and the EU police mission, EUPOL RD Congo – operating in the DRC to support the reform of the Congolese security sector. From the planning stage, these two missions were separated and responded to different lines of command. They were also reporting back to different institutions; the EU and the EUSEC RD Congo mission operated under the Crisis Management and Planning Directorate (CMPD) while the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC) was in charge of operational planning and the conduct of civilian CSDP missions (Lurweg 2011, 105). In the case of Congo, researchers have gathered evidence as to how horizontal

2

In EU affairs, co-ordination is broadly defined as “activities of two or more development partners that are intended to mobilise aid resources or to harmonise their policies, programmes, procedures and practices so as to maximise the development effectiveness of aid resources”. 3 Based on the DAC Journal of Development Co-operation, coherence in the context of EU may be referred to as different policy and communities of practice working together in ways that result in more powerful tools and products for all concerned. It means looking for synergies and complementarities and filling gaps among different policy and practice areas so as to meet common and shared objectives.

25

incoherence within the EU affected setting timeframes for SSR missions, and effective and meaningful resource distributions between various EU departments, and rather than deepening, horizontal incoherences have resulted in widening, overlapping and complicating the range of instruments available. Regarding resource allocation, the availability of different funds – such as the Development Fund (EDF), the Instrument for Stability (IFS) and the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) (Krause 2003; Klein 2010 in Justaert 2012, 221) – were also all scattered under different departments, which is also said to have affected the SSR mission in DRC negatively. At EU level, SSR processes are often haunted by the primacy of national rather than EU-level interests, a major factor underlying vertical incoherence. The national interests of EU member states are found to be undermining EU’s holistic approach in SSR missions and the EU’s common interests. It is found that the differences among the countries within the EU are often wider than the differences between Europe and the United States. Examples of vertical incoherences can be traced back as early as the 1990s. In responding to the increasing turmoil in Yugoslavia, Europe was hopelessly divided as to what policy to follow (Winn 2003, 51). Based on evidence gathered from recent SSR missions, Justaert notes in some instances the national interests of certain Member States even prevented some acting under the EU flag. The EU’S DRC SSR mission is cited as an example in this regard. (2012, 229. In this case, as former colonial powers, Belgium and France showed strong national interests overriding the common EU interest, whereas France, UK, and the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany had their own national foreign policy-related interests to contribute to the DRC–SSR mission. Conceiving a sharper gender focus and multiple gender programmes in the DRC–SSR mission reflect this. Portugal was also known to have political interests in DRC due to its relations with neighbouring Angola (Lurweg 2011, 117). The EU’s recent intervention in Libya is yet another illustrative case where serious vertical incoherences at EU level occurred. In the case of Libya, Germany breaking ranks with the EU and NATO partners and abstaining in the vote on UNSC resolution 1973, based on Germany’s own cost and benefit analysis, came as a surprise and a disappointment to other EU member states (Koenig 2011, 22). In the Libyan case, Germany’s behaviour is pointed out as an extraordinary example as to how its national interest overrode the EU interest and seriously undermined finding a common EU crisis response (Koenig 2011, 28). As Koenig writes, ‘while the EU’s response to the Libyan crisis has been multifaceted, nearly every aspect of it was marked by vertical incoherence. The recent institutional reshuffling and the EEAS did not contribute to inter-institutional coherence. Although the EU’s crisis response was in line with that of the UN, there was no synergetic co-operation with NATO and the African Union either (2011, 27). Given this aspect of national interest, researchers claim that the EU’s conflict management policy, and so its SSR missions, are dominated by some EU member states (the most telling example is the French domination of any policy on Africa)(Lurweg 2011, 118). Although the majority of instances of vertical incoherences at EU level is identified along rational theoretical lines, liberal theory suggests that the civilian and military missions undertaken by the EU under its CSDP umbrella cannot be solely explained using a rationalist logic and the self-interests of EU Member States. They argue for the need for understanding various instances of vertical incoherences alongside the expectation by European societies that their governments will act effectively in preventing and managing external crises and in fostering domestic values abroad or rather in governments’ attempts to respond to such 26

perceived expectations (Pohl 2013, 320). The vertical incoherence identified is likely to result in more serious negative effects on EU-SSR missions. Namely, instead of finding actual solutions to solve real problems, SSR missions are running a risk of being a “political compromise among the Members”, as captured in the examples of France and Belgium’s behaviour in DRC, leaving serious effects on resources to the EU mission, with individual Member States taking their own initiatives, channelling resources though bilateral development co-operation without contributing to joint EU missions, as was the case with UK – which had the biggest part in the Congolese police reform (Justaert 2012, 226). At the extreme end, it was also observed that sometimes individual Member States were using EU missions to pursue their own foreign policy interests. For instance, France and Belgium are often accused of using EU missions to continue their influence in the region as ex-colonial powers, while the Netherlands and Nordic countries use EU missions to promote their particular brand of foreign policy and development cooperation, while resource-constrained Belgium and Portugal are using EU missions to advance general national foreign policy goals (Ibid 227). In terms of coherence, there are several other challenges identified for the EU’s smooth rolling out of its SSR missions in a third country. In this regard, the interests of local actors/recipient countries, which are not under full control or influence of the EU, stand out. Examples from Afghanistan, OPts and in francophone Africa, demonstrate national and local elites having their own interests, calculations and projections on security and power (N'Diaye 2009, 3). Congolese elites deliberately worked against institutional coherence through their preference for bi-lateral approaches to SSR as a way of keeping control of the security sector. (Justaert 2012, 231). As Monar notes, at policy level through the Treaty of Lisbon and the 2010-14 Stockholm Programme, the EU has been taking steps to address multiple levels of incoherence, especially at horizontal level, by externalising and harmonising EU internal security objectives. This newer set of institutional reforms utilising the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty seem capable of enhancing the potential for addressing current coherence gaps (Monar 2010, 38). However, against this Koenig opined that the post-Lisbon institutional structure has done little to compensate for internal divisions and incoherence. Since the EU cannot change the course of national foreign policies, it should at least attempt to increase its ‘leadership for coherence’, Europeanise its crisis response in the medium term and aim at preventing incoherence in the longer term (Koenig 2011, 11). In the area of institutional coherence, the EU paints a picture that is far from perfect. Lack of institutional coherence results in many outcomes, some more detrimental than others. The EU’s SSR mission in Mali presents a scenario of institutional incoherence that resulted in duplication of efforts, wasting resources, and the failure to address critical functions. As illustrated by Larive, a lack of institutional coherence and co-ordination between the EU and NATO missions in Afghanistan rendered the peace building efforts in general, and SSR missions in particular, weak (in Dursun-Ozkanca & Vandemoortele 2012, 148). Similarly, Justaert draws attention to the co-ordination and coherence problem in European engagement in the Congolese police reform (2012). The EU mission in DRC also suffered greatly from incoherence between various public-private actors, which eventually led to a competition and even a deadlock in implementation of the proposed reforms (Sedra 2010, 19).

27

Incoherences between the EU and the US also falls under the category of institutional coherence. The United States has its own models guided by its own interests and set of assumptions, which contradict the EU’s SSR objectives, sometimes causing a real dilemma for EU field missions in achieving institutional coherence (ibid). The SSR missions in Occupied Territories of Palestine (OtP) provide an illustrative case of institutional incoherence due to gaps between the EU and the US. In this case, realising the gaps in the EU’s original mandate to provide technical assistance to Afghan security forces, the EU shifted its SSR activities from a train and equip model to promoting rule of law and security governance, and oversight institutions. Nevertheless, the US continued its original mission of providing technical assistance with a focus on developing the security capabilities of the Afghan forces. What this instance unveils is the different EU and US approaches to the same problem. Similarly in the SSR mission in Afghanistan, EU and NATO demonstrated instances of institutional incoherences. Ironically, sometimes these institutional incoherences have no impact at operational level for the host nations (i.e. in the Palestinian case) as they pursue things the way they wanted and selectively adopt SSR as it fits their interests (Schroeder et al 2014, 216), nevertheless undermining the EU’s overall image and its seriousness as a security actor. Another recent example of institutional (in) coherence is cited from Libya. In this case, the EU experienced a number of difficulties in co-ordinating with the African Union (AU) and with NATO. In the Libyan case, different stakeholders favoured different positions and approaches to the same problem, based on their own interests. For instance, contrary to the EU’s approach, the AU favoured a political mediation instead of a military campaign, it opposed a no-fly zone, and rejected the ICC arrest warrant on Qaddafi. The AU’s lack of co-operation with other stakeholders was motivated by its past ties with the Qaddafi regime, which used to extend strong financial and political support to the region (Koenig 2011, 22). Meanwhile, diverging views between the EU and the AU have inhibited synergetic co-operation (Koenig 2011, 24). The SSR mission in Somalia provides some insights as to why and how the EU cannot manage institutional incoherences and the difficulty that the EU faces in overcoming them. The national interests of international actors have overridden overall SSR goals. SSR missions in Somalia demonstrated how on one hand the US’s counter-terrorism agenda ensured its support for the PIS, Kenya’s desire to make Jubaland a buffer zone motivated it to establish the AMISOM operations. In the same vein, the issue of piracy prompted Denmark to consider the establishment of coastal police posts, whereas Turkey’s foreign policy ambitions shape its involvement in social issues, and China’s resource-related goals prompted it to engage in talks about electricity production. In addition, Ethiopia and Uganda provide basic police training for the SPF as part of their contribution to AMISOM, which fits with their wider engagement in regional and/or African Union activities (Hills 2014, 170). Although the majority of these examples point to institutional incoherence, there are a few positive examples of improved coherence. The EU’s increased co-operation with the United Nations, since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, is illustrative of this point. Cooperation between EU and the UN is guided by four different concepts that touch on both strategic policy and operational levels. The EU’s use of what is known as the 'modular' approach to support a particular component of UN operations (EU Assistance Mission to AMIS in Darfur is a partial representation of this approach) has been able to increase co-operation, 28

co-ordination and institutional coherence between the EU and the UN. Further, through the bridging model (e.g. Operation Artemis, EUFOR Chad/CAR), the EU can rapidly intervene in situations referred by the UN for a short period with a clearly defined endpoint, eventually paving the way for the UN to introduce a new operation and/or reorganise an existing one. Next, the EU’s standby approach undertakes temporary measures to reinforce an existing UN operation (e.g. EUFOR DRC from 2006). Finally, by using a joint hybrid operation, the UN and the EU co-run missions. However, as Tardy argues, contrary to what is written and agreed on paper, in each of these four domains, there are few examples of actual practice. Although there are various approaches defined for achieving multi-stakeholder coherence and institutional coherence between the EU and the UN, the EU’s usual preference is to contribute to UNmandated operations, meaning that it is more reserved about directly participating in UN-led operations (Tardy in Hynekab 2011, 88). Similarly in 2001, to maximise the co-operation between the EU and NATO, an institutionalised partnership was launched. The impetus for this renewed partnership was found in earlier commitments to promote greater European responsibility in defence matters (NATO-Western European Union co-operation). The political principles underlying the relationship were set out in the December 2002 NATO-EU Declaration on a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). This partnership assures the EU access to NATO’s planning capabilities for its own military operations. The subsequent “Berlin Plus” arrangements set the basis for establishing a strategic partnership and for the Alliance to support EU-led operations in which NATO as a whole is not engaged (NATO 2015). Under this framework agreement, so far, the EU and NATO have co-operated in several missions, beginning with Macedonia, as well as Bosnia Herzogovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the African Union Darfur mission in Sudan. Similar to EU-UN co-operation, this is criticised as co-operation “on paper” (Kamp 2013).

29

6. Concluding Remarks and Questions for future EU-SSR research Since the birth of the concept, among policy and scholarly communities, SSR continues to receive a great deal of attention, with scholars and policy makers continuing to study, understand, and chart the causes of successes and failures of SSR missions in different contexts. The EU as one of the major security actors and a resource provider for SSR activities around the world, has become a natural target of these investigations. In light of previous EU-SSR studies, it is correct to suggest that when comparing EUSSR policy making against the success of SSR operationalisations, there is a scenario of two steps forward and one step backward. In other words, EU-SSR is a slow moving affair and the EU’s track record in operationalisation is far from ideal. On the one hand, the EU’s SSR agenda is perhaps too ambitious- particularly given its normative overtone – and on the other, it has achieved very few positive results in operational terms. These operational failures are most notably observed with regard to the SSR missions undertaken in on-going conflict situations and fragile political environments. Amongst the plethora of challenges identified in the current body of literature, the EU faces a constant struggle of exporting and translating the international norms underpinning liberal peace and state- building - on which EU-SSR policy is predicated – creating tensions within and a lack of legitimacy for EU-SSR interventions. Some other challenges and gaps identified in this paper from various EU-SSR operational contexts, including local ownership, legitimacy and gender also directly point to the continued underlying tensions between the local and international norms. So for the EU to become successful in its SSR undertaking, making meaningful efforts to negotiate these norms against local security counterparts is crucial. Given the continued tension between the liberal normative underpinnings of the core SSR policies of the EU (and other international actors) with the regional (i.e AU) and micro-level local approaches to security, the question of how the EU negotiates the underlying norm transfer process with a diverse array of local security stakeholders in each operational context seems a highly relevant research avenue to investigate. Although in EU-SSR policy, the governance-development dimension is present, simultaneously EU uses the traditional ‘train and equip’ model in its SSR missions. Given the contrasting nature of these two approaches, future research could also be dedicated to the investigation of how, when and where the EU can balance between these two approaches to SSR in operational terms. By emphasizing the technical character of EU-SSR missions, the EU tends to shy away from engaging with what is political in SSR. However, the relevance of political questions cannot be ignored. Therefore, in future research, it will be important to investigate how the EU manoeuvres in different political contexts (within the EU and in external operational contexts). Applying a nuanced political analytical approach that privileges a strong political theory of change could benefit this analysis. Related to this, even a passing glance at the volume of literature produced on EU-SSR suggests that there is already a wealth of knowledge being produced on the topic. However, the majority of the EU-SSR cases are studied by applying case study methodology, and are lacking in systematic comparison, making theory development 30

a daunting task. The very little intellectual investment which has gone into developing theoretical explanations as to why and how different EU-SSR missions have resulted in different outcomes, is an important question to pursue in future research. Further, future research requires devising and employing more agency-centric approaches to the study of EUSSR. Particularly, by privileging an agency-centric political analysis, future research could help generate more analytically rigorous explanations of some of the lingering political questions arising from EU-SSR missions, and help explain how specific political-social-economic-cultural configurations presented in operational contexts influence various SSR outcomes and various degrees of success and failures. Inclusivity and sustainability are two goals of EU’s civilian peacebuilding policy. The EU’s principled commitment regarding gender is key in achieving these goals. However, the EU is facing criticism for the ways in which gender is being operationalised in SSR missions. Given this scenario, it will be useful to probe deeper into questions of how the EU’s principled commitment to gender is translated in its actual practices. Possible sub-questions are, is the EU conducting GSSR? What utility do EU and its local security counterparts see in including gender for the success of EU-SSR missions? Last, and certainly not least, as discussed in this paper, coherence issues at multiple levels are undermining the EU’s credibility as a serious security actor. Particularly, it is noted that the EU has limited or sometimes no control whatsoever over the range of security actors present in SSR operational contexts, including other international security actors (NATO and the US in particular) and non-state actors, whose actions directly influence and determine EUSSR outcomes. Therefore, probing into what are the strategies, instruments, resources (tangible and intangible) and leverage available for the EU to address institutional incoherencies in relation to other international and non-state actors is worthy of future scholarly attention.

31

References ADE. 2011. Thematic Evaluation of European Commission. Support to Justice and Security System Reform, Final Report, Vol. I. Bailes, A., and Thorhallsson, B. 2013. “Instrumentalizing the European Union in Small State Strategies.” Journal of European Integration 35(2): 99-115. Bellamy, A.J. 2003. “Security Sector Reform: Prospects and Problems, Global Change, Peace & Security.” Peace, Security & Global Change (formerly Pacifica Review) 15(2): 101-119. Brzoska, M. 2003. “Development Donors and the Concept of Security Sector Reform.” Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF). Occasional paper no. 4, Geneva, November. Caprini, M. 2002. Security Sector Reform and NATO and EU enlargement. SIPRI Handbook. Channa, J. 2002. “The Security Sector Reform Agenda.” The Adelphi Papers 41 (344): 13-31. EUTM Mali. Common Security and Defence Policy. 2015. Factsheet on EU Training Mission in Mali. Council of the European Union. 2014. EU establishes mission to advise on civilian security sector reform in Ukraine. Press Release ST 11974/14, Brussels, Presse 405, 22 July. Dursun-Ozkanca, O. and Vandemoortele, A. 2012. “The European Union and Security Sector Reform: Current Practices and Challenges of Implementation,” European Security, 21 (2): 139-160. Egnell, R. and Haldén, P. 2009. “Laudable, Ahistorical and Overambitious: Security ets State Formation Theory.” Conflict, Security & Development 9 (1): 27-54. N'Diaye, B. 2009. Francophone Africa and Security Sector Transformation: Plus Ça Change …, African Security, 2 (1): 1-28. European Union External Action Service (EEAS). Accessed 27 July 2015. http://eeas.europa.eu/security-defence/index_en.htm. Faleg, G. 2012. “Between Knowledge and Power: Epistemic Communities and the Emergence of Security Sector Reform in the EU Security Architecture.” European Security 21 (2): 161-184. Fischer, Sabine. 2009. “The European Union and Security in the Black Sea Region after the Georgia Crisis”. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 9(3): 333-349. Flenley, P. 2005. “Editorial: European Security.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 13(1): 1-4. Gourlay, C. 2004. “European Union Procedures and Resources for Crisis Management, International Peacekeeping.” 11(3): 404-421. Güney, A., and Karatekelioğlu, P. Spring 2005. “Turkey’s EU Candidacy and Civil-Military Relations: Challenges and Prospects.” Armed Forces & Society 31 (3): 439–462. Hänggi, H. “Making Sense of Security Sector Governance”, DCAF. www.dcaf.ch/content/download/36563/.../Hanggi.pdf. Hills, A. 2014. “Security Sector or Security Arena? The Evidence from Somalia.” International Peacekeeping 21(2): 165-180. 32

Hout, W. 2010. “Between Development and Security: the European Union, Governance and Fragile States.” Third World Quarterly 31 (1): 141-157. Hudson, D., and Leftwich, A. 2014. “From Political Economy to Political Analysis.” Development Leadership programme. Research paper 25, Birmingham, UK. Hynekab, N. 2011. “EU Crisis Management after the Lisbon Treaty: Civil–Military Coordination and the Future of the EU OHQ.” European Security 20 (1): 81-102. Jackson, P. 2011. “Security Sector Reform and State Building.” Third World Quarterly 32 (10): 1803-1822. Justaert, A. 2012. “The Implementation of the EU Security Sector Reform policies in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” European Security 21 (2): 219-235. Kamp, H. 2013. “Nato- EU Cooperation—Forget It!’, 30 October. http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=53458#comments. Koenig, N. 2011. “The EU and the Libyan Crisis – In Quest of Coherence?” The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs 46 (4): 11-30. Krause, K. and Jütersonke, O. 2005. “Peace, Security and Development in Post-Conflict Environments.” Security Dialogue, SAGE Publications 36 (4): 447–462. http://sdi.sagepub.com. Kunz, R. 2014. “Gender and Security Sector Reform: Gendering Differently?” International Peacekeeping 21 (5): 604-622. Lien, G. “The Political Economy of Security Sector Reform.” SIPRI 17th Annual International Conference on Economics and Security, “Bringing the Economy Back In.” Lurweg, M. 2011. “Coherent Actor or Institution Wrangler? The European Union as a Development and Security Actor in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.” African Security 4 (2): 100-126. Madsen, B., and Pietz, T. November 2014. “EU-UN Cooperation on Justice and Security in Crisis Missions: A Comprehensive Approach?” Policy Briefing, Centre for International Peace Operations. Martin, M. 2007. “A Force for Good? The European Union and Human Security in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” African Security Review 16 (2): 63-77. Menon, A. 2011. “European Defence Policy from Lisbon to Libya.” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 53 (3): 75-90. Mobekk, E. 2010. “Gender, Women and Security Sector Reform.” International Peacekeeping 17 (2): 278-291. Monar, J. 2010. “The EU's Externalisation of Internal Security Objectives: Perspectives after Lisbon and Stockholm.” The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs 45 (2): 23-39. Muehlmann, T. 2008. “EU Civil–Military Cooperation and the Fight against Organised Crime: Lessons to be Learned from the Bosnian Example.” European Security 17 (2-3): 387413. -------------. 2008. “Police Restructuring in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Problems of Internationally-led Security Sector Reform.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2 (1): 1-22. 33

Mustafa, T. 2015. “Damming the Palestinian Spring: Security Sector Reform and Entrenched Repression.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 9 (2): 212-230. NATO,NATO-EU. 2015.“A Strategic Relationship”, September. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49217.htm. N'Diaye, B. 2009. “Francophone Africa and Security Sector Transformation: Plus Ça Change…” African Security 2 (1): 1-28. Norheim-Martinsen and Martin, P. 2010. “Managing the Civil-Military Interface in the EU: Creating an Organisation Fit for Purpose.” European Integration Online Papers, Special Issue 1 (14): 1-20. Official Journal of the European Union. Jan 20 2015. Official L 13/5, Brussels. Oosterveld, W. and Galand, R. 2012. “Justice Reform, Security Sector Reform and Local Ownership.” Hague Journal on the Rule of Law 4: 194-209. Pohl, B. 2013. “The Logic Underpinning EU Crisis Management Operations.” European Security 22 (3): 307-325. Rauch, J. 2011. “Civil Society and Security Sector Oversight.” African Security Review 20 (4): 21-33. Schroeder, U.C., and Chappuis, F. 2014. “New Perspectives on Security Sector Reform: The Role of Local Agency and Domestic Politics.” International Peacekeeping 21 (2): 133148 Schroeder, U.C., Chappuis, F., and Kocak, D. 2013. “Security Sector Reform from a Policy Transfer Perspective: A Comparative Study of International Interventions in the Palestinian Territories, Liberia and Timor-Leste.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 7 (3): 381-401. ------------. 2014. “Security Sector Reform and the Emergence of Hybrid Security Governance.” International Peacekeeping, 21 (2): 214-230. Sedra, M. 2006. “European Approaches to Security Sector Reform: Examining Trends through the Lens of Afghanistan.” European Security 15 (3): 323-338. ------------. 2013. “The Hollowing-Out of the Liberal Peace Project in Afghanistan: The Case of Security Sector Reform.” Central Asian Survey 32 (3): 371-387. ------------. (ed.) 2010. The Future of Security Sector Reform. Centre for International Governance Innovation, Canada. Simón, L. 2012. “CSDP, Strategy and Crisis Management: Out of Area or Out of Business?” The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs 47 (3). Skeppström, E., Wiklund, C.H., and Jonsson, M. 2015. “European Union Training Missions: Security Sector Reform or Counter-Insurgency by Proxy?” European Security 24 (2): 353-367. Toktaşa, Ş., and Kurtb, U. 2010. “The Turkish Military’s Autonomy, JDP Rule and the EU Reform Process in the 2000s: An Assessment of the Turkish Version of Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DECAF).” Turkish Studies 1 (3): 387-403. Tolksdorf, D. 2014. “Incoherent Peacebuilding: The European Union's Support for the Police Sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2002–8.” International Peacekeeping 21 (1): 56-73. 34

Van Veen, E., and Price, M. 2014. “Securing its Success, Justifying its Relevance: Mapping a Way Forward for Security Sector Reform.” CRU Policy Brief, Clingandael Institute, August. Vandemoortele, A. 2015. “Learning from Failure? British and European Approaches to Security and Justice Programming.” Waterloo, ON: Centre for Security Governance, March 13. Winn, N. 2003. “Towards a Common European Security and Defence Policy? The Debate on NATO, the European Army and Transatlantic Security.” Geopolitics 8 (2): 47-68.

35