Security Sector Reform and the Stability of Post-War Peace

We use a mixed-method research design that connects theory-building case studies with theory-testing statistical analysis. (1) First, we conduct three theory-building, inductive case studies for which we select cases of SSR that past research as well as policy reports consider as instances of successful or unsuccessful SSR. To ensure cross-regional comparison, we choose cases from different world regions. Based on the expertise of the applicants, the cases are from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Based on these criteria, the following countries are selected: El Salvador, the Uganda as well as Nepal. Underlying causal mechanisms will be traced by performing process tracing that draws on semi-structured elite and expert interviews with several groups of interviewees during field work. The inclusion of an additional colleague allowed us to expand this design with a comparative desk study on SSR in the middle East (Iraq and Lebanon). (2) Choosing to first conduct the case study analysis in our research design is a strategy that allows us not only to refine our theory and develop hypotheses out of our assumptions, but to also identify more refined variables for which we can then explore more generalizable relationships. Thus, in a second step, we test the proposed relationships in a statistical survival analysis that allows us to formulate generalizable observations on the impact of SSR on the stability of post-war peace. We test our hypotheses on all post-war peace periods (1990-2013).

A first literature survey on current SSR debates and the field work on the SSR processes in our cases highlight four factors. First, there is a necessity to link the analysis of SSR to the theoretic debates on the role of the military (and other armed actors) in political, economic and social development. Secondly, cross area comparisons have a very promising potential as they allow to identify generalizable factors influencing SSR processes. Third, the desk study on the middle East showed the importance to include regional influences on the armed actors during war and their reform afterwards that are rarely included systematically currently. Fourth, the role of judicial reform and its interactions with the reforms in the security institutions (police, military) is rather under-researched. The role of amnesties is a case in point: In El Salvador a broad amnesty even for gross human rights violations during the war was a turning point in the peace process rendering the formally binding recommendations of the international truth commission regarding SSR largely irrelevant. Contrary to this, calls for amnesty in Uganda came from local communities aiming at the reintegration of child soldiers. These differences shed light on the necessity to put amnesties in the context of local and political power relations. Due to a lack of comparable data regarding judicial reforms after war our data collection will focus on this topic.