Read more
This book examines the dynamics of security provision in international interventions in post-conflict states.
It focuses on how international security interventions - such as Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes, Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Armed Violence Reduction (AVR) - play out in the post-civil war context in which they are implemented. The underlying assumptions of such interventions are that the state is the best placed to organise violence, that the ideal state has to function as an organisation with the legitimate monopoly on the use of violence, and that the primary task of the state is the provision of security. Post-civil war contexts, however, are characterised by hybridity, in which various authority structures are overlapping, cooperating and competing. The interactions between different security actors (both state and non-state) create struggles in society about whose security interests are promoted, which actions to provide security are considered legitimate, and about who is considered a legitimate security actor. This book investigates the interactions between international actors organising and supporting security interventions and the local security dynamics created by the interactions between both state and non-state actors involved in security. It draws on extensive field research in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and South Sudan.
This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR.
List of contents
Introduction: A Chivalric Quest 1. Books of Chivalry: Assumptions and Approaches to Interventions 2. A Disenchanting Reality: Chaos and Order 3. Policy Implementation, Politics and Ownership 4. The Dynamics of Security Interventions in Local Contexts 5. Security Interventions and the State 6. Security Interventions on the Ground: Reintegration 7. Dynamics of Security on the Ground 8. Conclusions
About the author
Rens C. Willems is a Research Fellow at the University for Peace, The Hague, and has a PhD from Utrecht University.
Summary
This book examines the dynamics of security provision in international interventions in post-conflict states, to better understand the interactions between international actors implementing interventions and the local and national actors involved.
