A safe, secure environment for people, communities and states is essential for sustainable development and conflict mitigation. This article in Public Administration and Development analyses the challenges confronting the achievement of democratic security sector governance after conflict. Addressing these challenges requires professional security forces, capable civil authorities, rule of law and regional approaches. Local stakeholders must make hard decisions about priorities on the availability of domestic resources and the costs and benefits of accepting external assistance.
Politicised or ineffective security and justice systems can create instability and insecurity. Attention to democratic security governance is particularly important in conflict-affected countries that typically experience significant institutional weaknesses and suffer from the enduring legacies of undemocratic politics. Efforts to strengthen and restructure the state apparatus are severely hampered by competition for power, lack of legitimacy of political leaders and lack of consensus over the country’s future.
To date, efforts to reform the security sector have concentrated primarily on strengthening the operational capacity of the security forces, rather than strengthening democratic oversight and accountability mechanisms. A country’s focus on short-term security needs is often the result of limited resources.
Strengthening democratic governance of the security sector involves developing and implementing a legal framework, civil management and oversight bodies and viable and accountable security forces. It also means ensuring that the institutional culture of the security forces is supportive. The following tasks should be prioritised:
- Strengthen the professionalism of the security forces, both in normative and technical terms.
- Develop capable and responsible civil authorities and civil society. Civil society must ensure their operations are fiscally accountable.
- Give high priority to rule of law; respect for rule of law must exist among civilians and security force personnel.
- Develop regional approaches to security problems to encourage countries to work together and reduce tensions.
Democratic security sector governance can be expected to occur at a pace consistent with overall democratic consolidation. National leadership must be committed to the reform process. The principles, laws and structures of the reforms must be rooted in the country’s cultural, historical and legal frameworks. Processes should be consultative. Furthermore:
- Local ownership of the reform process is essential.
- The highly political nature of strengthening democratic security-sector governance needs to be factored into reform efforts. External actors must understand the critical political relationships.
- Decisions about reform strategy and programming must be informed by a highly nuanced sense of context, involving the adaptation of borrowed solutions.
- The pace and content of locally-owned reform processes must be shaped by conditions in the reforming country.
- Situating reform efforts within a comprehensive, sector-wide framework has the potential to maximise the impact of the reforms and to increase the efficiency of resource use.
