How is security governance organised in the Central African Republic (CAR)? Is international assistance helping security governance to become more democratic? This paper uses a multi-level governance approach to analyse the relationships between national and international actors in the CAR’s Security Sector Reform (SSR). Despite a policy that emphasises increasingly decentralised security governance, informal links and structures of power have enabled the CAR executive to dominate SSR implementation. Domestic and international decison-making processes overlap and interfere with each other. It is therefore crucial that international partners understand decision-making processes in Southern countries, and that local actors understand the procedures by which international actors are intervening in their environment.
The Multilevel Level Governance (MLG) approach has emerged as a popular tool for analysing the complexities of and overlapping networks involved in European Union policy formulation. If expanded to consider policy implementation as well as formulation, and informal and semi-formal decision-making processes as well as formal ones, the MLG approach provides a relevant framework for the analysis of security policymaking in the Central African Republic and other Southern countries.
The government of the CAR, under international pressure, launched a comprehensive SSR process in 2008. Applying the adapted MLG framework to this process identifies the normative and material resources mobilised and the distribution of power between actors:
- The reform is donor-led in terms of technical assistance and funding. There is negligible contribution in these areas from the government and consequently there was little national influence at the policy formulation stage.
- While donors provide almost all the funding for SSR, they have only partial control over resources. The defence budget is particularly opaque, with only the President and the Deputy Minister of Defence (his son) knowing the available amounts and able to make allocations.
- Parliament is dominated by parties associated with the President and does not carry out its SSR oversight role.
- The SSR process plans to increase the influence of decentralised government over local security. However, post-holders are appointed by the President and posts are conferred on his close relatives.
The formal and informal dynamics of the relationships between actors are complex, and directly affect the SSR process. Donors are interested in embedding state security policymaking in wider regulatory and control networks so that SSR diffuses liberal norms, and democratic and human rights values. However, the CAR’s political stakeholders (both government and opposition) are interested in building up a militarised security apparatus to bolster their regime. The SSR approach is framed in terms of technical issues of coordination and political issues of democratic governance. This interferes with the CAR’s value systems and patronage networks. Conclusions from applying the MLG framework to the CAR’s SSR process are that:
- The Western theoretical models that underpin SSR are of limited help in understanding how the security sector actually works in African states.
- Indigenous procedures and patronage networks (controlled by the state) will continue to prevail over technical procedures and inclusive governance arrangements promoted by international actors.
- Non-state security actors (such as vigilante and village defence groups and traditional justice institutions) are not presently included in the check-and-balance institutions defined by the western SSR model. However, they do not always adhere to human rights standards.
