Routledge Handbook of Security Sector Reform

This Handbook offers a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of Security Sector Reform (SSR) by a mix of established experts and emerging scholars from diverse disciplines and geographic regions.

Born out of development policy interventions by advanced states and multilateral organizations in developing countries in the early 1990s, SSR looks at the question of how security can be provided in an appropriate way that respects democracy and human rights. This volume provides an academic treatment of the contested concept of SSR, considering how it evolved and became part of mainstream security discourse in the past three decades. The Handbook is divided into six sections. The first section reviews relevant theories and concepts, and includes chapters on security sector governance, non-traditional security threats, as well as coups and climate change and coups as security threats in the traditional and nontraditional sense. The second section covers development and peacebuilding as important social, economic, and political contexts that underpin the push for SSR across countries. The third section pays attention to the international dimension of SSR, as well as how the international community has tried to grapple with the concept of local ownership to achieve sustainable SSR interventions. The fourth part examines the main actors and institutions within the security sector. The fifth section discusses cross-cutting issues and reform areas that overlap with SSR such as human rights, gender equality, and transitional justice. The sixth section combines regional overviews of the SSR landscape in different regions, such as Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa, which discuss the successes, problems, and challenges of SSR.

This Handbook will be of much interest to students of security sector reform, international relations, global governance, development studies and security studies, and will be a benchmark publication for practitioners in the security domain.

Sandy Africa is the Research Director of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) and a Research Associate in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. She is the author of Well Kept Secrets: The Right of Access to Information and the South African Intelligence Services (2009).

Aries A. Arugay is Professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He is also Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute (Singapore) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Politics & Policy. He is co-editor of Games, Changes, & Fears: The Philippines from Duterte to Marcos Jr. (2024).

Hans Born is Head of Research and Training at DCAF - Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, Switzerland. He is editor of several books, including Democratic Control of Intelligence Services (2011), International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability (2011), and Civil-Military Relations in Europe (2006).