The politics of security sector reform in ‘fragile’ or ‘post-conflict’ settings: a critical review of the experience in Timor-Leste

Security sector reform (SSR) policy has, for the better part of a decade, been viewed as instrumental to the larger international project of improving and strengthening the ‘capacity’ of post-conflict and ‘fragile’ states. The current policy approach, which represents a merging of security and development agendas in the post-Cold War era, is based on the premise that fragmented, ineffective, poorly managed and politicised state security institutions threaten political stability and undermine poverty reduction and sustainable development goals. The objective of this article is to examine aspects of what has been described as the ‘SSR policy-practice gap’ that arose in the course of implementing SSR policy in Timor-Leste by analysing the systemic basis of the gap. An analytical framework that untangles the relationship between SSR policy objectives, targets and outcomes is presented in concert with a discussion of the social and political circumstances that confronted international organisations and donor countries when they sought to implement SSR policy in Timor-Leste. By using the analytical framework to assess the policy coherence between SSR objectives and the SSR programme contained in UN Security Council Resolution 1704, the ubiquitous disconnect between SSR ‘Gospel and Reality’ is pulled more sharply into focus.     

Parties,personalities and political power: legacies of liberal peace-building in Timor-Leste

This article examines the tension between liberal peace-building and local political culture through the lens of party and personality politics in Timor-Leste. It argues that the efforts of the UN peacekeeping mission to promote multi-party democracy cut across the interests of two opposing political forces: the charismatic resistance leader, Xanana Gusmão, who was deeply suspicious of party politics and favoured supra-partisan coalitions; and the dominant political party, FRETILIN, which pursued majoritarian power. Over the 16 years since independence, FRETILIN maintained a strong party identity and the governments it led met strenuous opposition and came to a premature end, while the Gusmão-led or -backed governments formed and survived as pragmatic tactical alliances. The article concludes that although the UN peacekeeping mission guided institutional design to favour political party organisation as the foundation for achieving representational government, the institutions have subsequently evolved in response to local political drivers. While outside actors can seek to influence the formal rules of the game, local political culture will determine how the game is played.     

The International Criminal Court on trial

This article assesses the structure and operation of the International Criminal Court by setting out a case for the defence of the Court, a case for its prosecution and a verdict. Defenders of the Court suggest it has had a positive impact because: it has accelerated moves away from politics and towards ethics in international relations; it goes a long way towards ending impunity; it is a significant improvement on the previous system of ad hoc tribunals; it has positive spill-over effects onto domestic criminal systems; and because the courage of the prosecutor and trial judges has helped to establish the Court as a force to be reckoned with. Opponents of the Court see it as mired in power politics, too reliant on the United Nations Security Council and on state power to be truly independent; failing to bring peace and perhaps even encouraging conflict; and starting to resemble a neo-colonial project rather than an impartial organ of justice. The verdict on the Court is mixed. It has gone some way to ending impunity and it is certainly an improvement on the ad hoc tribunals. However it is inevitably a political body rather than a purely legal institution, its use as a deterrent is as yet unproven and the expectation that it can bring peace as well as justice is unrealistic.     

Amnesty,peace and reconciliation in Algeria

Amnesties constitute the most contentious issue in transitional justice processes. While largely rejected for contravening international law and being morally objectionable, political realities may sometimes force us to accept them in the interest of peace and stability. Determinations about the desirability and effectiveness of amnesties to promote peace thus need to look beyond legalistic claims, and take into account the specific political context within a country, as well as the nature of the amnesty itself. Taking the case of Algeria, where an amnesty was adopted in 2005 with the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, this article argues that although the amnesty can be justified partially by the fragile political context in Algeria and may contribute to reducing levels of violence in the country, its effective contribution to peace and reconciliation will be limited because it has, so far, not been accompanied by other political and economic measures necessary to bring peace and stability to the country, and because it promotes amnesia and largely ignores the plight of the victims of the war.     

The governance of justice and internal security in Scotland: between the Scottish independence referendum and British decisions on the EU

This article examines how the governance of justice and internal security in Scotland could be affected by the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014. The article argues that it is currently impossible to equate a specific result in the referendum with a given outcome for the governance of justice and internal security in Scotland. This is because of the complexities of the current arrangements in that policy area and the existence of several changes that presently affect them and are outside the control of the government and of the people of Scotland. This article also identifies an important paradox. In the policy domain of justice and internal security, a ‘no’ vote could, in a specific set of circumstances, actually lead to more changes than a victory of the ‘yes’ camp.     

Performance under ambiguity: International organization performance in UN peacekeeping

This article argues that ambiguity—indeterminacy between alternative interpretations of a phenomenon—is inherent in the peace operations field, and makes defining and assessing the UN’s performance problematic. Applying Gutner and Thompson’s framework for international organization performance (IOP) research to UN peacekeeping, it argues further that the relationship between process performance and outcomes in peacekeeping is irreducibly ambiguous, and that ambiguity has significant implications for efforts to measure and improve peacekeeping performance. To demonstrate this, the article reviews methods employed by the UN to measure its peacekeeping performance, arguing that the primary method employed—results-based budgeting (RBB)—is inherently unable to cope with the challenges of performance ambiguity. Its adoption and continued use despite its evident shortcomings are due to RBB’s legitimacy in the wider organizational field of international public management in which the UN Secretariat, and UN peacekeeping, perform. Finally, the article considers recent efforts to improve process performance in UN peacekeeping, and discuss the ways in which so-called ‘integration’ reforms central to such efforts are a means of reducing and managing the ambiguity inherent in peacekeeping.     

‘Walking the tightrope’: The Kosovo conflict and Russia in European security, 1998–August 1999

This article argues that Russia has pursued a policy of inclusive multipolarity towards European security after Primakov's appointment as Foreign Minister in 1996. This policy focused on three dimensions to constrain NATO and ensure a Russian voice in Europe. First, ties with NATO; second, the pursuit of OSCE reform and a European ‘Security Charter'; third, the primacy of the UN Security Council in international affairs. NATO actions in the Kosovo crisis deeply undermined all dimensions of this policy. However, inclusive multipolarity was not discarded by the Russian leadership. The tortuous path of Russian accommodation after May 1999 highlighted Russian attempts to reinstate this policy and restore a Russian voice in European security affairs — with limited success. This article examines the evolution of Russian shifts in this crisis until Vladimir Putin's appointment as Prime Minister in August 1999.     

Democracy or democrazy? Local experiences of democratization in Timor-Leste

Since gaining independence from Indonesia in 1999, Timor-Leste has been pursuing an agenda of democratization. However, in the villages of Timor-Leste traditional ideas of socio-political legitimacy continue to be strong. The purpose of this article is to examine how the new democratic ideals are being incorporated into local politics, where traditional law, or lisan, continues to guide the daily lives of the villagers. This article argues that democratization in this context should not be seen as integrating one ‘type’ of governance (liberal democracy) into a social structure that is informed by another ‘type’ of governance that is qualitatively different and in opposition to the first. Rather, evidence shows that communities are engaging within both spheres of governance simultaneously, as part of the everyday politics of village life. This article critically examines the areas where traditional and democratic institutional spheres come together, resulting in structured systems of mutual recognition, as well as the areas where the spheres have been in conflict. The author concludes that the fundamental areas of tension that have emerged between the spheres tend to be where notions of ‘respect-in-community’ as the basis for human security are threatened.     

Walking together: the journey of the Non-Aligned Movement and the women's movement

The story of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the way in which women engaged with it, gaining from its overall liberatory calls, as well as its political independence from the UN and other multilateral agencies, is relatively unknown in the world of development and women; and yet it is an important example of multilateral space. This article argues that the NAM, and its engagement with women, has the historical and strategic potential to be the platform from which to launch an inclusive growth paradigm.     

A matter of balance: the European Union as a mediator in Yemen

The mediation efforts of the European Union (EU) Delegation in Yemen started with the uprising in 2011 which led to the conclusion of the National Dialogue Conference in 2014. This article examines the EU's understanding of mediation vis-à-vis its practice. The case of Yemen lends itself to trace EU mediation capabilities from the implementation of the “Concept on Strengthening Mediation and Dialogue Capacities” to a more systematic approach because the Mediation Support Team (MST) of the European External Action Service took office in 2011. Building on an analytical framework of mediation as a tool of EU foreign policy, this article demonstrates how EU mediation presents itself along a political and a technical dimension. The collaboration of the MST and the EU Delegation personnel in Yemen fostered an increase in mediation awareness. However, it could not develop its full potential as the UN Special Advisor sidelined the EU and other members of the Group of Ten Ambassadors through his proactive approach. Despite those difficulties of standing up to established actors in the field, this study argues that EU mediation is about balancing its political and technical dimension. For now, the political seems to outweigh the craft of mediation in the case of Yemen.     

The Politics of U.S.–UN Reengagement: Achieving Gains in a Hostile Environment

From 1999 to 2001, the United States actively tried to improve its image and role in the United Nations (UN). This was a difficult process due to the many areas of disagreement between the United States and other UN members. However, throughout this period, the focus of reengagement was centered on resolving the large and longstanding U.S. arrears to the UN. While the United States was not able to achieve everything it desired, this period of reengagement resulted in new scales of assessment for the UN's regular and peacekeeping budgets that were much more favorable to the United States. This article draws on practitioner interviews to analyze the U.S. campaign to resolve its arrears, most specifically focusing on six factors that explain why the United States was able to achieve so much in the face of such an inhospitable environment at the UN. In doing so, the article identifies several areas where scholars and practitioners are highlighting similar dynamics, and it uncovers important policy implications for future U.S. efforts to push other UN members in directions that they may not be eager to go. These policy implications are especially relevant for current U.S.–UN relations given the U.S. failure to secure Security Council authorization for the use of force against Iraq in March 2003 .     

Trials,lustration, and clean elections: the uneven effects of transitional justice mechanisms on electoral manipulation

Transitional justice aims to promote democratization, but previous research has found that it has mixed effects. We address this puzzle by focussing on how transitional justice affects a necessary condition for democracy: clean elections. We test for the effects of four transitional justice mechanisms – truth commissions, lustration policies, amnesties, and trials – on two different types of electoral manipulation, using data from 187 post-transition elections held in 63 countries around the world from 1980 to 2004. We find that post-transition trials limit illegal forms of electoral manipulation, such as vote-buying and falsification of results, but have no effect on legal forms of manipulation. By contrast, lustration policies limit legal manipulation tactics, like intimidation and harassment of opponents by the security services, but do not affect illegal tactics. By showing that different aspects of transitional justice can have varying influence on electoral integrity, this project improves understanding of the mechanisms that link transitional justice and democratization.     

Human Security: The Making of a UN Ideology

Inspired by the conclusions of the United Nations Intellectual History Project, this article seeks to enrich the ongoing discussion on the role of ideas in UN activities. The focus here is on security, an issue often regarded as the organisation's raison d'être. The article argues that over the past two decades the ideology of human security has been the driving normative force behind the global policies advocated by the UN in the area of security. The first part analyses the UN's official discourse, and demonstrates the political importance that it ascribes to the concept of human security. The second section examines a set of global policies that illustrate how the world body has sought to put the principles of human security into practice. While recognising that these policies fall short of the ambitions articulated in UN rhetoric, the article suggests that they have opened a small but very real breach in the epistemic framework underlying the traditional conception of security.     

UN sanctions burden sharing: Article 50 of the UN charter and assistance to third states

This article proposes the establishment by the UN Security Council of a system of mutual support for third states whose economies have been adversely affected as a result of UN non-military sanctions. This system consists of several components: (1) creating new markets for the sale of goods and services of third states; (2) crafting of a logical UN sanctions costs methodology; (3) bringing into UN Security Council for a those bilateral and regional efforts involving cases of UN sanctions compensation; (4) devising norms and procedures for acquiring and pooling of the requisite funds out of which states' claims for damages attributable to UN sanctions might be satisfied; and (5) establishing a mechanism for the adjudication of such claims. While many obstacles admittedly exist to creating such a system of mutual support, the article argues that effective UN sanctions burden sharing is nevertheless important to international relations theory and practice, since UN sanctions appear to be increasing in frequency as they undergird many of the Security Council's contemporary enforcement actions.     

Analysis: Reconceptualising transitional justice: embedded and distanced justice

This article argues that transitional justice ranges from the very personal and local to the global and structural, spanning processes and outcomes, clear demands, compromises and contracts. It explores this diversity using the framework of ‘embedded justice’ and ‘distanced justice’, and the case studies of South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. The argument draws on Fletcher and Weinstein (2002) to argue that justice needs to be embedded within and to engage the communities, cultures and contexts of conflict. A recent article by Sieff and Vinjamuri (2002) is used to advocate decentralisation. Transitional justice debates have generally overlooked justice, and human rights, as manifest in political, economic and social processes whilst privileging the law, and dismissing the potential of locally generated and embedded justice. The article argues that achieving the correct balance requires a shedding of naïve faith in, and the transformation of, both local and international justice, and the contexts within which they operate, whilst seeking to build on their complementary capacities and legitimacies.     

The G20 and Global Justice: The Potential of Transnational Deliberative Democratic Theory

The G20’s capacity to promote global justice is up for debate. This article contends that the G20 has both problems and possibilities with respect to helping advance global justice. The potential of the G20 to promote global justice stems from its importance as a site for deliberation of policy ideas and its recent efforts to promote greater outreach and engagement with societal interests and states outside its narrow membership. Ultimately, G20 policy discussions could be more effective if its processes were more deliberative and better considered questions of justice and the perspectives of people affected by its decisions. The article utilises a transnational application of deliberative democracy theory to outline this potential. It attempts to identify this potential by drawing a practical balance between the normative importance of justice and the contemporary reality of the G20’s purpose and function.     

“Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law”: Britain and the Boundaries of Eastern Europe since 1945

This article argues that British policy on boundaries in Eastern Europe after 1945 was based on hardheaded Realpolitik whereby the justice of any given border was of entirely secondary importance to wider policy imperatives. British disregard for the legal and moral merits (or demerits) of respective cases was justified by British policy makers on two counts: firstly, international relations could not assess boundary disputes on a case-by-case basis as such thinking had undermined international stability to the point of global conflagration after 1918; secondly, British policy makers declared that it was their aim to stabilize the international system by means of détente. In reality, the proclaimed goal of universally beneficial goals by means of a “pragmatic” consolidation of the status quo hid a real desire to institutionalise a system that was seen as the best possible option for Britain given the harsh reality of its relative decline after 1945.

“There is no government on earth which divulges its affairs less than England, or is more punctually informed of those of others.”

—Sagredo, Venetian Ambassador to London in the Sixteenth Century.

     

The UN Convention on Migrant Workers’ Rights and International Migration Management

This paper examines the relationship between the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and contemporary discourses on international migration management. It shows that, while both converge on a number of points such as multilateral cooperation in policy making or the need for a comprehensive approach to migration, the Convention is largely ignored by most of the initiatives taking place under the “migration management” umbrella, and that it therefore remains an under-ratified treaty. To understand this situation, the paper analyses the obstacles encountered by the Convention and shows that further acceptance of the Convention is hampered by profound political obstacles. It therefore argues that, if migration management has introduced shifts in states’ approach to migration, it has so far been unable to put migrants’ rights at the core of this process, and that this may ultimately jeopardise its success.     

Bringing politics back in: the introduction of the ‘performative power’ of counterterrorism

While it is sensible that governments and academics endeavour to assess the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies, this article argues that it is almost impossible to measure arithmetically the outcome of counterterrorism efforts for a variety of reasons. However, this does not mean that the effect of governmental policy cannot and should not be assessed. This article argues that it is not necessarily the policy measures and their intended results as such, but much more the way in which they are presented and perceived, that determine the overall effect of the policy in question. The article introduces the concept of ‘performativity’, which involves the extent to which a national government, by means of its official counterterrorism policy and corresponding discourse, is successful in selling its representation of events, its set of solutions to the terrorist problem, as well as being able to set the tone for the overall discourse on terrorism and counterterrorism. Due to the distinct relation between the performative power of counterterrorism efforts and the arc of violence carried out by terrorist movements, analysing the level of performativity will provide an indication to the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies. It is argued that a low level of performative power generally has a more rapidly neutralising effect on radicalisation and political violence than large-scale, public counterterrorism efforts.     

UN sanctions burden sharing: Article 50 of the UN charter and assistance to third states

abstract

This article proposes the establishment by the UN Security Council of a system of mutual support for third states whose economies have been adversely affected as a result of UN non‐military sanctions. This system consists of several components: (1) creating new markets for the sale of goods and services of third states; (2) crafting of a logical UN sanctions costs methodology; (3) bringing into UN Security Council for a those bilateral and regional efforts involving cases of UN sanctions compensation; (4) devising norms and procedures for acquiring and pooling of the requisite funds out of which states’ claims for damages attributable to UN sanctions might be satisfied; and (5) establishing a mechanism for the adjudication of such claims. While many obstacles admittedly exist to creating such a system of mutual support, the article argues that effective UN sanctions burden sharing is nevertheless important to international relations theory and practice, since UN sanctions appear to be increasing in frequency as they undergird many of the Security Council's contemporary enforcement actions.