Abstract
ABSTRACTAttempts to explain the failure to reform the security sectors in post-conflict countries have often resorted to two sets of explanatory factors: international and local factors. This article seeks to move from that unhelpful dichotomy to an explanation linking both factors. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach and the concept of “counter-conduct,” it examines the rationality and practices of European Union (EU) governmentality and how governing technologies are resisted and reversed by local elites involved in security sector reform (SSR). Instead of understanding power and resistance as binary opposites, this article argues that counter-conduct can be conceived as implicated in the very relations of power that it seeks to resist. To tease out these relations, the article analyzes the EU's efforts in SSR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it identifies four forms of counter-conduct: upholding European standards, using the local ownership trap, simulating reforms, and lowering the bar.
Highlights
Over the last two decades, security sector reform (SSR) programs have been increasingly used in post-conflict situations, alongside other mechanisms, to support the restoration of peace.1 SSR has become another tool in post-conflict peacebuilding by helping with thebuilding of security sector institutions based on the principles of democratic oversight, transparency, and good governance
This article has shown that while SSR can be seen as a form of neoliberal governmentality, there is still space for resistance by those who refuse to be governed “like that.”
In the case of SSR in Bosnia, the article has provided insights into how the locals have resisted European Union (EU) governmentality by examining the failures and sites of contestation resulting from EU intervention in SSR in Bosnia
Summary
Over the last two decades, security sector reform (SSR) programs have been increasingly used in post-conflict situations, alongside other mechanisms, to support the restoration of peace. SSR has become another tool in post-conflict peacebuilding by helping with the (re)building of security sector institutions based on the principles of democratic oversight, transparency, and good governance. More attention has been paid to the outcomes of interactions between international and local actors in SSR, for instance, as the outcome of a rational choice game (Berg, 2014) While these are welcome developments, there remains an unhelpful dualism in the literature which distinguishes between “international” (liberal norms, external actors’ interests, lack of coherence of international programs) and “local” factors (local politics, corruption, conflict legacies, etc.). As will be explained a focus on “counter-conducts” serves as a corrective of previous analysis of EU intervention in Bosnia where local authorities are just seen as passive recipients of EU governmentality (Chandler, 2007, 2010)
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