From Paternalism to Facilitation: SSR Shortcomings and the Potential of Social Anthropological Perspectives

Abstract

This paper discusses the shortcomings of the established Security Sector Reform (SSR) concept and practice and argues for an overhaul of the ways in which transformations in security spaces are approached. In consideration of the theoretical and practical implications of the quest to involve local actors in SSR, a related research agenda is sketched and a case is made in particular for the inclusion of social anthropological perspectives to foster an empirically grounded evaluation of security governance interactions and transformations in context. This could be relevant to the search for strategies to support longer term facilitation processes and overcome the widespread paternalism in donor-recipient relations.