Abstract
In late 2014 and after more than two decades of a ‘semi-authoritarian’ regime, a popular insurrection in Burkina Faso led to the fall of Blaise Compaore, president and leader of the ruling party. Due to — or parallel to — the political transition, factors of insecurity developed or were amplified, leading to a reconfiguration of the provision of security at two levels. At the central state level began a reflection around the governance model of security and the improvement of the practices of state security forces. At the local level, non-state security initiatives have multiplied. Drawing on insights from the study of local security provision and providers in the town of Tenkodogo, located in the Boulgou province (Centre-East region), and on its wider integration into the national framework and response to insecurity in Burkina Faso, this article raises and investigates three major questions. First, how is the governance of security (co)produced by (state and non-state) actors in a specific local configuration in Burkina Faso? Second, in what ways does this local experience compare with the state’s response to insecurity and with the nationwide expansion of the Koglweogo movement? Finally, what new perspectives can such reflection at the local and national levels offer to overcome the limits of current approaches regarding local security?
Highlights
In late 2014, after more than two decades of a ‘semi-authoritarian’ regime,1 a popular insurrection2 in Burkina Faso led to the fall of Blaise Compaoré, president and leader of the ruling party Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (Congress for Democracy and Progress) (Hagberg et al 2018)
How is the governance of securityproduced by actors in a specific local configuration in Burkina Faso? Second, in what ways does this local experience compare with the state’s response to insecurity and with the nationwide expansion of the Koglweogo movement? what new perspectives can such reflection at the local and national levels offer to overcome the limits of current approaches regarding local security? Underlying these questions are the scholarly debates around the categorization of non-state security actors (Hendriks 2018), their legitimacy as a provider of security, the tensions emerging from their practices as well as the role of negotiation processes between state and non-state security actors in the reconfiguration of the state (Péclard and Hagman 2010)
We argue that turning the focus to the ‘end-user’ of security services (Denney 2014) to address both local security and security sector reform (SSR) and engage, where relevant, with non-state actors, would overcome the limits of state-centrism and state-rejection approaches in providing greater security to citizens and reinforce state-society relations and instil greater coherence into the local-national nexus
Summary
In late 2014, after more than two decades of a ‘semi-authoritarian’ regime, a popular insurrection in Burkina Faso led to the fall of Blaise Compaoré, president and leader of the ruling party Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (Congress for Democracy and Progress) (Hagberg et al 2018). The increasing level of insecurity — especially the terrorist threat (ICG 2019) — the limited human and financial means devoted to the security sector, the economy of corruption surrounding SSFs, the complexity and sensitivity of a wide SSR, the resistance to in-depth change in the governance of security as well as the tensions and low level of trust between SSFs and the population and between different components of the SSFs (Kibora and Traore 2017; CGD 2017; Harsch 2017: 232-33) all render the effective state monopoly of legitimate violence across the national territory highly unlikely in the short and medium term Despite this state-centrism, local security initiatives such as the Koglweogo are not absent from reflections on security governance. This expansion, stumbles upon internal and external tensions undermining its sustainability as well as the social cohesion and the state-society relations in the country
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