the two faces of security in hybrid political orders: a framework for analysis and research by robin...

7/29/2019 The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research by Robin Luckham, T

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Luckham, R and Kirk, T 2013 The Two Faces of Security in HybridPolitical Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research. Stability:International Journal of Security & Development, 2(2): 44, pp. 1-30,DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.cf

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The Two Faces of Security in HybridPolitical Orders: A Framework forAnalysis and Research

Robin Luckham* and Tom Kirk

stability

This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses,which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm ofideas.1 For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organisedforce to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and inter-nal threats. For others it is about how individuals and communities are protected (or pro-tect themselves) from violence, abuse of power and other existential risks. We integrateboth approaches whilst placing our focus on the deep tensions between them. Combiningthem is especially apposite in the hybrid political orders of conict-torn regions in thedeveloping world where the state and its monopoly of violence are contested and diversestate and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete.

We ask what security in these hybrid contexts looks like from below, that is from theperspective of end users, be these citizens of states, members of local communities or

those who are marginalised and insecure. What are their own vernacular understandingsof security, and how do these understandings link to wider conceptions of citizen and ofhuman security? Even when security and insecurity are experienced and decided locally,they are at the same time determined nationally and globally. It is at the interfacesbetween local agency, state power and global order that the most politically salient andanalytically challenging issues tend to arise.

To analyse these interfaces we focus on three interconnecting political spaces, eachcharacterised by their own forms of hybridity, in which security is negotiated withend-users: (i) unsecured borderlands where state authority is suspended or violentlychallenged by alternative claimants to power or providers of security, including non-state armed groups; (ii) contested Leviathans, that is state security structures whose

authority and capacity to deliver security are weak, disputed or compromised by specialinterests; and (iii) securitised policy spaces in which international actors collaborateto ensure peace and full their responsibility to protect vulnerable end-users in unse-cured regions. In making these distinctions we argue that similar analytical lenses canbe turned upon international actors in securitised policy spaces as well as upon stateand non-state security actors.

The concluding section argues that such a reframing of the security and develop-ment debate demands not just new modes of analysis but also fresh approaches to

* Research Associate, Institute of Development

Studies, University of Sussex, United [email protected]

Researcher, Justice and Security Research

Programme, London School of Economics andPolitical Science, United [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.cfmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.cf


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Luckham and Kirk: The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political OrdersArt. 44, page 2 of 30

The Changing Landscape of SecurityAnalysis and PolicyThe realist conceptualisation of security,which views security largely through the eyesof the state, whilst still enormously power-ful, has lost its earlier monopoly over secu-rity thinking. Since the end of the Cold War anew liberal security mainstream has emergedwhose referent objects the things to be

secured are not confined solely to the secu-rity of states, their institutions and borders.2Security is viewed increasingly as an enti-tlement of citizens and human beings. Theaims of security have also been broadened toencompass a more diverse range of dangersand threats, including issues of human rightsand emancipation, freedom from want, theprevention of infectious diseases and themanagement of climate change. Moreover,security is not necessarily obtained even

when states consider themselves to be atpeace, as in conditions of authoritarian rule,social injustice or structural violence.

The reframing of security fits within thewider paradigm of a liberal world orderand a liberal peace. It features bold asser-tions about the interdependence of security,development and human freedom (UnitedNations 2004, 2005). The United Nationshas officially endorsed human security

and the responsibility to protect (ICSS2001) as guiding principles of internationalconduct. The World Bank too has broughtsecurity firmly into the development policymainstream. Its World Development Report2011: Conict, Security and Developmenthasembraced the concept of citizen security,linking it to conflict management and pov-erty reduction (WDR 2011). It focuses notjust on armed conflict but also on politicaland criminal violence, seen as a continuum.And it contends that insecurity and violenceare negatively correlated with the institu-tional capacity and accountability of states

and their elites. The fact that the World Bank,as the premier multilateral developmentinstitution, has been launching itself intothe grubby universe of real-world politics(Watts 2012:116) may be as significant as thesubstance of the arguments themselves.

Yet the liberal mainstream by no meansconstitutes as radical a departure from therealist vision as it could. The WDR 2011

remains firmly within a state-centred policyframework. It insists on building legitimate,inclusive and capable institutions, with goodenough governance as the preferred policysolutions to citizen insecurity, although itsees them as a long-term exercise, whichneeds not follow Western models.

Even if states are no longer seen as the soleguarantors of security, political stability andinternational order, they are still given centrestage. Since 9/11 the emphasis has turned

increasingly to the stabilisation of insecureregions and fragile states.3 Human securityand the responsibility to protect have beeninvoked to justify armed interventions andstabilisation missions in countries as diverseas Somalia, Afghanistan, the DRC, SierraLeone, Timor-Leste and Mali. The intracta-bility of conflicts within such countries hasreinforced a long-term shift in security doc-trine towards counterinsurgency and asym-

metric warfare rather than conventional warsbetween states. Counterinsurgency in turnhas placed development, the protection ofcivilians, political solutions and the reform ofstate security sectors at the forefront of mili-tary doctrine and practice further blurringthe line between security and development.4

However, within the liberal policy main-stream one finds surprisingly little seriousinterrogation of the concept of security itselfand of how, by whom and with what politi-cal agendas security issues are framed andsecurity functions are exercised.5 Discussionof human and citizen security has largely

research designed both to provide insights into the vernacular understandings, copingstrategies and potential agency of end-users and to uncover the informal networks,alliances and covert strategies of the multiple actors determining their security inhybrid political orders.


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Luckham and Kirk: The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders Art. 44, page 3 of 30

by passed the problem of political power,including the various ways in which even lib-eral security paradigms uphold or are upheldby prevailing power relations. Thus, in prac-tice, security still tends to be treated as politi-

cally non-controversial, with much research,analysis and policy focused on technical solu-tions to current security challenges.

This applies even to the World Banks oth-erwise promising portrayal of citizen secu-rity, as both freedom from violence andfreedom from fear of violence construedvery broadly to include security at home, inthe workplace, and in political, social, andeconomic interactions with the state and

other members of society (WDR 2011: xvi).Conceptualized in this manner, security is anentitlement of individuals which can in prin-ciple be measured in terms of indicators ofreduced violence and, under the still widerumbrella of human security, other forms ofvulnerability. The gathering and analysis ofsuch evidence is used to facilitate large-ncross-country comparisons as well as to pro-vide evidence-based evaluation of stabilisa-

tion, aid and development programmes.Yet the concepts of human and citizensecurity struggle to capture securitys con-textually contingent meanings in fluid andcomplex multi-levelled regional, nationaland local contexts. They fail to acknowledgehow security arrangements stabilise existinginequalities. And they do not pay enoughattention to the ways those who clothe theiractions with the mantle of international,human or citizen security may in reality

damage the safety, livelihoods and welfare ofmany poor and vulnerable people.

The silences in the theory and practice ofsecurity are particularly problematic in hybridpolitical orders, where insecurity is unseen,easily hidden or unquantifiable, where theentitlements of citizenship are not extendedthroughout a population, where the state isnot the primary actor mobilising to providepublic goods and, furthermore, when govern-

ance arrangements benefit some but excludeothers, including the poor, vulnerable andmarginalised. They are more problematicstill when security discourse and practice is

monopolised by those with power, be theyauthoritarian states, insurgent groups, occu-pying forces or development agencies.

These conceptual gaps easily translate intoambiguity and confusion when research-

ers and policy-makers try to operational-ize human and citizen security. They haveresulted in widely divergent vocabularies andaims, even amongst those operating withinthe same research and policy communities.Vulnerable people and groups tend to behomogenised within weak empirical cat-egorisations, obscuring the political powerhierarchies and global processes which makethem insecure.6 In consequence they are

liable to be treated as subjects of prevailingsecurity arrangements rather than as agentswith varying capacities to influence, respondor resist.7

Securitisation and the Critical TurnThe elevation of human and citizen securityinto the security mainstream has come at atime when the wider vision of a liberal worldorder is increasingly challenged. First, it is

being made redundant by the emergenceof new global centres of power and profit inEast Asia and elsewhere that challenge thevery foundations of the post-World War II lib-eral consensus. Second, the limitations of lib-eral interventions have been cruelly exposedby events on the ground in a variety of differ-ent regional and national contexts, includingIraq, Afghanistan, the DRC, Libya and Syria.Third, human and citizen security have comeunder scrutiny by a critical security litera-

ture, which questions both the theoreticaland the policy foundations of liberalisationand, in particular, of liberal peace-building(Selby 2013).

The main thrust of these critiques isencapsulated in the concept of securitisa-tion: the idea that far from contributing toequitable development and the welfare andsafety of vulnerable people, liberal interven-tions carried out in the name of human or

citizen security have merely provided nor-mative and policy cover for new forms ofglobal hegemony. Duffields (2001) GlobalGovernance and the NewWars: The Merging


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of Development and Security has been espe-cially seminal. He and other analysts haveturned the critical lens of securitisation vari-ously upon the enterprises of internationaldevelopment, humanitarian assistance, gov-

ernance reform and state-building (Booth2005; Chandler 2006; Richmond 2009; MacGinty 2011). Despite its promising steps,they argue human security is largely silenton the aid and security arrangements whichprop up the liberal peace. Indeed, as one oftheir number suggests, human security canbe depicted as the dog that has not barked(Chandler 2008a).

Although offering varying takes on securiti-

sation, critical analysts see it as an importantaspect of an overarching hegemonic enter-prise instituted after the Cold War and suf-fused by ideas of Western economic and polit-ical liberalism. However they contend thatWestern humanitarian intervention, state-building and development initiatives differsignificantly from previous imperialisms inbeing conducted in the name of the inter-national community. This includes not only

powerful states but also the entire panoplyof international organisations, internationalfinancial institutions, aid agencies and globalcivil society organisations. The new aid pro-gramme promoted by international coali-tions, it is argued, is an innovative and subtleform of power-knowledge paying lip-serviceto development as progress and to universalentitlements, including human and citizensecurity. The international actors at the fore-front of this agenda have tended increasingly

to favour indirect engagement (Chandler2008b; Veit 2010). At the same time the dis-course of local ownership has allowed themto deny formal responsibility, especially wheninterventions generate more insecurity thanthey prevent or bear heavily upon vulnerablepeople (Chandler 2000, 2006).

Analysts utilising the lens of securitisa-tion have offered a useful antidote to liberalunderstandings of security but have not for

the most part provided their own alternativedefinitions of security. They have tended to

discount the motives and values of interna-tional actors, as well as to underestimate theextent to which values of democracy, humanrights and humanitarianism have gained realtraction in parts of the developing world

(Weiss 2000; Davidson 2012). They have over-played the coherence of the securitisationproject and underestimated the conflictsand tensions between the major political,military and humanitarian players in globaland national security marketplaces (Selby2013). In so doing they have come perilouslyclose to reducing national and local actors tobit-players in a global game. They have alsosuffered somewhat from the Cassandra syn-

drome, tending to downplay empirical evi-dence of improvements in peace and securityglobally, as well as in individual national con-texts like Mozambique, Sierra Leone or Libe-ria (HSR 2011; Pinker 2011). Thus far theyhave been much more effective as critics ofthe current liberal orthodoxy than in propos-ing credible alternatives.

Nevertheless, critical security analysishas inspired a new stream of analysis and

research. It offers a nuanced view of vio-lent conflict, seeing it not only as an obsta-cle to development but also a potential siteof social and political innovation (Cramer2006). Moreover it explores the hybrid pro-cesses that characterize governance in manysupposedly fragile (Rotberg 2002) states andsuggests that the meaning of security is con-tingent upon the contexts within which it isconstructed. Hence it challenges researchersto empirically investigate security from the

perspective of end-users, including thosewho are most vulnerable and insecure.

Rethinking the Two Faces ofSecurityTo summarise the discussion above, althoughsecurity remains a highly contentious con-cept, it is also a highly necessary one. Morerigorous definitions of security are neededthan those currently on offer by the realist

and liberal mainstreams or by most of theircritics. These definitions should help unpeel


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securitys multiple layers of meaning andgrasp its contested character, notably in thecomplex political terrains of supposedly frag-ile or conflict-affected political spaces.8

Our definitions start from the assertion

that security derives its normative force fromthe idea that public power is used to protectnot just the state but also its citizens alongwith those deprived of the benefits of citizen-ship, including marginalised minorities, refu-gees and displaced persons. In other words,the bedrock of state security is citizen andmore widely human security. Accordinglywe distinguish between two competing yetinterlinked conceptualisations of security.

The first of these is on the supply-side,having long historical roots in the theoryand practice of the modern nation state.According to this conceptualisation secu-rity can be seen as a process of politicaland social ordering established and main-tained through authoritative discoursesand practises of power, including but notconned to organised force.9

Although security thus involves seeing

like a state (Scott 1998), in the hybrid politi-cal contexts of the modern world securityresides, along with political authority, withina much wider array of global, national andlocal power structures and security arrange-ments. Security in this view is achievedthrough the exercise of power, especially butnot solely military power. In an information-rich world it also depends increasingly onsurveillance and on control of new media.That is, the processes of social ordering that

produce security can operate in parallelwith states as well as within them, in someinstances complementing state authoritywhile in others competing with it.

However, reducing security to the crea-tion and maintenance of political and socialorder is analytically incomplete. It risks iden-tifying security with the imposed silenceand normalised quiet of power commonto authoritarian regimes or criminal orders

that is, with enforced stability rather thantrue security.10

Accordingly, a second demand-side con-ception of security holds that security is anentitlement of citizens and more widelyhuman beings to protection from violenceand other existential risks including their

capacity in practice to exercise this entitle-ment.11 As such it is dependent upon thesocial contexts, cultural repertoires andvernacular understandings of those whoare secured.

This vision of security stems from contem-porary international development, humani-tarian and human rights concerns. Re-con-ceptualising security as an entitlement opensthe way to challenges to the states power

and monopoly of security provision in thoseinstances where it fails to protect or indeedactively harms its own citizens. It focusesassessments of security provision squarelyon ideas of legitimacy, popular consent andpolitical authority. We also see it as relatedto but somewhat distinct from existing for-mulations of human and citizen security infocusing on the vernacular understandingsof the people and groups who are secured

that is, how they experience, understand andrespond to their own security and insecurity.In broad terms one can say that supply-side

security provision, including state security, isneeded to assure political order; but in doingso it often stands in conflict with the viewsand entitlements of those who are secured.Analysis, therefore, should focus simultane-ously on the web of relationships betweenpolitical and social orders, and on the entitle-ments between individuals and groups.

How the tensions between the two arenegotiated is central to empirical enquiry.This distinguishes our own approach fromboth the realist and the liberal traditionsof security thinking. It encourages furtheranalysis of the many ways security is cre-ated and maintained through authoritativediscourses and practices of power; togetherwith the great variety of actors and organisa-tions contending and cooperating to estab-

lish structures of public authority. And it isespecially pertinent in situations of on-going


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conflict, political violence or difficult demo-cratic or post-conflict transitions, where sev-eral actors, some state, some non-state andsome global, struggle to appropriate and insome cases change the definition, ownership

and distribution of security.Our dual definitions are meant to prompt

questioning of the assumption that securityis a public good necessary for development.Security, unlike development, tends to be adiscourse of order and risk-avoidance ratherthan of change and transformation. Yet it isalso commonplace to argue that domesticsecurity and political order are prerequisitesfor development. Our understanding allows

for deep tensions between the two norma-tive goals. Where indeed security has becomethe sole governing principle of state policy,as in the national security states of mid-20 thcentury Latin America or until recently moststates of the contemporary Middle East, itmay actually harm development and reducethe safety and welfare of citizens (Sayigh2003; Imbusch 2011).

We thus see security and insecurity as

inseparable from the exercise of politicalpower; security is itself politically contested,sometimes violently. Because security likeother public goods has an almost unmatchedsymbolic prestige, the power to create newand shape existing security and justice insti-tutions is intimately bound up with the polit-ical processes central to state making andstate breaking (Tamanaha 1992: 205).12 Thussecurity provision tends to be fought over bythose wishing to gain or establish political

authority especially in fragmented statessuch as Afghanistan, where regional strong-men compete amongst themselves and withthe state to attract national and internationalresources. Those who deliver security assertand protect their mandates to use force orthreats of force, as well as to maintain sur-veillance and gather intelligence about thoseconsidered a risk to public order. As a conse-quence, security provision easily merges into

the deep state, becoming hostage to paral-lel political agendas and establishing for-

cibly defended states of exception evenwithin institutions like refugee camps sup-posedly devoted to protecting those at mostrisk from insecurity (Hanafi and Long 2010).For this reason the mandates of security

and justice institutions, their accountability,their observance of the rule of law and theirrespect for the rights of citizens have tendedto become paramount policy issues in allpolitical orders.

However, when we emphasise that secu-rity is an entitlement of end-users we sharecommon ground with current conceptionsof human and citizen security.13 Despite theirflaws, these conceptions have a genuine cut-

ting edge, especially when security arrange-ments protect inequalities of power, statusand wealth, be they global, within states orinside and between local communities. Weargue that the benefits of security provisiontend to accrue disproportionately to wealthyand powerful individuals, institutions andstates and that its cost tends to be largelyborne by the poor, vulnerable and excluded(Korf 2004; Fluri 2011). By emphasising that

security is an entitlement we also stress thepotential agency and voice of end-users,including their capacity to protest, mobilisearound their rights and hold accountablethose responsible for delivering security.

At the same time, by focusing upon author-itative discourses and practices of power, weemphasise that security is tied up with deepissues about political rights, entitlementsand obligations. In principle, those whodeliver security should have credible and

legitimate mandates based ultimately uponthe consent of those secured (i.e., end-users)or their political representatives. In practice,however, end-users tend to regard the claimsmade upon them by states and social ordersas authoritative to the extent that they delivertangible benefits on an everyday basis. Thusit is especially important to restore providerslegitimacy in situations where the mantle ofnational security has been used to justify

repression and rights abuses committed byauthoritarian regimes facing fundamental


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challenges to their authority, as in Burma,Libya or Syria. Questions of legitimacy alsocompromise security where governments aretoo weak or captured by special interests tobe able to protect all or some of their citi-

zens, as in Mali or, in the context of sectarianconflict, as in Pakistan. They are also highlysalient where the supposed requirements ofregional or international security are used topaper over local systems of occupation andrepression, as in Afghanistan or Palestine(Hanafi 2010). They can even arise in estab-lished democracies and quasi-democracieswhen the requirements of national secu-rity are wheeled in to justify harsh security

measures in insecure regions like NorthernIreland, Kashmir or Chechnya.

Finally, in rejecting a purely state-centredapproach we focus instead on the real natureof security arrangements, including theirvaried links to political authority below,within and above the state.14 The governanceof (in)security, especially in conflict proneand post-conflict states is multileveled(Cawthra and Luckham 2003; Baker 2010;

Leonard 2013). It involves complex arrays ofinternational, state and non-state actors whovariously cooperate and compete for powerand resources and who determine patternsof security and insecurity. Thus the actorsand institutions mobilised to deliver secu-rity (and sometimes insecurity) range from(a) the primarily global, such as the UnitedNations, international peacekeepers, privatemilitary companies or transnational mili-tant movements, to (b) the mainly national,

including national security and justice insti-tutions as well as the national governmentsand legislatures to which they are accounta-ble and to (c) the mostly local, including civilsociety, traditional leaders, business commu-nities and community security and justicebodies. Even more controversially, actors thatoperate beyond the rule of law and are oftenconsidered illiberal by Western paradigms,such as warlords, cartels, paramilitaries, mil-

lenarian cults, anti-globalisation movementsand mafias, cannot be omitted since they can

in some situations be considered agents ofsecurity as well as of insecurity (Reno 1999;Goodhand and Mansfield 2010).

Why Hybrid Security

Arrangements?The analysis of security outlined above callsinto question what Foucault (1980: 78133)terms the sovereign view of power thatlies behind state-centric analysis includingmuch security thinking (von Torotha 2009).15

Instead we find it more helpful to place ourfocus on the multiple sites of political author-ity and governance where security is enactedand negotiated. Here we draw upon the

emerging literature on hybrid political orders(HPOs), which highlights the varied and con-textually contingent nature of political powerand security arrangements, especially in con-flict-affected, transitioning and post-conflictcontexts (Boege at al 2009; Richmond 2009;Mallet 2010; Mac Ginty 2011).

While previous accounts of state fragilityhave concentrated on how predation, cli-entelism, and neopatrimonialism weaken

public authority and hollow out or crimi-nalise the state (Rhodes 1994; Bayart, Ellis,and Hibou, 1999; Chabal and Daloz 1999;Rotberg 2010), analyses of hybridity areless inclined to leap to conclusions aboutstate fragility or failure, and less inclinedto see this as a one-way process (Call 2008).Rather they focus upon the multiple waystraditional, personal, kin-based or clientelis-tic logics interact with modern, importedor rational actor logics in the shifting his-

torical conditions of particular national andlocal contexts.

Though the processes they focus upon maybe presented in terms of the interactionsbetween the formal and informal actors,analyses of HPOs seldom restrict hybridity tothis distinction alone (Kraushaar and Lam-bach 2009). Rather HPOs tend to be charac-terised by multiple providers of security, wel-fare and representation, as the state shares

authority, legitimacy and capacity with manyother actors, networks and institutions (Lam-


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bach 2007; Wennmann 2011). Indeed thereal holders of political power and provid-ers of public goods, including security, mayhave little allegiance to the state or may noteven subscribe to the idea of the state itself

(Abrams 1988; Hansen and Stepputat 2001).The HPOs literature has developed a com-

plex and sometimes confusing vocabulary,which characterises hybridity in terms suchas legal pluralism, twilight institutions,mediated andnegotiated states (Griffiths1986; Menkhaus 2006/7; Lund 2007; Hag-mann and Peclard 2010). These conceptu-alisations suggest that public authorities infragile regions, including institutions of the

state, wax and wane as governance arrange-ments are never definitely formed but are in aconstant process of reproduction, negotiationand flux (Lund 2007). Moreover they arguethat the providers of public goods, includ-ing security, enjoy different levels of accessto power and authority, and, in some cases,occupy positions in multiple political orders;be they local, national or international.

This broad understanding of hybridity

de-naturalises stereotypes of the state and,by extension, other forms of public author-ity. It proposes that governance should beempirically investigated as a collection ofloosely coordinated and constantly chang-ing processes. However, given its intellectualroots in subaltern history and anthropology,hybridity does not denote the mere graftingtogether of separate actors and institutionsto make new entities (Mac Ginty 2011: 8).Rather it directs attention towards the (re)

negotiation and transformation or unmak-ing and remaking of political orders (Mallett2010: 6772). Such an approach repositionsstate-building paradigms within transitionlogics that focus on the processes and inter-actions creating and sustaining functioningpublic institutions, be they of the state or ofother political entities (Wennmann 2011: 4).

Concerns with the variety of ways publicauthority is negotiated in hybrid contexts

are also beginning to influence the policyliterature on state-building and security

provision, focusing it upon inclusivity (DFID2010; OECD 2011; Carpenter, Slater and Mal-lett 2012). For instance the WDR 2011(xvii)stresses the importance of close understand-ing of particular national and regional con-

texts. It draws upon the literature on politi-cal settlements and limited access ordersto argue for collaborative, inclusive-enoughcoalitions which restore confidence andtransform institutions and help create con-tinued momentum for positive change (DiJohn and Putzel 2009; North et al 2012).Nevertheless the WDR 2011 is somewhat ret-icent about the political processes throughwhich these coalitions might be formed; nor

does it lay down clear criteria by which onemight decide empirically that such coalitionsare inclusive enough to ensure broad secu-rity provision. Its attempts to pull togethera wide array of empirical scholarship to sup-port its assertions about the links betweennarrow elite pacts, weak institutions andcycles of violence do not completely con-vince, even at times doing violence to thescholarship itself (Watts 2012: 120).

Moreover governance practitioners areenjoined to seek local legitimacy andinvolve broader segments of societylocalgovernments, business, labour, civil societymovements, [and] in some cases oppositionparties (WDR 2011: xvii). Donors are left toconsider how best to manage, exploit, andcoexist with [HPOs], and help public author-ities to provide human and national securityto their populations (Clunan and Trinkunas2010: 12). In a similar manner, the OECDs

International Network on Conflict and Fra-gility (INCAF) has called for deeper under-standing of HPOs (OECD 2011: 25), arguingthat such societies:

continue to function, to form insti-tutions, to negotiate politically, andto set and meet expectations. Tradi-tional forms of authority are not nec-essarily inimical to the development

of rules-based political systems [] Infact, the challenge is to understand


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how traditional and formal systemsinteract in any particular context,and to look for ways of constructivelycombining them.

In many respects working with hybridity, likedecentralisation before it, appeals to actorsfrom diverse ends of the political spectrum(Lutz and Linder 2004). For the left it accordswith the embedded, participatory and com-munitarian aspects of governance assistanceprogrammes. For neo-liberals it suggestsstate functions can be outsourced, movingpower away from inefficient or corrupt cen-tral governments. It also attracts those frus-

trated by the failure of numerous post-ColdWar state-building and security sector reformprojects in conflict affected countries, par-ticularly where the centralisation of securityrepeatedly leads to predation. A hybriditylens has even been adopted by some securityanalysts to interpret the blurring of irregularand regular threats they encounter in asym-metric warfare on contemporary as well asancient battlefields (Killcullen 2009; Murray

and Mansoor 2012).In sum the notion of working with thegrain of hybrid processes has been har-nessed for quite different normative goals,be they basic service provision, liberal state-building, the promotion of democratic pro-cesses, the free market or the defeat of anadversary (Booth 2012: 8486). Unsurpris-ingly this apparent looseness has openedthe concept of HPOs, and in particularhybrid security arrangements, to a number

of critiques.Some analysts contend that the HPOs

approach risks swapping the state fragilityliteratures essentialist focus on the defi-ciencies of the state with a celebration ofpotentially chaotic, regressive and violentforms of governance beyond the marginsof the state (Meagher 2012: 1077). In par-ticular, it is suggested that a rush to embracethe traditional can blur the true nature of

the relationship between localised ordersand legitimacy, or, even more dangerously,

deploy Tillyan notions of state formation toapologise for violence.16 Moreover a concen-tration on hybridity may lead to an overem-phasis upon the negotiability of governancearrangements and foreclose robust empirical

investigation of existing power structures(Doornbus 2010). Critics even fear that ana-lysts, who see hybridity everywhere, maydisregard the existing tensions and divisionsin fragmented governance contexts moreaccurately described by the concept of insti-tutional multiplicity (Goodfellow and Linde-mann 2013).

These are useful warnings. Like all open-ended analytical concepts (as we have seen

security is another), hybridity is vulnerable toa variety of constructions, critiques and mis-interpretations.17 Furthermore, it is usefulonly if it raises fruitful questions for analysisand empirical investigation. Indeed we pre-fer it over alternatives such as institutionalmultiplicity precisely because it highlightsthe complex interplayamong multiple andoften contradictory forms of social order-ing, each having their own sources of power,

distinct organisational logics and sourcesof legitimacy.18 We also argue that hybridityshould not be seen as a concept in search ofa pleasing theory of the traditional. Rather itis an analytical lens that explicitly challengesreductionist positions by focusing on theinteractions that make talking of, let alonereverting to, supposedly traditional govern-ance arrangements impossible. Later in thispaper we turn the same analytical lenses notonly upon local level security arrangements

but also upon the political spaces controlledby national elites and global security actors,both of which are far from homogeneous,being tugged in different directions by adiversity of political and security actors, eachwith distinct agendas, ways of operating andpolitical alliances.

To be sure, we argue that hybrid politi-cal contexts tend to be permeated by deepcontradictions and clashes between differ-

ent ways of organising security and politicalpower. These clashes may become violent,


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especially in situations of major insecurity,contested political authority or armed inter-national intervention. But violence is neitherinherent nor necessary, either for securityor in order to drive the slow, locally embed-

ded processes of political centralisationthat some see as essential to state-building.Rather, the presence or absence of violence,and how it is organised or resisted, remainempirical issues for investigation in particu-lar national and local contexts.

In sum, the main value of a hybrid approachto security is its emphasis on empiricallygrounded investigations that uncover how,and for whom, security is determined in com-

plex, multilayered political contexts. Indeedit brings together a supply-side approach tothe determination of security by a variety ofsecurity actors, with a demand-side empha-sis upon inclusive security based upon theagency of end-users. Thus the approachcan help analysts understand the infor-mal networks and political spaces in whichend-users voice protest against or withholdcooperation from illegitimate institutions, at

the same time as it reveals networks whichthreaten their rights or worsen insecurity.Through such a lens realistic appraisals ofthe weapons of the weak become every bitas essential for understanding security provi-sion as analysis of the political powers of thestrong (Scott 1985).

Webs of (In)Security: A Multi-LevelApproachAs already suggested, hybrid interactions

between actors and institutions occur acrossas well as within national and local bounda-ries. Security arrangements tend to be deter-mined at multiple levels both on the demandside and on the supply side. Webs or chains ofsecurity and of (in)security stretch from theglobal to the national to the most local levelsand back.19 The lives and survival strategies ofend-users, in particular poor and vulnerablepeople, often depend upon remote national

and global processes over which they haveno control and upon powerful actors whoare in no way accountable for the misery and

insecurity they may cause. Conversely bothglobal and national decision-makers oftenfind themselves disconcerted by seeminglylocal upheavals, which generate wider con-flicts and insecurities: what some security

analysts term blowback.Below we turn our focus upon three

types of political space, within which thesewebs of (in)security tend to interconnect,namely: unsecured borderlands, contestedLeviathans and securitised policy spaces.Although they span the local, the nationaland the global, we see them as being mutu-ally constituted, not merely as separate lev-els of analysis. However we are deliberately

selective in our focus on these particularpolitical spaces rather than others and, fur-thermore, in confining our discussion to theprimary decision-makers active within them(rather than all possible actors determininglocal (in)security). As our dual definition ofsecurity attests, this focus should not betaken to imply that end-users have no agency.Rather it acknowledges that their agency andexperience of security in each space may be

constrained by other more obviously power-ful actors and dynamics.While our treatment of the global and

the national may seem to take us rather farfrom our original concern with the vernacu-lar understandings and lived experience ofend-users, we think it can be justified: end-users are not only entangled in networksacross local and national boundaries, theysometimes have a surprisingly acute under-standing of how they are put at risk by wider

national and global insecurities. Inevitablytrying to look at security from below (Luck-ham 2009) is something of a thought experi-ment. It is not made any the easier by thefact that so much of the literature sees secu-rity through the eyes of states and powerfulglobal actors. One way of turning the tablesupon the latter is to scrutinise their policiesand programmes through the same hybriditylenses that researchers turn upon local actors

in the developing world.1. Unsecured borderlands are spaces

where state authority is suspended or


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violently challenged by alternative claim-ants to power and providers of security,including non-state armed groups. Theseborderlands are unsecured since they falloutside the security umbrella of the state;

but they are not necessarily insecure. Theycan be configured around both social exclu-sions and geographical divisions (Goodhand2009). Often they traverse established stateboundaries. But they may also take the formof unsecured spaces inside existing states.

Examples are the borderlands betweenPakistan and Afghanistan (White 2008) andbetween Indian and Pakistani-controlledKashmir (Aggarwal and Bhan 2009), the

troubled peripheries between eastern DRCand its Great Lakes neighbours (Raeymaek-ers 2010), the porous border areas betweenSudan and Northern Uganda, the Somali-speaking region that traverses Somalia,Somaliland, Ethiopia and Northern Kenya(Simonse 2011) and the militarized borderareas between Lebanon, Syria, Israel andPalestine. Sometimes the entire de jureter-ritories of states like Somalia (Menkhaus

2006/7), Haiti, Central African Republic or,arguably, Yemen can be seen as unsecuredborderlands. National parks too can sharea number of the characteristics of border-lands, in some instances functioning as safeareas, but in others becoming unpoliced orunpoliceable spaces, as in rebel-penetratedparks in the Great Lakes region of Africa(Dunn 2009).

However there are important differencesamong borderlands, including distinctions

between those where borders themselvesare porous and unpoliceable, as betweenPakistan and Afghanistan, and those whereboundaries within peripheral regions aremilitarily enforced but where state author-ity is routinely ignored or contested, as inIndian-controlled Kashmir or Palestine. Inneither case can regional borderlands beregarded as political voids. Often there existwell-organised security links between states

and non-state actors across national bounda-ries, such as those between Iran, Syria andHezbollah in Lebanon or those between Paki-

stans military intelligence apparatus and theTaliban in Afghanistan.

Not all unsecured borderlands are situatedacross or adjacent to national boundaries.The salient borders may be largely or wholly

interior and may be characterised by deep-seated horizontal inequalities, ethnically orreligiously polarized identities, or geographi-cal patterns of urban and rural exclusion.Examples are Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka(Goodhand, Klem and Korf 2009), parts ofGujarat in India (Berenschot 2009), the NigerDelta in Nigeria, areas exposed to Maoist vio-lence in Nepal (Bohara, Mitchell and Nepal2006), Baluchistan in Pakistan or the Oromo

and Somali regions in federal Ethiopia.Exclusions may be even more local still,

including political and social spaces wherethe writ of the state does not extend orwhich suffer significant state and non-stateviolence, for instance Palestinian refugeecamps in Lebanon (Hanafi and Long 2010),urban slums like the Cape Flats in Cape Town(Burr 2008), the outskirts of Karachi (Khan2010) or favelas in Rio de Janeiro (Dowdney

2003). Indeed securitized border spaces canbe found even in otherwise stable and well-governed countries as in Indias Jammu andKashmir (Aggarwal and Bhan 2009) or North-ern Ireland.

Yet far from being ungoverned, such bor-der spaces tend to have their own hybridforms of political regulation, often involv-ing violence alongside complex interactionsamong various armed groups. There can alsobe multiple articulations with the absent

state, among neighbouring states and withglobal players. Certainly one cannot in truthsay states are absent in places like PakistansFederally-Administered Tribal Areas, Darfuror Kashmir (on either side of the Line of Con-trol); they are very coercively present.

Unsecured borderlands are particularly sali-ent contexts to examine how poor and vul-nerable people themselves think about andexperience security (Richards 1996; Lorenco-

Lindell 2002; Allen 2012). They poignantly,sometimes brutally, expose the vast gapsbetween the way academic and policy analy-


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sis frames security and lived experience ofthose at the receiving end of insecurity. Eventhe concepts of human and citizen securitydo not come close to conveying the vernacu-lar understandings and hidden transcripts

of resistance of people at grass-roots (Scott1985). Indeed it is doubtful if the term secu-rity itself can be translated. Approximationscan be found; Acholi people in war-tornNorthern Uganda distinguish between badsurroundings (piny marac) and good sur-roundings (piny maber) (Finnstrm 2008).However such terms are imbued with cul-tural resonances all of their own, as well asbeing open to change and reinterpretation

as violent events transform local realities.Using different methodologies, Uvin and

Finnstrom study grass roots perceptions ofsecurity in Burundi (Uvin 2009) and North-ern Uganda (Finnstrm 2008). Both con-clude that most people do not make sharpdistinctions between freedom from vio-lence, social peace and the ability to meetbasic needs, including the ability to movefreely from place to place. Both suggest that

local people tend to have more complex,less judgemental understandings of armedgroups than national elites or internationalactors. And both seem to endorse the senti-ments of a respondent in Finnstroms (2008:12) study, that the silence of guns does notmean peace.

At the same time unsecured borderlandstend to be highly gendered spaces, in whichgender subordination interlinks with otherexclusions (Saigol 2010). Coulter challenges

stereotypical accounts of women as victimsin her study of girl soldiers and bush wivesin Sierra Leone, as do Abdullah, Ibrahim andKing in their analysis of women as civil soci-ety activists and peacemakers (Coulter 2009;Abdullah, Ibrahim and King 2010). Neverthe-less Coulter (2009: 10) observes womenschoices in times of conflict and war are atbest circumscribed, at worst non-existent.

Hybrid or informal security and justice

institutions in unsecured borderlands aresometimes regarded as credible alternativesto failing, corrupt or oppressive state secu-

rity provision. They are, however, incrediblydiverse, including traditional justice institu-tions, local defence forces, community polic-ing bodies (Baker 2008), paramilitaries, pri-vate security companies, assorted vigilante

groups (Buur 2008; Meagher 2007) andcommunity-led peace initiatives (Colak andPearce 2009). Isimas (2007) study of non-state security provision in Nigeria and SouthAfrica suggests there may be contradictoryrelationships between informal securityprovision and civil militarism, when pro-viders alternate between being protectorsand oppressors of poor and vulnerable peo-ple. Indeed informal institutions are seldom

impartial, having their own political and eco-nomic agendas, some pursued through vio-lence. Those relying on traditional authority,like theArbakaiin Afghanistan, can be patri-archal and reinforce local inequalities (Tariq2009), while privatised security provisionmay be market-driven and biased towardsthose with wealth and power (Isima 2009).Furthermore, where outlawed groups pro-vide much needed security and justice, they

often do so at the expense of due processand respect for rights and the rule of law.Conversely, in some situations, as with para-military formations in Darfur and SouthernSudan, they may act in collusion with thestate in repressing both armed resistanceand unarmed protest (Ylonen 2005).

Yet in different circumstances narratives ofsubaltern resistance to economic exploita-tion, state repression or foreign occupationmay be harnessed to wider transformative

agendas. Woods historical and ethnographicanalysis of peasant revolt in El Salvador offersa persuasive account of insurgent collectiveaction within struggles for land and socialjustice (Wood 2003). Others explore howpopular movements and civil-society groupscan pose alternatives to violence, as with civilsociety organisations and agrarian conflict inGuatemala (Van Leeuween 2010), Afghani-stans often overlooked activists (Theros and

Kaldor 2011) and the resistance of Colom-bian communities to guerrilla as well as stateviolence (Alther 2006).


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Yet one cannot assume that the hiddentranscripts of dissent, still less armed resist-ance, are progressive. Indeed, where insur-gents mobilise submerged ethnic, national orreligious identities, even in support of wider

goals of national liberation or social justice,they often create new forms of exclusion andviolence, as for instance studies of the Tali-ban have shown (Fleischner 2011; Rangelovand Theros 2012). Moreover, a well-recog-nised feature of successful armed struggles isthe betrayal of the hopes of many of thosewho supported them: the 2006 violence inEast Timor (Nixon 2012) and the well-docu-mented peacetime reversals of gains made

by women in armed insurrections are casesin point (Coulter 2006; Hale 2008).

In sum, whilst it is critical to understandhybrid security provision and the ways itcan fulfil unmet security and justice needs,a strong dose of realism based on detailedempirical research into how informal mecha-nisms function, for whom they work andwhat tangible benefits, if any, they provide toend-users is necessary.

2. Contested Leviathans are states andstate security structures whose author-ity and capacity to deliver security areweak, disputed or compromised by the spe-cial interests that tend to predominate inHPOs. They are so termed in order to cap-ture the contingent and disputed nature ofstate authority in many national contexts. Tocall such states fragile can be something ofa misnomer, however, since even the mostchallenged retain considerable powers to

coerce or watch over their citizens. Moreover,their primary security institutions (the armedforces, intelligence apparatuses, police andjudicial systems) matter enormously for therights and security of citizens, even whenin the main they act as agents of insecurityrather than security.

At the extreme end of the spectrum standstates whose capacity to exercise any form oflegitimate authority, nationally or locally, is

severely diminished or non-existent. In largeparts of Somalia or eastern DRC (Renders2007; Kaiser and Wolters 2012), for instance,

almost all semblance of public authority hasvanished; state power is highly contestedand geographically fragmented in Lebanon(Mac Ginty 2011); and in Afghanistan it facesprolonged armed resistance (Goodhand and

Sedra 2010). Yet none of these countries,even Somalia, can be written off as ungov-erned and ungovernable political spaces(Leonard and Samantar 2011).

Empirical analysis is not best served byhammering such states into a single theo-retical mould of state fragility. Their categori-sation as fragile or failing has often beenafter the event, only following major statecrises or outbreaks of violence. Seldom has

there been much serious ex anteanalysis oftheir susceptibility to breakdown. Moreo-ver it is striking that some states currentlyconsidered fragile were once considereddevelopmental success stories, like the IvoryCoast, Zimbabwe or (before the genocide)Rwanda.20

The Arab Springs seemed to challengewhat we knew, or thought we knew, aboutthe closed or oligopolistic political market-

places of many authoritarian and quasi-dem-ocratic regimes. While such regimes deployimpressive capabilities for political coercionand surveillance of their citizens, sometimespenetrating deep into civil society as in stateslike Syria, Burma, Sudan, Yemen or Pakistan,the apparent centralisation of power has notbeen all that it seems. Rather as the formerPresident of Yemen expressed it ruling is likedancing on the heads of snakes (ex-PresidentAli Abdullah Salih quoted in Clark 2010: xi).

Hence we suggest turning the analytical lensof hybridity upon apparently more durablestate Leviathans as well.

First, state power and security may in prac-tice be negotiated with major independentsocial sectors, like Islamist groups in Paki-stan, Lebanon, Sudan or Egypt, or cartelsin Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Second, thecentral institutions of the state itself mayin reality be hybrid in their own right, with

formal chains of command and account-ability penetrated and even superseded byinformal patronage networks and systema-


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tised corruption. Indeed, as in Syria, Iraq,Libya, ex-Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe and others, itis often state elites themselves who deploypersonal, ethnic or religious ties to cementtheir regimes and control their military and

security apparatuses.This informalisation of power tends to be

a double-edged sword, consolidating thepower of state elites within patronage struc-tures but also weakening public authorityand the states capacity to deliver securityand other public goods. In times of crisis itcan also generate acute political tensions inthe heart of the state itself, rendering appar-ently fearsome state machines and their

security apparatuses suddenly vulnerable.This is especially so where, as during theArab Springs, state elites lose control overinformation to new media and where theirmonopoly of force is challenged by newforms of popular unarmed and armed resist-ance on the streets.

Yet the resilience of the deep state shouldnot be underestimated either. Security elitestend to act as power and profit maximiz-

ers, translating their control of security andorganized violence into personal or insti-tutional gain within national, regional andglobal political marketplaces (North et al2012). They may even work to mould demo-cratic governance around their own security-dominated vision of the polity, as in CentralAmericas post-conflict democracies. Politi-cal armies and security institutions almostinvariably continue to be major players, evenin transitional or democratic regimes (Luck-

ham 1996; Koonings and Kruijt 2004). Aparticularly graphic example of the balefulinfluence of security services under a vio-lence called democracy has been Guatemala(Schirmer 1998; Goldman 2007). Even lessexplored by researchers has been the politi-cal consolidation of unaccountable securitysectors under states of emergency in thesecuritised border spaces of Colombia, SriLanka or India (not only in Kashmir but also

in areas contested by Naxalite insurgents) bringing down the wrath of the state upon

embattled minorities and economically andsocially excluded regions.

Despite a wealth of useful insights, thepolicy and academic literatures on the sta-bilisation of fragile states tend to remain

couched in the restricted language of state-craft. Moreover they barely touch upon thedeep politics of reform, draw upon the criti-cal literatures on the state and on HPOs orempirically investigate how security is actu-ally delivered to end-users. Only latterlyhas more critical and empirically groundedattention been turned upon the real poli-tics of stabilisation (Collinson, Elhawary andMuggah 2010), post-conflict security reform

(Hutchful 2009; Sedra 2007; Peake, Scheyeand Hills 2009) and day-to-day policing andjustice in conflict and post-conflict situations(Baker 2010), including the activities of whatBaker (2002) terms lawless law enforcers,who may in practice be the only recourse ofpoor and vulnerable people seeking a modi-cum of safety and justice.

Over three decades ago a classic study byEnloe (1980) focused upon how colonial and

post-colonial elites framed security policyaround the manipulation of ethnic and reli-gious identities. More recently attention hasturned to how fragile states and predatoryelites thrive upon durable disorder (Chabaland Daloz 1999), merging state security insti-tutions with the parallel networks of HPOs.Nevertheless there has not been enough seri-ous empirical investigation of how they andtheir security apparatuses contribute to, andextract advantage from, such disorder, either

nationally (as in Burma, Zimbabwe and argu-ably now Iraq and Syria) or within marginal-ized border regions (like Darfur, Abyei andKofordan in Sudan) nor of the ways durabledisorder touches on the lives of those whoare threatened or excluded.

There is also a distinct shortage of detailedmicro-analysis of the invisible faces of powerand security, including the intelligence andsurveillance systems often at the heart of

contested Leviathans. As Tadros (2011) hasshown for Egypt, state security apparatuses


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are often parallel powers in their own right,interconnecting with corporate and politicalinterests and penetrating deep into civil soci-ety. Research on these apparatuses in LatinAmerica has analysed how they perpetuate

legacies of impunity, rights abuses and socialexclusion even in supposedly democraticor post-conflict states (Schirmer 1998).

There have been calls for pragmatic real-ism both about the prospects of securityreform (Scheye 2009) and about post-warstabilisation more generally (Colletta andMuggah 2009). The empirical foundationsfor such a pragmatic approach are spelt outin case studies of the politics and practice of

security sector reform (Cawthra and Luck-ham 2003; Hendrickson 2008; Peake, Scheyeand Hills 2009). Most of these case studies,however, tell the story of reform and thepolitical obstacles it encounters from theviewpoint of the reformers themselves ratherthan that of the end-users whom the reformsare supposed to benefit.

Existing analysis has been notably weak onhow dysfunctional security institutions can

be challenged or held accountable by end-users living in conditions of insecurity. Fur-thermore we have little understanding of thehow citizen demands for change emerge andcatalyse a reordering of the political and secu-rity landscape. For his part, Hattotuwa (2009)has drawn attention to how new media havekept open spaces for political debate in thesecurity-dominated political environment ofpost-conflict Sri Lanka, as well as engagingwith grass roots audiences in vernacular lan-

guages. Furthermore, Somaliland is widelycited as a paradigm case of citizen action andpeacebuilding from below. Yet it remains aspecial case and it is far from clear that its les-sons are transferable to other conflict-torn orfragile states, where as we see below peace-building largely been driven by internationalrather than local actors and agendas.

3. Securitized policy spaces are policyarenas in which international actors

(peacekeepers, donors, international agen-cies, INGOs etc) intervene to ensure peace

and security, claiming to act for poor andvulnerable end users as well as for the inter-national community. Our central conten-tion is that interventions by members of theinternational community are characterised

by their own forms of hybrid politics, whichwarrant similar analytical lenses to thoseturned upon national and local actors. Scru-tinised through these lenses, security provi-sion is globally and historically constituted(Ayers 2010); and the welfare and security ofend-users all too often take second place togeopolitical concerns, inter-agency rivalriesand patron-client relationships. Even whenintervening for humanitarian goals, inter-

national actors rapidly become entangledin hybrid relationships with powerful, andsometimes destructive, national and localactors. Good intentions are no protectionagainst the perverse and sometimes violentconsequences of international engagement.

As we have seen, the WDR 2011 tackles thepolitical dimensions of peacebuilding andsecurity reform. Yet it remains very difficult totranslate its analysis into sound operationalguidelines for international engagement inthe bad surroundings of fragile states. Morebroadly the distinct historical trajectoriesby which states and regions become fragileor insecure, or are stabilized or opened toreform, are all too often glossed over. Norindeed has there been enough recognition ofthe major differences in the scale, types andimpacts of international engagement, rang-ing from the relatively limited policy supportfor security and justice reforms in countries

such as Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia orNepal, to the wholesale reordering of entirestates and their security institutions underthe rubric of stabilisation as in Afghanistan,Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, East Timor, Libe-ria or Sierra Leone (see the typology of exter-nal post-conflict engagement in Luckham2011: 98106).

The policy literature tends to view peace-building through the interventionist gaze

of the international community, rather thanthrough the lenses of national, let alone


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grass-roots stakeholders. This top-down per-spective is reflected in analyses which attrib-ute the success or failure of peacebuildingvariously to the sequencing of reform (Paris2004), to inability of donors and interna-

tional agencies to coordinate policies andact with a single voice (Toft 2010), inherenttensions between humanitarian and mili-tary action and a lack of local ownership andabsence of political will. Although no doubtimportant, these issues do not sufficientlyaddress deep contradictions inherent in theinternational enterprise of peacebuildingitself (e.g. Paris and Sisk 2009; Collinson,Elhawary and Muggah 2010; Gordon 2010;

Lothe and Peake 2010).Policy analyses of interventions have

tended to edit out the political interests andcalculations of the major players, includingthe international ones. Yet experience showsthat stabilisation and the prioritisation ofsecurity can easily become counterproduc-tive in situations of highly contested politicalauthority, large-scale violence and externalmilitary intervention, especially where stabi-

lisation merges into counter-insurgency as inAfghanistan and Iraq. Thus the internationalcommunity remains open to the charge thatits humanitarian aid and development assis-tance, and still more its sponsorship of secu-rity sector reform (SSR) and stabilisation pro-grammes, have been securitized or driven byforeign policy agendas.

An emerging stream of critical analysishas turned its attention to the links betweenthe liberal peace and stabilisation agendas

(Chandler 2006; Pugh, Cooper and Turner2009; Richmond and Franks 2009), as wellas to the cooptation of both by the war onterror (Keen 2006; Howell and Lind 2009).A major contribution of these approaches isto frame external actors as objects of study -rather than taking their policy agendas as thestarting point for inquiry. Accordingly theentire assemblage of external actors who areactive in unstable regions are characterised

as international regimes or indeed HPOs intheir own right (Mac Ginty 2011; Veit 2010).Veit even characterizes the complex relation-

ships in eastern DRC between representa-tives of the international community, localelites and armed groups as a new trope in theold colonial narrative of indirect rule.

The priorities and animating logics of the

different protagonists peacekeeping forces,aid bureaucracies, humanitarian agencies,international NGOs etc differ and some-times clash (Bagayoko and McLean Hilker2009). Yet one finds little detailed empiricalenquiry into how bureaucratic timetables,funding requirements and inter-agency rival-ries determine the workings of stabilisationpolicies or SSR programmes. There is evenless empirical study of the relationships of

such policies and programmes to the agen-das of military alliances, large powers, andglobal corporations. Moreover relativelyfew studies have focused upon relation-ships between international interveners andnational and local security actors. Beginningto fill these gaps, Autesserres (2010) study ofpeacebuilding in the DRC is one of the firstanywhere to approach the messy and violentreal politics of relationships peacebuilders

and local armed actors.In recent years significant shifts in globalsecurity marketplaces have had major con-sequences for the capacity of the interna-tional community to ensure security withinthe contested spaces of fragile or shadowstates (Nordstrom 2000). These shifts haveincluded developments in the commerce inweapons and other conflict goods and ser-vices (Cooper 2002), including the expansionof privatised security provision (Abrahamsen

and Williams 2009), the commercialisationof conflict resources, including the erosionof the distinction between lootable and non-lootable resources like oil (Le Billon 2012;Kaldor, Karl and Said 2007) and, above all,the trade in destructive illicit commoditiessuch as drugs in countries like Afghanistan,Colombia, Mexico or Guatemala (Briscoeand Rodriguez 2010). Illicit or shadow mar-kets have even begun to reconfigure entire

states, as seen dramatically in eastern DRCor Guinea Bissau, which are transit points inthe drugs trade between Latin America and


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Europe. They have also brought new actorsinto the security frame, including criminalmafias, diaspora networks, internationalsecurity firms, natural resource corporationsand even international NGOs (Avant 2005),

all impacting in various ways upon vulner-able people and communities.

There are many ways in which develop-ments in global and regional security mar-ketplaces have spread violence and under-mined peacebuilding. Examples include:(i) the enormous difficulties of regulatingpoppy production and trade and of break-ing its links to warlordism and insurgencyin Afghanistan (Goodhand and Mansfield

2010); (ii) the illicit trade in coltan andother high-value commodities in the DRC,which have impeded the creation of a viablenational economy and provided incentives tosustains criminal and political violence (Kai-ser and Wolters 2012); (iii) the problems ofimplementing security and justice reformswhere resource or drug-induced corruptionpenetrates deep into security agencies, as inMexico, Colombia or even Ghana; or (iv) the

undue influence that international securityfirms have in civilian protection programmesor SSR in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan orLiberia (Leander 2001).

Moreover international actors in donor-saturated spaces confront major issues ofaccountability, above all in relation to end-users in host countries and local communi-ties. Donors, international humanitarianactors and NGOs are accountable primarilyto their own governments, agencies, funders

and stakeholders, not to end-users in hostcountries and local communities. In otherinstances, international actors such as globalsecurity firms, dealers in illicit or high-valuecommodities, arms traders, natural resourcecorporations, criminal mafias or networksof religious militants may be accountable tonon-state authorities such as shareholdersor faith communities; in others they may beanswerable to no one at all. Yet none of them

are accountable in any way to end-users.Indeed the latter not only have few meansof redress against those exposing them to

violence, exploitation and rights abuses bethey state security agents, warlords, armedmilitants, criminals or indeed interventionforces; they have almost none against thosesupposed to protect them, such as peace-

keepers, international agencies, donors,humanitarian bodies and NGOs, when theyfail to deliver on their responsibility to pro-tect or become complicit in their exploitationand abuse (Mamdani 2009).

By Way of Conclusion: SomeChallenges of Research from anEnd-User PerspectiveOur analysis above has presented a frame-

work for evaluating security from an end-user perspective. This demands not onlyin depth local-level research but also theability to turn an end-user lens upon theglobal, regional and national power rela-tions which determine the security of poorand vulnerable people. Below we brieflysketch some challenges of implementingsuch a research agenda.

The rst challenge is to tap end-users

own vernacular understandings of howthey navigate the terrains of violence andseek security in unsecured borderlands. Afew researchers have provided vivid and atthe same time analytically focused accountsof how particular groups navigate insecurity.These include, for instance, Coulters (2009)research on girl soldiers and bush wives inSierra Leone and Vighs (2006) account ofyoung urban fighters in Guinea-Bissau, bothof which include perceptive accounts of their

methods of research. Others have combinedmore structured surveys with ethnographictechniques or historical sources to goodeffect, including Uvins (2009) research onperceptions of war and peace in Burundiand Woods (2003) analysis of grass-rootsinsurgency in El Salvador. Some of the bestresearch indeed has not announced itself asbeing about conflict and insecurity per sebut has rather generated insights about the

latter indirectly, as for instance in Coburns(2011) ethnographic study of power and thepottery trade in an Afghan town and Hutch-


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insons (1996) examination of the Nuersrelationship to cash, guns and the Suda-nese state. Paiges (1997) innovative use ofethnography, surveys and historical politi-cal economy analysis to interpret relations

between coffee elites and violence in threeCentral America countries may also be put inthis category.

Approaching end-users from anotherperspective, a number of research initia-tives challenge the received wisdom that itis impossible to do large scale or rigorousresearch in conflict affected regions (Jus-tino, Leavy and Valli 2009).21 Some of theseutilise large time series livelihood or house-

hold surveys designed to understand end-users perspectives of public goods provision,including security and justice, and the every-day outcomes of conflict for different socialgroups. Although the drive for large-n datasets is arguably spurred by donors need tomake business cases for development inter-ventions, the possibility of combining thesewith further, historically and contextuallynuanced, methodologies presents an exciting

prospect for future understandings of secu-rity provision and everyday life in HPOs.22However we argue in a companion piece

on our literature searches (Luckham and Kirk2013) that, in aggregate, existing studies stilltend to be geographically scattered, themati-cally and methodologically diverse, and inmany cases lacking in empirical rigour. Onecannot extract firm empirical or policy con-clusions without greater conceptual integra-tion and sharper empirical focus on (a) who

precisely end-users are, (b) to whom they lookfor protection, (c) how far they have capac-ity to influence or indeed frustrate formalpolicy structures and agendas and (d) wheninstead they turn to informal security andjustice providers, protests or violent revolts.Moreover, vernacular understandings muststill be placed in historical context, includingthe processes of uneven development, socialexclusion and political violence, which have

rendered unsecured borderlands peripheraland their inhabitants insecure.

In sum, mapping end-users vernacularunderstandings of hybrid security arrange-ments demands a combination of methodo-logical innovation, historical understanding,empirical rigour and willingness to enter

their social worlds and respect their agency(on the challenges of research in violentcontexts see McGee and Pearce 2009 andCramer, Hammond and Pottier 2011). Thebulk of existing studies deploy the standardtechniques of ethnography and participatoryresearch. They can with profit be supple-mented by creative use of a wider repertoireof research techniques, such as: (a) the pre-viously mentioned integration of qualitative

methods with quantitative surveys; (b) math-ematical modelling of social networks; (c) theuse of life histories alongside documentarysources to record local-level social change;(d) accessing the resources of poetry, fiction23and the mass media to draw on the popularimagination; (e) deploying the crowd sourc-ing techniques which have shown their effec-tiveness in preventing outbreaks of electoralviolence in Kenya and elsewhere (Bott, Gigler

and Young 2011; Mancini 2013); or (f) usingblogs and SMS messages to ensure a voicefor the excluded in documenting their ownexperiences of abuse and insecurity, as in SriLanka (Hattotuwa 2009).

Analytical innovation too can sharpen thetools of empirical inquiry to better serveend-users, drawing for instance on the sub-altern perspective of post-colonial histori-ans, or on Scotts (1985) analysis of the weap-ons of the weak. Our point is not that these

analytical perspectives should be wheeledin simply to place the focus on the agencyof those who have been made insecure. It isthat the premises as well as the techniquesof research on security from below are inneed of rethinking.

A second challenge is how to undertakeempirical archaeology of the informalsecurity relationships within and aroundthe state. How and for whom do they work

or fail to work?We have seen how durabledisorder is endemic in HPOs, with diverse


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forms of political authority coexisting andcompeting over how and by whom securityis defined and provided. As Stepan (1988:ix-xv) argued in a seminal analysis of demo-cratic strategies towards security apparatuses

during the Latin American transitions of the1980s, rendering the deep state transparentis a truly major research challenge. Secrecyis not just endemic, it is the way the stateworks, as well as the way it shields its benefi-ciaries from prying eyes. Even in seeminglyconsolidated autocracies, such as Syria andLibya prior to the current upheavals, patron-age networks of family, clan, ethnicity andreligious confession criss-crossed state and

security structures, holding elites togetherbut also dividing them and linking them towider political alliances beyond the state,which often descended to grass roots.

Mapping such networks is crucial to deter-mine if elite and elite-mass coalitions areinclusive enough (in the World Banks ter-minology) to manage emergent conflicts andensure the security of end-users. It may alsodiagnose the tension points in the edifices

of power that can open spaces for change orrender state structures vulnerable to majorshocks and upheavals. However it is veryhard to penetrate the deep state and theclandestine social networks and patronagesystems within it. Added to this are the risksto researchers own safety and their respon-sibilities towards their informants. Yet eventhe most fearsome state Leviathans are notcompletely monolithic. Opportunities canopen for research in the most unexpected

places, especially at moments of political cri-sis, when the unravelling of political author-ity opens new windows for inquiry.

Researchers can construct reasonablyconvincing accounts of the deep state andof its informal networks of power throughthe gathering and triangulation of scraps ofinformation from a variety of non-obtrusivemeasures and indirect data sources; even if itis not always easy to ensure that such a bri-

colage meets rigorous research standards.24

Researchers can draw upon and learn from

organisations, such as the International Cri-sis Group, which have documented politicalviolence and human rights abuses in manynational contexts. Investigative journaliststoo have much to teach them. Goldmans

(2007) The Art of Political Murder, for instanceuses the murder of an archbishop in Guate-mala as the starting point for a far-reachinginquiry into the activities of the countryssecurity agencies, their links with paramili-tary and criminal groups and the strugglesof human rights groups and social activiststo hold them accountable. Furthermore it ispossible to use the resources of new mediato gather information about political spaces

that are difficult or dangerous to enter. Arecent study of internet censorship in Chinashows how researchers can even extract sali-ent conclusions from the states own effortsto close down spaces for debate and criticism(King, Pan and Roberts 2013).

A third research challenge is to lay barethe webs of causality and of accountabilitylinking poor and vulnerable people to theinternational actors who in various ways

determine their (in)security. As we haveseen the literature on the securitisation ofdevelopment focuses in general terms onthe globalised nature of the security arrange-ments entangling the developing world.Critical scholars such as Mamdani (2009)have argued persuasively that the inter-national community bears a major shareof the responsibility for the humanitariandisasters, such as that in Darfur. Howevertheir case needs to be backed by more rig-

orous research (especially from an end-userperspective) on how donors, internationalorganisations and international NGOs actu-ally navigate the terrains of war and the shift-ing security marketplaces of troubled statesand unsecured borderlands.

There has been some progress, as we haveseen, from the initial normative concernsof the literature on security and develop-ment towards more empirically grounded

analysis of the real politics of internationalengagement: for instance (amongst oth-


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ers) the studies put together by Peake, Sch-eye and Hills (2009) on field experiencesof security reform; the work of Hutchful(2009) on SSR in peace agreements; orCollinson, Elhawary and Muggahs (2011)

scrutiny of stabilisation policies. There havealso been detailed accounts of the interfacebetween international and local securityactors in particular national contexts, forinstance the work of Autesserre (2010) andVeit (2010) on the DRC. The latters analy-sis of how international actors fall backupon colonial tropes of indirect rule andare thereby drawn into hybrid relationshipswith politicians and warlords scrutinises

both international and local actors throughthe same analytical lenses.

Policy-makers often grumble that the socialresearch that arrives on their desks does notaddress their most pressing policy concerns.Researchers for their part complain that pol-icy-makers disregard their findings by pursu-ing quick policy fixes in situations of great his-torical and social complexity. Acknowledgingthis complexity can help international actors

to identify and minimise the potentiallyregressive outcomes of their interventions.More crucially it could potentially providethose at the receiving end of interventionswith evidence-based analysis with which tohold international actors accountable. How-ever end-users cannot hope to hold policy-makers (or indeed researchers themselves) toaccount without more access to the researchupon which the framing of policy is based.They also need empirical inquiry that reflects

their own concerns, including better under-standing of how and by whom their securityis determined.25

Despite an expanding research literature,security in HPOs remains such an acutelycontested area that firm empirical conclu-sions are rare, especially about how securitytouches on the lives of poor and vulner-able people. Research, like policy, has beenskewed by the inequalities inherent in the

theory and practice of security itself. We hopethat this article will encourage researchers topay greater attention to the capabilities and

concerns of those whom the prevailing secu-rity architectures have left out or failed.

Notes 1 This paper builds upon a systematic lit-

erature search undertaken by the Justiceand Security Research Programme (JSRP)at the London School of Economics (LSE)funded by the UKs Department for Inter-national Development (DFID). The searchitself and its main findings are discussedin Luckham and Kirk (2012) and Luck-ham and Kirk (2013).

2 The argument that security is not con-fined to the security of states predated

the end of the Cold War (Palme 1982;Buzan 1983; Luckham 1983). During the1990s it was mainstreamed through theconcept of human security (UNDP 1994;Ogata and Sen 2004; Tadjbakhsh andChenoy 2007; Jolly and Basu Ray 2007;Kaldor 2007).

3 State fragility, state-building and stabili-sation are the focus of a substantial offi-cial literature; (OECD 2009; DFID 2010).

For an excellent critique and analysis ofthe implications for development andhumanitarian policy see; (Collinson, El-hawary and Muggah 2010).

4 The US Army/Marine Corps (2009) Coun-terinsurgency Field Manual remains themost authoritative official statement.

5 There is of course an entire academic sub-field of critical security studies, referred tolater in this paper. But it has had little im-pact on mainstream research, still less on

policy discussion. The Security in Transi-tion research programme at the LSE is ex-amining the discourses and policy papersof powerful international actors to un-derstand what it terms the security gap.http://www.securityintransition.org/[Last accessed 17 August 2013]

6 These receive some discussion in theWDR 2011 but are neither confrontedhead on nor linked to its main policy con-

clusions and recommendations. 7 Both Ogata and Sen (2004) and Tad-

jbakhsh and Chenoy (2007) build human
http://www.securityintransition.org/http://www.securityintransition.org/


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capabilities into their analyses, but donot relate them to security governance.

8 The essentially contested nature of secu-rity was highlighted by Buzan (1983). Seealso; (Smith 2005; Luckham 2007, 2009).

9 This definition is distinct from but con-sistent with realist accounts of interna-tional relations. It draws from analysesof the making, unmaking and remakingof political orders and states; (Hunting-ton 2006; Tilly 1985, 1990; Bates 2010;North, Wallis and Weingast 2009).

10 Edward Said quoted by Nadine Gordimer(2011).

11 This definition draws heavily upon Sen

(1981, 1999). See also endnote 2 above.Nevertheless we emphasise the contestedand contextually contingent nature ofentitlements.

12 See also the sources in endnote 8. 13 See the sources in endnote 2. 14 de Sardan (2009), Researching the Prac-

tical Norms of Real Governance in Africacontrasts real governance how statesare really managed, public policies actu-

ally implemented and public goods actu-ally delivered to the normative ideals ofgood governance promoted by develop-ment agencies.

15 See Foucaults (1980) Two Lectures andTruth and Power where he argues thatpower is diffused through multiple sitesrather than hierarchically concentrated,enacted rather than possessed and dis-cursively constituted through regimes oftruth rather than purely coercive.

16 Tillys famous notion of state formationas organised crime portrays violence asa tool for populations to hold abusiveauthorities to account and drive a slow,locally embedded process of political cen-tralisation. See: Tilly (1985).

17 The accusation of privileging violentforms of social ordering simply does notapply to influential formulations of hy-bridity, such as Boege et al (2009) which

focuses, for instance, on the activitiesof clan elders etc. in building peace anddemocratic governance in Somaliland

contrasting them with the more unre-sponsive methods of international peace-builders in countries like Timor-Leste.

18 For recent discussions of local legitimacythat acknowledge its diverse sources see

the Journal of Intervention and State-building, 7 (1) (2013), special issue onPeacebuilding, Statebuilding and LocalLegitimacy.

19 These metaphors have political and ana-lytical ramifications. Webs implies thatsecurity is co-constructed at the global,national and local levels. Chains impliesthat social actors are imprisoned withincoercive global, national and local rela-

tionships - although some economistsuse the term value chains to analyse theinternational division of labour.

20 Since the genocide Rwanda has re-estab-lished its credentials as an effective de-velopmental state, despite

the two faces of security in hybrid political orders: a framework for analysis and research by robin...

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