Introduction: Security Arrangements in Fragile States

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Introduction: Security Arrangements in Fragile States Finn Stepputat, Louise Andersen, and Bjørn Møller

State Fragility as a Policy Concern Since the end of the cold war, security and development have been reinterpreted and the boundaries between them increasingly blurred. Development agencies—who used to shun violent conflicts—are now actively engaged in conflict prevention and conflict transformation, while their colleagues from defense and foreign policy have taken a much broader interest in parts of the world that previously rarely appeared on their radars. This merger between security and development remains contested and incomplete. Yet, an unusual consensus has evolved on a common agenda of promoting democracy, good governance, and human rights in pursuit of “their” development and “our” security (Duffield 2001; Beall et al. 2006). To some extent this departs with the state-centric perceptions of both security and development that dominated during the cold war. The introduction of “human security,” “human development,” and sovereignty as the “responsibility to protect” has shifted focus toward a more people-centered approach. In the current policy framework, neither of these concepts is, however, presented as adverse to state security and state interests. On the contrary, they are seen to be mutually reinforcing in the long run: A stable and effective state is a precondition for human development and human security; and a state which fails to provide development and security to its citizens is neither strong nor stable. It is fragile. Throughout the 1990s, the nexus between development and security was primarily developed in terms of peacebuilding. In recent years, the term “state- building” has been gaining ground. To a large extent the


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F. STEPPUTAT, L. ANDERSEN, AND B. MØLLER

objective remains the same: to assist war-torn countries escape the scourge of violent conflict and achieve lasting peace and sustainable development. The shift toward state-building discourse, however, highlights that the establishment of efficient and legitimate national institutions are increasingly seen as pivotal. To overcome problems of violent conflict and poverty, societies need to build a state that is capable and responsive as well as effective and just. The same emphasis on institutional capacity is found in the so-called aid effectiveness school which has inspired a drastic reorientation of aid toward the “good performers.” The obvious flip side of this policy is the tendency to ignore those performing poorly—that is, countries that lacked the institutional capacity and/or political will to pursue pro-poor policies. Since the 1990s, donor funds have increasingly been diverted toward strong and stable states, where most development was achieved per aid-dollar (Levin and Dollar 2005). Inadvertently, this practice has run counter to the peacebuilding objectives of preventing violent conflict and restoring war-torn societies. Indicators of weak capacity and repressive policies could have served as early warnings and signaled the initiation of large-scale preventive measures. In most cases, however, they have done the exact opposite and signaled the retraction of foreign aid. The current policy focus on fragile states is formulated as an explicit attempt to remedy this practice (USAID 2005; DFID 2005). Perhaps, the most innovative element in the attempt to approach fragile states differently is to emphasize the need for a highly focused reform agenda. This contrasts sharply with the comprehensive, holistic, and multidimensional development strategies of the 1990s. Instead of addressing all areas in need of change, donors now claim that emphasis should be on “improving governance and capacity in the most basic security, justice, economic and social service delivery functions” (OECD 2005a: 1). This brings the security institutions of the state to the fore of international involvement in fragile states. Since the 1990s, a standard formula for peacebuilding and state building has emerged from the growing number of international interventions in war-torn countries (Chesterman 2004; Paris 2004). The formula includes the deployment of an international peace mission (often consisting of many soldiers and few police officers) alongside the launching of massive political and economic reforms, aimed at promoting democracy, market economy, and good governance. Within this overall agenda, the policy template for transforming the security institutions in a conflict-ridden country remains sketchy. The numerous guidelines and policies on security sector reform (SSR) aim primarily at reforming a security apparatus that is too strong, too effective—not at transforming one that is fragile and fragmented


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as is the case in most war-torn states (see, e.g., OECD 2005b). In the absence of specific guidelines, most SSR efforts in fragile states have thus focused broadly on the dual task of (re)establishing a Weberian monopoly on violence and installing good governance safeguards to prevent the state from abusing this monopoly. Whether this is the only possible—or indeed the most appropriate approach—is explored throughout this book. Aim and Structure of the Book This volume aims at taking a fresh analytical look at the problems, forms, and dynamics of security provision in areas where formal state institutions have no or limited presence. Whether such areas are referred to as failed, weak or fragile states, or as difficult partnerships or low-income countries under stress—as Western donors tend to do—or whether one prefers to use more fashionable analytical metaphors as those currently emerging from certain quarters of the social sciences—global borderlands, frontiers, and zones of exception—we are essentially dealing with the contested limits of state control over territory and population. Geographically, this phenomenon is found in large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, including Somali East Africa, most of western Africa and the Great Lakes region. It is, however, also at work in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Latin America as well as in many metropolitan areas—not least megacities such as Sao Paolo, Mumbai, or Johannesburg. By default as it were, these zones constitute laboratories for the political strategizing and analysis of state building. And by virtue of the real life alternatives to state authority and state legitimacy they present, they force us to rethink and explore the limits of the normative state model that is underpinning most of the current discussion about order and disorder in the global system. This volume on security—and insecurity—in fragile states thus seeks to ●

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identify different kinds of institutions and arrangements for the provision of security analyze relationships (of cooperation, conflict, or indifference) between different sets of security institutions and arrangements, including current attempts at reforming the security sector in so-called fragile states scrutinize underlying assumptions and blind spots of these attempts, and outline possible scenarios, political choices and the implications these choices may have.

Looking at state-building projects in the colonial and postcolonial world they may be located somewhere between direct and indirect rule in regard


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to the ways in which relations are organized between state institutions and nonstate entities that dispense justice or command some measure of control over means of force in fragile states.1 The distinguishing feature between the two forms is whether the aim is to create uniform conditions and standards within a territory and population under direct state responsibility or whether some kind of accommodation is foreseen between state institutions and nonstate authority under the sovereignty of the state. Whereas direct rule requires that nonstate providers of justice and security are eliminated or brought under state control, indirect rule is based on some kind of screening, control, and recognition of de facto authorities with the acceptance of different standards and conditions for different segments of the population. In other words, recognizing the limitations of state institutions and “making do” with some of the existing, plural systems. Indirect rule has rarely been formally institutionalized in postcolonial states, and particularly not in the security sector, but if we look upon how different security arrangements develop in practice it may be appropriate to talk about forms of “indirect government.” Or, as Ken Menkhaus suggests in his contribution to this volume, we may use the notion of “mediated state” to conceptualize an arrangement in which the state desires to promote—if only indirectly—order, stability, and rule of law, without being able to project its authority into peripheral areas. In the remainder of this introduction we will take a look at the idealtype state and security sector which runs through security sector reforms, present a brief view of actually existing states and security sectors, sketch out current attempts at reforming security sectors, and discuss the possibilities of “making do” with existing systems and providers of security in zones of limited state control. Finally we will discuss the analytical and political challenges lying ahead of us. Along the way we will briefly introduce the chapters of the book. Fragile Statehood To make sense of the discussion of state fragility, weakness, or outright failure and collapse, one must begin with the normative ontology of the sovereign, territorial state which dominate theories of international politics and which have developed alongside the actual formation of modern states. In particular in the West, populations have come to regard states as something natural—as indispensable companions of society. If approached as a set of institutions, the state is, however, a relatively new phenomenon. The modern state model only dates back to sixteenth century Europe and it was not until the twentieth century that this idea of Western imagination became the globalized idea of how political order was supposed to look. Colonialism was


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only delegitimized as a form of government in the decades following World War II and—as van Creveld shows in his contribution—the ideas and mechanisms of state sovereignty took centuries to develop in Europe. When viewed against this, it is less surprising that much younger states are still struggling to define and identify their statehood vis-à-vis other social institutions and actors. In keeping with Hobbes’ description of the state as the great Leviathan, domestic peace and defense against external aggression are regarded as the quintessence of what modern states do (1968). A Hobbesian Leviathan is essentially charged with protecting the state and citizens against other states and with ensuring that its citizens can escape the raw anarchy where all are fighting all and where human life is “solitary, poor, brutish, nasty, and short.” Both functions demand a force superior to what others may have at their disposal, and indeed historical sociology demonstrates how the modern state evolved through a dual-sided process of internal “pacification” and external “warfare” (Giddens 1985; Tilly 1985, 1990; Mann 1988). It was through this lengthy and bloody period of state formation, that the European states increasingly monopolized the means of violence and established themselves as legitimate providers of protection and security. And it is this capacity for brute force that still represents the dark and essential underside of state sovereignty. The rise of the modern state and its monopoly of the means of violence gave rise to what van Creveld has termed “trinitarian warfare” (1991, this volume). It is based on the trinity of government-people-army and maintains (in theory) clear divisions between the armed forces whose task is to fight and die, the government whose task is to direct, and the civilian population whose task is to pay and suffer. Under this system, a sharp distinction is upheld between internal and external war and thus between the state’s inward-looking security apparatus—the police—and its outwardlooking armed forces—the military. Whether acting as enforcers of the law or as defenders of the nation, the means of violence are supposed to be controlled by the government, which in turn is supposed to be representing or acting on behalf of the population. This is—in essence—the modern state model, which is so deeply engrained in the social sciences that it often remains implicit, unspoken, and thus unquestioned. According to most political scientists, the central distinguishing feature of the modern state is its sovereignty. This implies that the state is recognized— by other states—as the supreme authority within its geographically defined domain. Within the confines of its territorial borders, the state is supposed to be in charge of “the authoritative allocation of values for a society”—as the classical definition of politics holds (Easton 1953: 129). Central dimensions of this value allocation include its administrative capacity, its legitimacy, and


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the extent to which it enjoys the legendary “monopoly on the legitimate means of violence” as formulated by Weber (1958: 78). These three dimensions are closely intertwined. One cannot operate separately of the other and a crisis in one dimension is thus bound to impact the other two dimensions. The state’s administrative capacity as well as its ability to uphold a monopoly of violence are thus closely linked to its capacity to raise revenues from society, which in turn is linked to its legitimacy in the eyes of the population, which in turn is linked to the state’s capacity to provide services for which it needs both administrative capacity and a monopoly of violence. This is the basic circular triangulation that modern states are supposed to square. And it is against this benchmark that postcolonial states are currently being measured to determine how fragile they are. In many countries, some elements of state sovereignty have, however, always been more of a myth than a reality. In the wake of independence, sovereignty has primarily sustained the state’s international recognition and protected regimes against foreign intervention. It has not been an expression of effective authority over population and territory, as Jackson (1990), Clapham (1996), Krasner (1999), and others have argued. Most of these states are built on the structures of colonial regimes that being appendages to European complexes of power, neither focused on building effective internal sovereignty nor on embedding the state in society (Young 1994; Ayoob 1995). Colonial masters never aimed at governing their colonial subjects with the same intensity and uniformity as they applied toward their own populations, nor did they—in general—cultivate the creation or consent of national identities. In vast areas, colonial governments relied heavily on indirect rule through appointed chiefs and co-opted community leaders, as well as on spectacles and demonstrative, arbitrary, and excessive violence. Often this tied into efforts at asserting ideas of racial and civilizational superiority. It was thus a widespread convention that more resolute and violent policing was necessary to keep colonial subjects in place than otherwise would be the case (Chandavarkar 1998). In particular in Africa, the brutality, scale, and systematic nature of colonial violence surpassed that which was dispensed in earlier forms of power. Postcolonial forms of authority were from the outset partial, fragmented, and unsettled. New, political leaders and movements sought to create nation-peoples that would legitimize the regimes, but the kind of citizenship promoted put more emphasis on displays of patriotic loyalty and civility than on substantial rights. The state was, as Mamdani (1996) has argued, deeply bifurcated between rural and urban forms of governance. In particular in Africa, the vastness of territories and the scarcity of population represented barriers to state building and to the projection of power beyond the urban areas (Herbst 2000). The monopoly of violence


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was incomplete at best and often, for practical purposes, left in the hands of chiefs, community leaders, and others. The new states inherited colonial governmental practices that were characterized by summary governance at a distance, heavy-handed and militarized forms of population control, and a profound lack of independent judiciaries, in short several of the markers of weakness and fragility in today’s discourses on statehood. As Menkhaus (this volume) emphasizes in his analysis of Somali East Africa—an area that spans several international borders—Somali people have mostly experienced states as arbitrary predators rather than as legitimate centers of authority. In addition, many states’ legitimacy have suffered from the arbitrariness of the (colonial) borders that entrapped ethnic groups in marginal positions within multicultural states, divided them between different states, or indeed both (Holsti 1996). State sovereignty was thus fragmented and incomplete in many areas even in the early days of independence when hopes were high of the nation-state as a driver of development and security. As it turned out, many postcolonial leaders gradually became more interested in redistributing wealth to themselves and their cronies than in creating growth and wealth for the nation at large, and they used the state apparatus primarily as a mechanism to stay in power. It was never allowed to develop into an effective bureaucracy and an independent societal power base (Chabal and Daloz 1999). The introduction of neoliberal reforms and the end of the cold war further undermined the capacity of these regimes to effectively control the territories, gain legitimacy through service delivery, and uphold patronage networks and alliances through strategic redistribution of state resources. Decentralization, liberalization, and privatization— although aimed at freeing resources and social dynamic for development—often led to further fragmentation and the undermining of the state as a prime locus for resource allocation. And with this the last hope vested in the state as a guarantee of social order often dwindled. Some states, in particular in Africa, were effectively parceled out to military and political elites (Bayart et al. 1999) or dissolved in fiefdoms of local bureaucrats or police officers. In extreme cases, the state ceased to be a factor in everyday life and raw might—often linked to ideas of ethnic identity— emerged as the ultimate basis of legitimacy (Zartman 1994). The security sector is no exception to the pattern of change. No longer propped up by the superpowers, regimes of the central state in Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Zaire, and elsewhere were unable to defend themselves against contending armed groups that could take advantage of the increasingly accessible market for cheap weapons following the end of the cold war. National armies crumbled and were in some cases taken over by ethnic, religious, and regional interests as it happened in Afghanistan and Zaire,


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while the new warlords funded armies through control of valuable resources, trade routes, or other privatized sources. Religious, ethnic, and local communities have developed militia or vigilante structures and so have businessmen, market organizations, and private firms, including multinationals with mining concessions that manage private security forces and govern large areas and populations in a form of “private indirect government” (Mbembe 2001). The privatized control with resources and security—combined with the deterioration and active downsizing of central state institutions—has increased the possibilities of forging alternative, nonstate loci of authority. For the international community, such areas have emerged as “fragile” or “failed states” that represent serious problems for the fulfillment of both security and development objectives. As a side remark it is curious to note that, some analyses of the EU point to a similar diffusion of sovereignty within the EU and refer to the EU in terms of “multi-level governance”— albeit without the alarming connotations of state failure (Marks et al. 1996). Louise Andersen (chapter 2) identifies and discusses four different approaches to the question of failed and fragile states. Three of these— “peacebuilding,” “liberal imperialism,” and “realism”—differ substantially in their recommendations, yet share the analytical point of departure in the normative, ideal-type based distinctions between the state, the market, the nongovernmental, and the illegal. However, the fourth approach, “critical analysis,” argues that these domains are interdependent, and that the actual functions and forms of institutions in the different domains tend to overlap, interlink, and morph in ways that defy categorization and analysis according to ideal types. This implies, we would argue, that for analytical purposes we have to look at the dynamics of specific institutions, practices, and processes of security provision. What kind of systems and arrangements are being constructed? And in which ways—if at all—is the provision of security bound into social relations of accountability to clients, users, communities, politicians, state institutions, religious groups and authorities, NGOs, or private firms? Such questions are dealt with in parts II and III of this volume. Part II explores the various forms of security provision that are found where state institutions have a limited role, whereas part III deals with the recent attempts at reforming security sectors in such areas, in particular in the wake of armed conflicts. Fragile Security The chapters that form the main, empirical body of this volume share three points of departure, which set them apart from many other analyses of security and security sector reform.


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First, the distinction between state and nonstate, so fundamental to political and social science, does not necessarily correspond to the concrete empirical relations that are revealed through closer scrutiny. Rather, the boundary is blurred, state/nonstate relations are messy, and—as Baker demonstrates in his contribution—a whole range of “security providers” that defy simple classifications as either state or nonstate entities can be identified. Second, international state builders are often either blind to or prejudiced against the actually existing but informal systems of governance and security. Even though they may be critical to states in their current form, policy makers, analysts, and practitioners in the international community tend to regard state institutions as inherent providers of order and security, while nonstate entities are perceived as sources of instability, disorder, and insecurity. However, this normative distinction can distort the entire analysis, not least in the context of fragile states. Third, it is emphasized that protection and security are essentially double-edged swords. Regardless of where they might be placed on a state/nonstate continuum, security providers always have the capacity to threaten those they allegedly should be protecting. Similarly, actors who started out as repressive predators may eventually end up providing security and protection on a grand scale to communities they initially preyed on. This, according to Tilly, was how states were formed, implying that states are basically very large and legitimized protection racket schemes (1985). This duality of force is clearly illustrated in Reno’s analysis of West African militias, Menkhaus’ exploration of local security systems in Somali East Africa, Baker’s overview of nonstate security providers, and Stepputat’s account of twentieth century military establishments in Latin America. From different angles these studies show that whether or not a particular institution or actor is (primarily) a source of security or insecurity to a given community depends on the concrete context and circumstances—not on whether it is a state or a nonstate entity. Those who control the means of violence are always Janus-faced. Considering this fundamental ambiguity, the commonly used notion of “security providers” can be slightly misleading. Whereas this concept cuts across the state/nonstate divide, it might be more appropriate to use a concept such as “dispensers of force” which takes into account that we are dealing with institutions and actors that have the potential to be—often are—sources of sources of security as well as insecurity. Security beyond the State The current policy emphasis on state fragility and failure has the merit of forcing us to analyze the actually existing security structures. In fragile states


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it is painstakingly clear that the Weberian state does not apply as a descriptive model. It is—at best and if anything at all—a normative model for how one might prefer things to look. It is, however, a model that it appears to be extremely difficult to construct and sustain. In fragile states, the range of different dispensers of force is vast. It comprises everything from vigilante groups, community defenses, local strongmen, and youth gangs, through militias and paramilitaries, to private security firms, and military companies, to use some of the common labels. The whole field is in much need of empirical, conceptual, and theoretical studies that can improve our understanding of the current dynamics of security, state fragility, and international intervention. The four chapters in part II, each in their own way, offer valuable contributions in this regard. Van Creveld’s sweeping account of the organization of violence provides interesting historical parallels to several of the forms (re-)surfacing today—in particular the sodalities and the mercenaries that never entirely disappeared from the arenas of violence. In his historical perspective, the conscripted army and the Trinitarian system seems an exception from a long history of other forms of organization and van Creveld offers suggestions as to how different dispensers of force may be analyzed in terms of funding, discipline, technology, relations to society, and the kind of war and conflict that the different organizations have been able to engage in. His chapter does, however, also raise the somewhat overlooked two points; first, that the privatization of security is not a phenomenon isolated to poorer parts of the world and second, that western states themselves are being transformed in the meeting with alternative forms of organized violence. Jumping from the grand sweep of history to present-day Somali East Africa, Menkhaus provides an overview of the sources of insecurity and the informal and hybrid security arrangements that have developed there in the wake of the disastrous years in the early 1990s. He characterizes these complexes as patchy, illiberal, unstable, and short-lived—because they depend on shifting alliances—but nevertheless underlines that they have improved the security situation for the Somalis. The question is whether these forms of security can serve as building blocks for more durable and comprehensive forms of security, or whether they will block attempts at forging a state. The same question is raised, as Reno takes us into the analysis of the political economies that forge the context of violence and policing in the state/nonstate borderland of West Africa. In his analysis of the different contexts and dynamics of predatory and protective militias, he identifies patronage as overridingly important in shaping the social contexts of violence. Furthermore he describes how the specific form of patronage (in terms of distance, dependence, and function) has been decisive for whether militias have become protective or predatory


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vis-à-vis subject populations. Militias are likely to become protective when they depend on the subject population for resources, but they may simultaneously be predatory vis-à-vis other, neighboring populations. In this regard Reno provides a historical backdrop to Baker’s analysis of nonstate policing, as he gives examples of how authoritarian postcolonial governments in West Africa contributed to the generation of militias that kept opposition at bay by violent means, but also turned against governments at other occasions. In his chapter, Baker analyzes the rich diversity of institutionalized forms of operation and cooperation in the state/nonstate borderland. He shows us the limits of state policing as customarily conceived; the vibrancy of varying nonstate forms of force—their legitimacy, effectiveness, and so on—and not least the actual ways in which these two forms of force merge and form partnerships. And in doing so, he drives home the point that the state/nonstate distinction must give way to a more fine-grained analysis of the field of everyday security. Reform and Insecurity As noted above, the paradigmatic distinctions between state and society, civil and military and police and military are breaking down—especially but not only in fragile states. Yet, or perhaps for this very reason, they are at the heart of ongoing international attempts at reforming security arrangements in these territories of limited state control—the fragile states in the global borderlands. The three chapters in this part of the book provide diverse accounts of how such attempts have fared at improving the security of both citizens and states in Africa, Latin America, and Afghanistan. A central message emerging from these studies is that the current policy concepts and guidelines for Security Sector Reform (SSR) fail to take into account the diversity and plurality found in different contexts. Security Sector Reform is a relatively new field of intervention, and the policies, instruments, and concepts for it are evolving and are still contested, partly because of the inherent difficulty in defining what the security sector is. Initially SSR policies focused narrowly on what was considered the core security institutions of the state, most notably the army and the police. Gradually, however, the definition was broadened to include the judiciary and other institutions that contribute to law enforcement and oversight, including parliaments and civil society. Currently, the security sector is being described as encompassing basically all the institutions and actors that affect the security and insecurity of both people and state, including informal and nonstate structures (OECD 2005b). SSR is thus not just a matter of professionalizing and rightsizing army and police forces. The ambitions are much higher. The overall aim according to donor guidelines


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is to increase “the ability of partner countries to meet the range of security needs within their societies in a manner consistent with democratic norms and sound principles of governance and the rule of law” (OECD 2005b: 11). The objective is thus twofold: to generate effective state-controlled mechanisms for the provision of state and human security, and to ensure that these mechanisms are controlled and held accountable through civilian oversight mechanisms. In the context of fragile war-torn states, this tends to be translated into attempts at (re)establishing state monopoly on the legitimate use of force while simultaneously installing governance safeguards to curb the state’s ability to abuse this monopoly. Despite the policy emphasis placed on ensuring civilian oversight and democratic governance, donor programs have tended to focus on the shortterm measures that are perceived to be necessary to stabilize the security environment. Longer-term structural objectives of building more accountable security institutions have tended to be somewhat neglected (Hendrickson 2005). This is what Sedra in his chapter has called “the securitization of security reform.” SSR programs in postconflict peacebuilding operations typically focus on (1) dismantling irregular militias that compete with the state and (2) reforming the state’s security forces, most notably the army and the police. This is fully in accordance with the recently formulated principles for how to work in fragile states (OECD 2005a) and the advocacy for a highly focused reform agenda. It is, however, not consistent with the growing policy awareness that, first, the security sector consists of a plurality of actors and, second, that each situation is unique and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Reforms of the security sector are, nevertheless, often seen as the sine qua non for the achievement of wider peace- and state-building objectives in fragile states. This is also the case in Afghanistan today. In his contribution, Sedra portrays how the Afghan security sector has been thrust to the forefront of the state-building project and is now seen as “the indispensable foundation upon which all other facets of the reconstruction efforts depend.” His projection—which is echoed in similar exercises around the globe—is that the Afghan SSR program will not meet the high expectations with which it was conceived, because it relies too much on “off-theshelf ” solutions that reflect neither Afghan history and context, nor the dynamic linkages between formal and informal security structures. While Sedra explores how army and police reforms do (not) contribute to state building in Afghanistan, Cawthra and Møller analyze how some states have tried to dismantle rival armed groups by integrating them into the national army following the end of a civil war. It appears that the manner in which the civil war ended and the type of military transformation that followed significantly affect a war-torn state’s prospects for overcoming its fragility. Comparing six very different attempts at combining


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DDR programs (demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration) with power-sharing arrangements that allow for the integration of former enemies into unified national armies, it seems—perhaps ironically—that the most successful integration was achieved, where the international community was least involved: in South Africa. Undoubtedly South African exceptionalism provides part of the explanation to this. More generally, a lesson to be learnt—again and again apparently—is that reforms are unlikely to produce the expected results and to be sustained, if they are not supported by significant groups in society. The Democratic Republic of Congo case illustrates this as Cawthra and Møller report how—despite an ambitious international plan for creating one integrated military formation—many armed groupings have either not participated in the process or are still responding to orders from their factional political leadership. Parallel structures are upheld as a fallback position for leaders despite the formal appearance of an increasingly (albeit slowly) unified national army. While emphasis so far has been on some of the poorest countries in the world, it is increasingly clear that many middle-income countries are also experiencing severe crises of public security, not least in larger cities, as the 2006 revolt in Sao Paolo evidenced. As Stepputat shows in his contribution, the states in Latin America may not be failing in the common sense of the word, but they are definitely failing in the sense of providing public security for all their citizens. In the new model of security in Latin America (Kincaid 2001) three alternatives to the increasingly fragmented public security sector are emerging: militarization of the police, privatization of security in wealthier areas, and informalization of security in poorer neighborhoods where citizens organize themselves against common crime. Security has become a top political priority and the increasing securitization of everyday life reinforces the spatial and social segregation between well-policed wealthy areas and poor areas where informal or illicit security providers impose their own rules with little formal interference from state authorities—which is not to say that state representatives do not have influence. While not threatening the state as an institution in the medium term, this dynamic of “hidden state failure” with its hybrid coexistence of legitimate institutions and extralegal violence (Koonings and Kruijt 2004) has the potential to disrupt the democratic development in the continent.

Analytical and Political Challenges Millions and millions of people around the world live in areas where states are unable or unwilling to provide everyday security for their


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citizens. The perception of such areas as representing threats to the Global West has contributed to the elevation of fragile states to a prominent place on the international policy agenda. Following 9/11 it has become common wisdom to broadly equate failed states with “breeding grounds” or “safe havens” for international terrorism despite the limited empirical evidence to underpin such sweeping assertions (Patrick 2006). The focus of this volume, however, is not on the transnational threats that may or may not arise from failed and fragile states, but rather on the everyday security conditions for the people living in these states. The challenge and ambition of the volume are to develop the analysis further; to expand our understanding of the actually existing security arrangements found in these areas, and to contribute to the policy debates on the issue. The challenge of understanding has methodological, conceptual, and theoretical dimensions. First of all, given the difficult conditions of data collection, there is a dearth of studies in this field. Logistics, security conditions, as well as lack of infrastructure and trained researchers militate against comprehensive research projects. Consequently we know too little about the dynamics and forms of security, authority, and governance, which emerge and evolve in the absence of strong state structures. Poorly sustained ideas about how things might work risk being recycled in reports and papers to the point of becoming established truths on the subject. Conceptually we are also moving on relatively thin ice. As mentioned above, one of the ambitions of our group of authors has been to avoid preconceived notions of absolute state/nonstate distinctions. We have furthermore tried to avoid the risk of reproducing normative images of states as benign providers of security and nonstate entities as eternal sources of insecurity and disorder. But what if the usual categories of state/nonstate, private/public, formal/informal, order/anarchy are of limited use? As one strategy we have suggested is to be specific in the analysis and focus on particular institutions and related practices, such as mechanisms of accountability and constraint, sources of authorization and sponsoring, and so on. A different strategy is to identify concepts that capture the processes at work between (representatives of) formal state institutions and other entities constituting “hybrid security complexes” (Menkhaus this volume). “Indirect government” and the “mediated state” are relevant concepts to describe the negotiated relationship in areas where state institutions cannot project their power among the population. Theoretically the issue of failed and fragile states more generally challenges our understanding of politics, political community, and sovereignty


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in what may be a postnational era coming of age. As the chapters in this volume show, the alternative (“nonstate”) regulators and dispensers of force are often associated with the defense or consolidation of political or moral communities at different scales. Village or town communities, clans and lineages, sharia courts and other religious associations, ethnic groups, citystates, and business communities are examples of such entities in whose name violence or threats of violence are dispensed or regulated. Even though they are linked to far away patrons or commercial interests in capitals and metropolises through networks of funding, supply, and authorization, dispensers of force often operate on the basis of claims to a certain legitimacy and representation of shared identities. In order to imagine political means of engagement in these zones of overlapping sovereignties we need to generate theoretical thinking on the linkages between the use of violence and the constitution of political communities.2 The concluding chapter of this volume points to a number of issues and dilemmas of relevance for the development of policies for security reforms in failed and fragile states. The authors argue that a new and more realistic paradigm for security sector reform is needed for areas where the state is a “minority provider” of security. Due to the problems of human, financial, and institutional capacity, the current reforms do not stand much chance of succeeding without substantial, continued funding from elsewhere, and even then they suffer from problems of legitimacy among the population and thus long-term sustainability. A new paradigm would comprise a “multilayered approach” that incorporates measures to negotiate and regulate the practices of nonstate dispensers of force and justice in the short and medium term without discarding the strengthening of state capacities in the longer term. This multilayered approach would seem to be consistent with the current emphasis on “local ownership” of internationally supported and induced reforms, but its development in practice will be fraught with very difficult dilemmas. For one thing, the “local ownership” may not apply to national governments since they tend to insist on their sovereignty and formal monopoly of force; a certain legal plurality has proven to be something that can be negotiated with national governments, but the use of armed force is a different ball game. And second, as Menkhaus emphasizes, many nonstate security providers are inherently illiberal and unstable, which may constitute the major dilemma to solve. In this field there may be a need for technical and operational development, but first and last we are dealing with very difficult political choices, which, as Andersen reminds us, always come at a price for somebody.


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Notes 1. The concept and governmental design of indirect rule grew out of the discussions of statehood in the colonies which circulated in the first half of the twentieth century (Lugard 1922), but its legacy has influenced the ways in which systems of governance have developed in practical terms in the postcolonial states, even without indirect rule being installed in any formal way (for Africa see, Mamdani 1996). 2. The historical relationship between violence and the formation of political communities in the form of European nation-states has been thoroughly demonstrated by scholars such as Giddens (1985), Tilly (1985, 1990), and Mann (1988, 1993). However, how the relationship is working in the current era of globalization as well as in societies with historical backgrounds that differ sharply from the European is yet to be explored. The philosophy of Agamben (1998) provides one avenue for such explorations (see, eg., Hansen and Stepputat 2005).

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