New book explores the limits of security sector reform in Sierra Leone

The new book explains how security is organized from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone, and how external actors attempted to shape the field through security sector reform. Peter Albrecht writes on the basis of more than a decade of work in Sierra Leone, both as an academic researcher and as an adviser.

Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone.

'This is a very innovative and important book based on more than a decade of detailed empirical research...'
Paul Jackson, University of Birmingham, UK

Theoretically, the book critiques how the notion of hybridity is applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions.

The book is the first to elevate the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea.

REVIEWS

'This sophisticated, perceptive and challenging account provides important insights into the hybrid nature of authority and order in Africa. Albrecht's first-hand research on local chiefs and police officers reminds us of what to expect when external resources are injected into state spaces. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the realities of security sector reform.'
Alice Hills, Durham University,UK

'Peter Albrecht has over the past ten years or so developed hybridization into a highly important concept. In this book he connects urban and rural political landscapes, northern state making processes with local chiefs, and history with the contemporary in postwar Sierra Leone. Not only does he make sense of a complex case, but simultaneously he elegantly criticizes and develops theories and concepts of contemporary political science, IR and development studies. That is quite a feat.'
Mats Utas, Uppsala University, Sweden

'This is a very innovative and important book based on more than a decade of detailed empirical research. It details how well-meaning international programmes and advisers failed to fully understand the nature of local politics in Sierra Leone and the nature of power. This book comprehensively analyses the nature of power at the level of the Chiefdom and how the politics of the local affected the implementation of security and policing reforms and access to justice for people in Sierra Leone. Incorporating extensive research at international, national and local levels with significant experience on the ground, this book is an excellent guide to the complexity of relationships between international security programming and local outcomes.'
Paul Jackson, University of Birmingham, UK

'This book explores the interface between the local and security reformers. It demonstrates how external security packages shaped and were shaped by Sierra Leone’s chiefs. As Albrecht emphatically shows, interventions into little understood complex social systems have unintended consequences. New resources produce another melding of customary and state authority in the perpetual process of hybridization. Let would-be reformers learn that the local cannot be ignored or fully captured.'
Bruce Baker,Coventry University, UK

'Applying hybridization as an analytical lens, this book provides useful empirical insights into the provision of peace, security and justice in Sierra Leone. A welcome addition to understanding postwar Sierra Leone and a resource for policymakers and students alike.'
Kwesi Aning, The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Accra, Ghana