Following state-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK has increasingly eschewed large-scale intervention in favour of local proxy forces. Whilst this strategy might appeal to the war-weary and cash strapped interventionist, frequent use of military capacity building as a tool of foreign policy inevitably raises questions about the accountability of those local forces being trained. This thesis examines the exportation of Western concepts of civil-military relations into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), carried out by the British-led International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) during intervention and post-conflict stabilisation in Sierra Leone. It argues that external interventionists can reshape local military culture, to promote both democratic civil-military norms and professional military effectiveness, but only through extensive institutional change. In Sierra Leone, IMATT attempted to change the organisational culture of the RSLAF by reforming its institutional mechanisms for socialisation, training, education and promotion. By inculcating a new normative ethos in a cohort of junior RSLAF officers, IMATT sought to promulgate cultural change throughout the military via a structured process of intra-service competition and generational replacement. This novel blend of internal and external processes of military change challenges existing scholarship on military innovation and adaptation, advancing our understanding of the relationship between military culture, military change, and external intervention. However, this process of institutional redevelopment and cultural change in the RSLAF proved to be both heavily contested and deeply political, ultimately leading to partial results. Consequently, IMATT’s experience of RSLAF reform holds important implications for the study of civil-military relations and security sector reform, and with it, the conduct of contemporary military capacity building and liberal intervention.

This dissertation provides an in-depth study of police transformation in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It draws upon interviews with police, NGO workers, politicians and international practitioners, and employs a comparative-historical approach. Contra to democratic policing approaches, advocating the diffusion of police power and implementation of police reform concurrently with wider democratisation, reform was relatively successful in Georgia after the 2003 Rose Revolution because of state-building. The new government monopolised executive power, fired many police, recruited new personnel, raised police salaries and clamped down on organised crime and corruption. Success also depended on the elite's political will and their appeal to Georgian nationalism. Prioritisation of state-building over democratisation limited the reform's success, however. The new police are politicised and have served elites' private interests. Reform has failed in Kyrgyzstan because of a lack of state-building. Regional, clan and other identities are stronger than Kyrgyz nationalism. This has hindered the formation of an elite with capacity to implement reform. The state has limited control over the police, who remain corrupt and involved in organised crime. State-building has not precipitated police reform in Russia because of the absence of political will. The ruling cohort lacks a vision of reform and relies on corruption to balance the interests of political factions. The contrasting patterns of police reform have a number of implications for democratic police reform in transitioning countries: First, reform depends on political will. Second, institutionalising the police before democratising them may be a more effective means of acquiring the capacity to implement reform. Third, such an approach is likely to require some sort of common bond such as nationalism to legitimate it. Fourth, ignoring democratisation after institutionalisation is risky as reformers can misuse their power for private interests.

Depuis les années 2000, la Réforme du secteur de la sécurité fait partie des politiques publiques internationales préconisées par la Communauté internationale pour permettre la gestion de crise de l’Etat et la transition de la guerre à la paix. Faisant suite à l’échec de l’aide au développement, qui a insisté sur l’absence d’appropriation locale comme la cause fondamentale, la communauté internationale fait appel à une véritable appropriation locale de la réforme du secteur de la sécurité. L’étude se propose d’analyser l’opérationnalisation de cette notion d’appropriation locale dans le contexte de la Réforme du secteur de la sécurité au Burundi. Cette thèse se pose la question de savoir pourquoi les acteurs internationaux en sont arrivés à poser l’appropriation locale comme une condition de la réforme du secteur de la sécurité. L’analyse est basée sur trois indicateurs :la conviction des acteurs locaux, la formulation et la mise en œuvre des réformes, et la coordination des acteurs et des activités de réforme ;et se focalise sur les données empiriques recueillies au sujet du processus de la réforme de la police nationale du Burundi. L’étude montre que l’appropriation locale est une stratégie mobilisée par les acteurs internationaux pour banaliser leurs interventions et transférer leurs modèles de réforme en s’appuyant sur les intentionnalités de responsabilité et de souveraineté des acteurs locaux que véhicule cette notion. Cette étude conclut que dans le contexte de la crise de l’Etat, la notion d’appropriation locale est un discours qui affermit l’interventionnisme international en donnant l’illusion d’accorder plus de place aux acteurs locaux dans la conduite des réformes. <p>//<p>Since the 2000s, Security Sector Reform is one of the international public policies advocated by the International community in order to deal with the state crisis and the transition from war to peace. Due to the failure of development aid which emphasized the lack of local ownership as its root cause, the International community calls for a genuine local ownership of the Security Sector Reform. This study analyses the operationalization of the concept of local ownership in the context of the Security sector reform in Burundi. This thesis raises the question of why international actors have come to consider local ownership as a condition of Security sector reform. The analysis is based on three indicators: the conviction of local actors, the formulation and implementation of reforms, and the coordination of actors and reform activities, and is focused on empirical data about the Burundi National police reform process. The study shows that local ownership is a strategy mobilized by international actors to both trivialize their interventions and transfer their reform models while the genuine intentionality of the notion is one of responsibility and sovereignty of local actors. This study concludes that in the context of the crisis of the state, local ownership notion is a discourse that strengthens the international interventionism in giving the illusion of more space given to local actors in the implementation of reforms.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished