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Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security Sectors: Survey Evidence from Liberia on Female Ratio Balancing Reforms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2017

Sabrina Karim
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Abstract

Civilian confidence in domestic institutions, particularly in the security sector, is important for stability and state consolidation in post-conflict countries, where third-party peacekeepers have helped maintain peace and security after a conflict. While other scholars have suggested that a strong security sector is necessary for mitigating the credible commitment problem, this article provides two alternative criteria for assessing security sector reforms’ effect on confidence in the security sector: restraint and inclusiveness. Female ratio balancing in the security sector meets these two criteria, suggesting that it has the potential to help enhance confidence in the security sector and thereby create the right conditions for the peacekeeping transition. The argument is tested using original surveys conducted in post-conflict, ex-combatant communities in Liberia. The expectations received empirical support. The findings indicate that restraining and inclusive reforms could improve trust in the state’s security sector. They also demonstrate the importance of considering gender in theories related to post-conflict peace building and international relations more broadly.

Keywords

security sector reformpeacekeepinggenderex-combatantsstate buildingLiberia
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 799 - 821
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

Government Department, Cornell University (email: smk349@cornell.edu). I would like to thank the enumerators from the Center for Applied Research and Training, especially Kou Gbaintor-Johnson. I would also like to thank Rufus Zerlee and Nelly Cooper for giving us permission to work in the communities. I would like to thank Kyle Beardsley, Dan Reiter, Pamela Scully, Laura Sjoberg, Amelia Hoover-Green, Rose McDermott, Monica Toft, Brandon Prins, Ismene Gizelis, and Louise Olsson, and members of the Folke Bernadotte Academy UNSC 1325 Working Group for their useful comments on drafts of the article. Support for this research was provided by the British Research Council through a grant with Ismene Gizelis. Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: doi:10.7910/DVN/R3DJI6 and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123417000035.

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