The articles in this issue were originally presented at a Workshop held in The Hague on 28-29 April 2011. The Workshop was organised by HiiL, Warwick Law School and the Folke Bernadotte Academy (Sweden). Participants included academics and development practitioners who were invited to reflect upon the similarities and differences between rule of law promotion and security sector reform (SSR).

Despite increasing attention by donors to Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Rule of Law development (ROL), results have been mixed. This article explores conditions within recipient states that shape the outcome of these programs. Drawing from literature on state-building, I argue that the development of security and justice institutions reflects relations among political elites and citizens. Concentration of power by ruling elites as a result of a narrow political base or discretionary control over revenue undermines incentives for leaders to accept constraints on executive power. Regimes rooted in broad or fragmented coalitions without easy access to revenue are more likely to accept legal and institutional constraints. The outcome of rule of law development and security sector reform programs is largely determined by donors' impact on these conditions. I illustrate these dynamics in three post-conflict countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste, where donor-funded programs have yielded varying results.

In this article we discuss the integration of international security assistance and rule of law promotion within larger state-building projects. Going beyond the widespread claim that both approaches should be closely linked within overarching security sector reform (SSR) efforts, this article inquires more systematically into their relationship both at a conceptual level and at the level of state-building practices. It argues that the creation of effective security institutions cannot be easily reconciled with programmes that promote mechanisms of legitimate political control as one dimension of the rule of law. Rationales behind security and rule of law support diverge: the former aims to strengthen a state's enforcement capacities, while the latter seeks to restrict them. The case of security and rule of law support to the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank illustrates the tensions that can result. The article shows that in the Palestinian case, selectivity, fragmentation and timing issues have impeded the coherence of international assistance.

Over the last four decades, donor-driven justice reform efforts have largely followed two parallel paradigms: one primarily concerned with promoting development and economic growth, the other centered on state-building and the consolidation of peace in countries emerging from violent conflict. Operationally, however, these models face the same conundrum: they draw on a broad consensus that justice institutions are intrinsically and instrumentally important for development, and yet have a track record demonstrating that much remains to be learned. These paradigms have increasingly converged in recent years, as exemplified in the World Development Report 2011 (on conflict and security), providing a basis for rethinking approaches to justice reform in fragile and conflict-affected states. These approaches are based on an alternative theory of change, a long-term commitment to investing in research to understand the idiosyncrasies of local contexts, and a more nuanced approach to building locally legitimate justice institutions capable of mitigating the societal stresses that feed cycles of conflict.

This article argues for an integrated, political and pragmatic approach to justice and security development as one of the key objectives of effective international support to peace building and state building in conflict-affected and fragile states. Developments since the 1990s suggest that different actors and communities have started to work on the same issues from different angles and with – perceived – different mandates. As a result, important parts of the debate on how to deal with security system reform (SSR), justice reform and the rule of law seem somewhat stuck in conceptual arguments. This article suggests moving away from such debates and instead to focus on what such justice and security engagements are meant to achieve, for whom, and which general approaches are likely to provide most added value. It argues that results require political focus, long-term processes and need to be in tune with local elite interests – whilst pursuing the aim of gradually helping to improve delivery of justice and security as basic services for all, to appropriate local standards. External and domestic objectives require careful balancing, creative compromises and strong incentives. The article also outlines a number of recurrent challenges to effective programming and suggests some ideas for improvement to achieve better results and more value for money.

This article examines rule of law (ROL) and security sector reform (SSR) linkages in crisis management. In particular, the article looks into why international assistance providers chose to categorize a situation and ensuing response strategy as rule of law or SSR, how this categorization is motivated and explained to international and national partners and stakeholders, and how this categorization affects national laws, institutions and other arrangements in post-conflict and crisis societies. The article is borne out of an observation, based on events in the Arab Spring, that the character of international community responses to rule of law threats and challenges has as a strong focus on security. Rule of law promotion taking place in UN and EU missions has undergone a ‘securitization’ in how reforms are conceived and put into practice, compared with rule of law in development aid and past experiences of rule of law assistance in post-communist transitions.

Post-conflict governance poses particular challenges to governments and foreign assistance providers. We focus on the question of how – and whether – the rule of law is reconstituted in the wake of civil conflict. We find evidence that the state of the rule of law prior to and during a conflict substantially predicts the reconstitution of the rule of law post conflict. We further find that foreign intervention has a positive influence on the rule of law post conflict and that wars which end with a truth or settlement are associated with better rule of law post conflict than those resolved through victories by either government or rebel forces.

The ‘liberal peace agenda’ assumes that security sector reform (SSR) and the consolidation of the rule of law are both interdependent and complementary. Evidence from Colombia and Guatemala suggests, however, that in practice conflict resolution and peace-building strategies may prioritize attaining national security over the rule of law (Colombia) or taking measures to strengthen the rule of law only when faced with serious post-conflict insecurity affecting elites and the hollowing out of the state by organized crime and criminalized elite competitors (Guatemala). Peace-builders should therefore pay particular attention to strengthening justice systems and protecting fundamental rights of citizens and victims of state and non-state violence. Strategies to increase the state's security capacity and to reform the security sector should be synchronized with an overarching rule of law agenda. In violent settings where insecurity has many faces and cuts across the blurred lines between legality and illegality security remains elusive without a stronger rule of law.

Rule of law promotion and security sector reform (SSR) are expected to abide by the same guiding principles. Actors involved in both endeavors are demanded to base their activities on a solid knowledge base. They are urged to take a holistic approach and to ensure that particular components of such an approach are properly coordinated. They are pushed to strive towards local ownership. And, the credibility of external actors is deemed to be of paramount importance. However, there is wide consensus that both rule of law promotion and SSR by and large fail to adhere to these guiding principles. SSR practitioners would thus be ill-advised to rely on applying best practices from rule of law promotion, the older and more established field, to their own endeavor. Rather, both fields ought to step up their efforts to develop practically relevant lessons learned that could then, in turn, be reciprocally useful.

This paper examines the efforts of the European Union to advance Security Sector Reform and to bridge the gap with the Judiciary Sector Reform and the rule of law in the Occupies Palestinian Territories. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the EU engaged actively in the state-building project in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by taking a number of initiatives in situ. Security has been a key issue in all Israeli-Palestinian agreements concluded during the post-1993 Oslo interim period up to 1999 and then, with the resumption of the Palestinian intifada in 2000, security became primordial to all internationally-sponsored diplomatic initiatives and peace plans. The article analyses the EU initiatives undertaken to help the Palestinian Authority reform its security and judiciary sectors, and argues that while the European Union has, in theory, supported the rule of law perspective in Palestinian Security Sector Reform, in reality it has not paid much attention to improving democratic civilian oversight and accountability.

The purpose of this article is to look more deeply at why the principle of local ownership has so often been disregarded in justice reform and security sector reform (SSR). In doing so, it identifies various dilemmas that account for this lack of regard, including issues relating to local vs. international norms; donor vs. local interests and representational issues at the national and local level. Subsequently, it will examine how local ownership dilemmas impact on programming including during the assessment, implementation and monitoring and evaluation stages and then consider how local ownership can be strengthened particularly in fragile states.