Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
This paper aims to examine existing and emerging international norms and criteria relating to the security sector and security sector reform amongst EU,OSCE and OECD countries. Security sector reform agendas are wide, and this paper focuses particularly on norms and criteria relating to democratic accountability and control of the security sector. It aims to clarify ways in which normative processes in these areas could contribute to international efforts to promote and assist appropriate security sector reform (SSR).
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Democratization
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The implications of the events of September 11 are not yet fully clear. Generally, national security policies and postures take some time to appreciate the effects of strategic shifts. Even if the lessons are quickly learnt, security structures can be slow to absorb them. European defence structures and capabilities are already subject to the transformation required by the end of east-west confrontation and the arrival in the 1990s of the new demands of crisis management. Yet, over twelve years after the end of the Cold War, the necessary transformations and re-posturing of European armed forces are still under way. This is partly due to the scale of the task; partly the result of the costs of military restructuring (while banking immediately the savings arising from force reductions, Governments have preferred to invest over time in new military capabilities); and partly because there is no great sense of urgency. By definition, crisis management is a question of political choice, rather than a matter of direct national security. Developing the necessary capabilities has been an evolutionary process, subject to the need to manage new programmes within declining defence budgets.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, and Democratization
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The objective of this paper is to provide a brief general analysis of the democratisation of the security sector in Hungary in the decade following the political changes of 1989-1990 and highlight elements of success and failure. It must be underlined at the very beginning that the following analysis is of an experimental nature and is intended to serve more as a basis for future debate than an ultimate framework and example for similar analyses regarding other countries.
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
When countries are accepted into NATO membership, it will become more difficult to 'test' them on a pass/fail basis since, by virtue of the fact that they will have been accepted into the 'club', they will already have passed. Increasingly, therefore, some other form of process will be needed in order to promote improvements in democratic control of the armed forces in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The issue of Security Sector Reform (SSR) has gained quite a lot of interest within the last decade both in politics and in academia. However there is no consensus or agreement on what is actually meant by SSR and how it is to be defined. To map the scope of the debate, Timothy Edmunds (2001: 1) distinguishes two approaches to delineate what SSR refers to: "The first is concerned with those militarised formations authorised by the state to utilise force to protect the state itself and its citizens. This definition limits SSR to organisations such as the regular military, paramilitary police forces and the intelligence services. The second approach takes a wider view of SSR, defining it as those organisations and activities concerned with the provision of security (broadly defined), and including organisations and institutions ranging from, for example, private security guards to the judiciary." The first approach may be regarded as constituting something like the minimum consensus on what SSR includes and, thus, seems to be quite undisputed. Also, the examples Edmunds cites as belonging to the second approach seem to be quite legitimate, albeit with this arguably being more the case for the judiciary than for private security guards. Nevertheless, the real problems with the second approach rest in what is being put into the brackets, namely a broad definition of security. This resonates with the debate about the term, the meaning(s) and the dimensions of security. Within this debate, one may observe an extension of the contents of the term security to include, for example, ecological, cultural, and, quite recently, human dimensions (see Buzan 1991; Daase 1991; Buzan/Waever/de Wilde 1998). As a consequence, if these extended dimensions of security were included in the usage of the term security in SSR, this would surely mean overloading the concept because the number of actors involved in SSR would become legion.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Democratization
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The new realities and challenges governing the nature of security in the post Cold War era have brought about a variety of pressing reasons for engaging in security related reforms. The inherent needs oscillate between mere adjustments of traditional concepts and force structures to today's quite different security requirements, on the one end, and comprehensive political reorientation and transformation, including the establishment of entire new national and regional security architectures, on the other.
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to provide an overall account of the Czech security sector reform that followed the fall of the communist regime in 1989. Especially the period starting in 1997 will be emphasized, since only that year, in connection with the on-coming accession to NATO, a really profound reform of country's security system and security sector began.
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The objective of this paper is to contribute to the international efforts in setting up a general framework and agenda for security sector reform. The text is organized in reference to the model presented by Zoltan Martinuzs. It reflects the unique Bulgarian experience from the last decade and examines the democratic credentials of the country, particularly as a candidate-member to NATO. It concentrates on the transitional issues and identifies the obstacles to a more complete democratic transformation in the overall security sector.
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The international security environment registered a dramatic change after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. The instrument, training, scare budgets, lake of inter agencies cooperation could be sometime not only insufficient but also inadequate.
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The motto "Yet who could guard the guards themselves?" used as the epigraph is often quoted in academic and political literature on civil-military relations. Indeed, it consists of two questions in one; both of which related to the essence of democratic transformation of the security sector in post-totalitarian societies: firstly, whether civil institutions are able to "guard the guards", in fact to control military and law-enforcement agencies, and, secondly, whether these institutions are democratically formed or they are of authoritarian or totalitarian nature.