https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0942-7628
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ABSTRACT
This article explores how transitions produce non-linearity in Sierra Leone’s security and justice programming, as it unfolded from the late 1990s and onwards starting in open conflict. Transitions have received limited detailed analytical consideration in the literature on interventions because they are mundane and inevitable, and therefore taken for granted. However, they definitively condition how programmes evolve. We show that transitions can be seemingly small as well as comprehensive, but commonly have unpredictable, hidden and often unmanageable transformative effects on the trajectory of security and justice programmes. To conceptualize the logic of transitioning, ritual theory – and specifically liminality that is a central component of rites of passage – is used to capture the inherent diffuseness and unpredictability of transitioning. Transitions in programming are liminal moments, ‘neither here nor there’, and as such characterized by ambiguity and indeterminacy. The ambiguity, and importance, of transitions stems from their potency to disturb the direction of programming, requiring the suspension of routine, which internationally funded programming is notoriously ill-suited to deal with. Empirically, the article looks at three types of transitions in Sierra Leone: (1) war to peace; (2) turnover of staff; and (3) elections leading to change of the party in power.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Andrews, The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development.
2 Denney and Domingo, “Context-Relevant, Flexible and Transnational Programming.”
3 Chandler, “Peacebuilding and the Politics of Non-linearity”; Jackson and Bakrania, “Is the Future of SSR Non-linear?”; Jackson, Bell and Bakrania, Security and Justice Evidence Mapping Update.
4 Schroeder and Kode, “Rule of Law and Security Sector Reform in International State-Building”; Delcourt, “The Rule of Law as a Vehicle for Intervention.”
5 Delcourt, “The Rule of Law as a Vehicle for Intervention.”
6 Pandolfi and McFalls, “Global Bureaucracy.”
7 Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine; Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars.
8 Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.
9 Wulf, “Reconstructing the Public Monopoly of Legitimate Force.”
10 Wulf and Zirfas, Die Kultur des Rituals.
11 Gennep, The Rites of Passage; Bridges, Transitions; Aguirre and Pietrapaoli, “Gender Equality, Development and Transitional Justice.”
12 Otto and Weingärtner, “Linking Relief and Development.”
13 Douglas, Mary Douglas Collected Works, 97.
14 Bell, Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions, 36.
15 Data was collected between 2007 and 2018. The authors have both carried out extensive fieldwork in Sierra Leone going back to 2001 in connection with PhD studies, short and long-term consultancies, and research projects. For the analysis that follows, this paper especially draws on how security sector reform, S&J programming, has been taken forward at the national level in Sierra Leone. During this work, much of which was funded by the Department for International Development (DfID) and the UK Ministry of Defence, the authors engaged extensively with key individuals across Sierra Leone’s security sector (defence, police, intelligence, justice, national security) as well as international advisers, mainly from the UK. The first main output of this process explores security sector reform in Sierra Leone between 1997 and 2007; the second main output explores the process up until 2013.
16 Jackson and Bakrania, “Is the Future of SSR Non-linear?”
17 Detzner, “Modern Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform in Africa.”
18 Schroeder and Chappuis, “New Perspectives on Security Sector Reform.”
19 Jackson, Bell and Bakrania, Security and Justice Evidence Mapping Update.
20 Jackson and Bakrania, “Is the Future of SSR Non-linear?”
21 Baker, Multi-Choice Policing in Africa; Richmond, A Post-Liberal Peace; Albrecht, The Chiefs of Community Policing; Jackson and Albrecht, Power, Politics and Hybridity.
22 Andrews, The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development.
23 For insight into how this dynamic played out in practice, see Albrecht, “Separation and Positive Accommodation,” 12–13.
24 Turner, “Betwixt and Between,” 7.
25 Kohl, “Diverging Expectations and Perceptions of Peacebuilding?”
26 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone.
27 Albrecht, “Separation and Positive Accommodation.” For more detail on the judiciary, see White and Albrecht, “Sierra Leone” (available upon request).
28 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone.
29 Detzner, “Modern Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform”; Jackson and Bakrania, “Is the Future of SSR Non-linear?”
30 Albrecht and Kyed, “Justice and Security,” 4.
31 Philipsen, “Improvising the International.”
32 Alexander, “Turner’s Definition of Ritual Reconsidered,” 69.
33 For the variety and range of rites of passage, see Gennep, Rites of Passage.
34 Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
35 Gennep, The Rites of Passage, 80–81. See Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern.
36 Hockey, “The Importance of Being Intuitive,” 213.
37 Grimes, Ritual Criticism.
38 Turner, The Ritual Process, 93.
39 Albrecht and Jackson, Security System Transformation, 31, 71.
40 Aguirre and Pietropaoli, “Gender Equality, Development and Transitional Justice.”
41 Wulf, “Security Sector Reform in Developing and Transitional Countries.”
42 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone; Gbla, “Security Sector Reform.”
43 Ferguson and Gupta, “Spatializing States.”
44 Albrecht, “Separation and Positive Accommodation,” 5.
45 White and Albrecht, “Sierra Leone,” 32. From 2014, activities were shaped by the outbreak of Ebola.
46 White and Albrecht, “Sierra Leone,” 32.
47 Sedra, “Introduction,” 16.
48 Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone; Sedra, “Introduction”; Gbla, “Security Sector Reform Under International Tutelage.”
49 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone.
50 Albrecht and Jackson, Security System Transformation, 23; Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone, 28.
51 Albrecht and Jackson, Security System Transformation, 46.
52 Albrecht, “Transforming Internal Security in Sierra Leone,” 4.
53 Cf. Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern.
54 Czarniawska and Mazza, “Consulting as a Liminal Space,” 272.
55 Krogstad, “Security, Development, and Force.”
56 Interview, anonymous, Freetown, December 2018.
57 Van Biezen and Kopecký, “The States and the Parties”; Panebianco, Political Parties; Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization.
58 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone, 38–9.
59 Fanthorpe, “On the Limits of Liberal Peace.”
60 Sesay and Hughes, Go Beyond First Aid, 55.
61 Albrecht, “Separation and Positive Accommodation.”
62 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone.
63 Griffin, “Financial Governance ‘After’ Crisis.”
64 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone, 91–3; interviews, Freetown, July 2012.
65 Albrecht, “Separation and Positive Accommodation.”
66 Interviews, Freetown, February 2017.
67 Utas and Christensen, “The Gift of Violence,” 27.
68 Denney, “Reducing Poverty with Teargas and Batons.”
69 For Ghana, see Tankebe, “Colonialism, Legitimation and Policing in Ghana.”
70 Philipsen, “Improvising the International.”
71 Albrecht, Hybridization, Intervention and Authority, 14.
72 Philipsen, “Improvising the International.”
73 Gennep, The Rites of Passage; Turner, The Ritual Process.
74 Albrecht and Jackson, Securing Sierra Leone, 107.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Peter Albrecht
Peter Albrecht is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). He is the author of Hybridization, Intervention and Authority: Security Beyond Conflict in Sierra Leone (2020), and has co-authored several other books, including Securing Sierra Leone, 1997-2013: Defence, Diplomacy and Development in Action (2014).
Paul Jackson
Paul Jackson is Professor of African Politics at the University of Birmingham. He has published widely about peacebuilding, including Securing Sierra Leone, 1997-2013: Defence, Diplomacy and Development in Action (2014) and the Edward Elgar Handbook of Security and Development (2016).