Introduction: Second-Generation Security Sector Reform

Security sector reform (SSR) has become a commonly used tool for international approaches to insecure countries. Despite its frequent deployment as a key element of statebuilding, SSR suffers from both a lack of a conceptual hinterland and also lack of strong evidence of success. This special collection of papers explores these ideas, starting from an assumption that there are serious issues with SSR in practice. SSR, alongside many other facets of international aid programming, has suffered from an excess of technocentric and managerial approaches, with politics relegated to the sidelines. These articles outline what this means in practice and what a second generation of SSR could look like: an approach based on process and politics rather than linear managerialism.