The EU Security Sector Reform Agenda: Between Democratic Security Governance and Internal Security Interests

discussed, past SSR activities should be studied more carefully.An evolving focus within the donor community on monitoring and evaluation of SSR activities and contributions is a positive sign, but only if such helpful feedback on applied SSR is used to facilitate honest learning and improvement.If pursued as intended, SSR can play a constructive role in building legitimate states and safe societies.However, if only pseudoSSR activities are pursued, the risk is great that good intentions result in more harm than good, illegitimate state institutions are strengthened and the peace, development and security dividends of transition processes -as well as affected beneficiary populations -will suffer as a consequence.Focussing on the basic principles and objectives of SSR should thus be the aim of all those committed to real and positive change in transition societies.approaches to SSR can be pursued with comprehensive and principled objectives in mind: They need to be applied in phases that do not betray the eventual objectives of good SSG; honour local ownership of the process and its results; and take into account debilitating circumstances that require piecemeal rather than landslide approaches towards achieving the necessary buyin and other supporting conditions, which in turn facilitate reasonably swift pursuits of even longerterm reform programmes and strategies.Most importantly, helpful lessons (not necessarily "best practices") need to be generated to assist those involved in planning and embarking on new reform processes -and to advance the practical usefulness, political debate and academic scholarship on SSR as a technical, political and social process.While best practises of SSR planning and implementation are not widely assessed andThe EU Security Sector Reform Agenda: Between Democratic Security Governance and Internal Security Interests