Ambiguous Order


Book Description

Examines three options for increasing state security in Africa: regional military groupings, private security companies, and a continent-wide, professional peacekeeping force. Howe explores these alternatives within the larger context of why African militaries have proven incapable of handling new types of insurgency




Police in Africa


Book Description

State police forces in Africa are a curiously neglected subject of study, even within the framework of security issues and African states. This work brings together criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and others who have engaged with police forces across the continent and the publics with whom they interact to provide street-level perspectives from below and inside Africa's police forces.




Learning from West African Experiences in Security Sector Governance


Book Description

Many efforts have been undertaken to address dysfunctional security sector governance in West Africa. However, security sector reform (SSR) has fallen short of radical – transformational – change to the fundamental structures of power and governance in the region. Looking more closely at specific examples of SSR in six West African countries, Learning from West African Experiences in Security Sector Governance explores both progress and reversals in efforts by national stakeholders and their international partners to positively influence security sector governance dynamics. Written by eminent national experts based on their personal experiences of these reform contexts, this study offers new insights and practical lessons that should inform processes to improve democratic security sector governance in West Africa and beyond.




Security in Africa


Book Description

Security in Africa: A Critical Approach to Western Indicators of Threat questions the dominant Western narrative of security threats in Africa. Based on an analysis traditional security studies and Western security policy, it argues that commonly used indicators are based on mainstream security studies and provide only circumscribed analyses of threats to international security. By assessing the origins of this traditional approach to security and problematizing failed states, political instability, Muslim populations, and poverty among others, it makes the case for a critical approach to framing security challenges in Africa.




African Peacekeeping


Book Description

An examination of how peacekeeping is woven into national, regional and international politics in Africa, and its consequences.




Mercenaries


Book Description

Second volume of Deutscher prize-winning trilogy on the future of IR, tracing the defining characteristics of 'foreign encounters' over time.




State and Societal Challenges in the Horn of Africa


Book Description

This book brings to fruition the research done during the CEA-ISCTE project ‘’Monitoring Conflicts in the Horn of Africa’’, reference PTDC/AFR/100460/2008. The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) provided funding for this project. The chapters are based on first-hand data collected through fieldwork in the region’s countries between 4 January 2010 and 3 June 2013. The project’s team members and consultants debated their final research findings in a one-day Conference at ISCTE-IUL on 29 April 2013. The following authors contributed to the project’s final publication: Alexandra M. Dias, Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho, Aleksi Ylönen, Ana Elisa Cascão, Elsa González Aimé, Manuel João Ramos, Patrick Ferras, Pedro Barge Cunha and Ricardo Real P. Sousa.




Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior


Book Description

This book examines the extent to which Russia’s strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin’s own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book’s analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin’s statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin’s agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.




Guarding the Guardians


Book Description

This book reviews the intrusion of the armed forces in African politics by examining contemporary armies and their impact on society. It revisits the various explanations of military takeovers in Africa and disentangles the notion of the military as a progressive force. The study argues the necessity of new civil-military relations in Africa, calling for a democratic oversight of the security forces.




Building Security in Africa


Book Description

The United States has sought to combat security threats in Africa principally by supporting partner governments, and security sector assistance (SSA) has been one of the primary tools it has used. Rigorous evaluations of the overall impact of SSA, however, have been extremely rare. A RAND Corporation study used statistical models to evaluate the impact that U.S.-provided SSA has had on political violence in Africa-in particular, the incidence of civil wars and insurgencies, terrorist attacks, and state repression. The authors found that SSA has had a mixed record. During the Cold War, SSA likely exacerbated instability, leading to a higher incidence of civil wars. During the post-Cold War era, it seems to have had little net effect, likely reflecting recipient-government failures to sustain the capabilities developed through SSA and to harness these capability gains to effective political-military strategies. When SSA has been implemented in conjunction with peacekeeping operations, however, it has had a consistently positive impact across a range of outcomes, including the likelihood of civil war recurrence, the incidence of terrorist attacks, and the extent of state repression. These findings have important implications for future U.S. policies in Africa and potentially beyond.