GUIDE TO REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN STABILITY OPERATIONS:

A ROLE FOR THE MILITARY?

Derick W. Brinkerhoff

Ronald W. Johnson

Richard Hill

RTI International

Editor

Susan Merrill

Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute

June 2009

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ISBN 1-58487-394-9
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ................................................................................................................................ v

Summary ...............................................................................................................................vii

Government and Governance ............................................................................................. 1

Governance, Stability, and Resilience .................................................................................2

How Much Democracy; How Fast?.....................................................................................3

Three Functions of Governance............................................................................................4

Effective Provision of Public Goods and Services....................................................... 5

Managing Political Participation and Accountability.................................................6

Safety and Security...........................................................................................................7

STRUCTURING THE STATE...............................................................................................8

Federalist versus Unitary Structures.............................................................................9

Federalist and Unitary Systems ...................................................................................10

Decentralization..............................................................................................................11

Federalism, Decentralization, and Stability Operations...........................................12

Managing Political Participation and Accountability...............................................13

INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE STATE...................................................14

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................16

Options.............................................................................................................................16

CONSTITUTIONS............................................................................................................... 19

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................20

Options.............................................................................................................................20

ELECTIONS ......................................................................................................................... 21

Political Party Formation and Operation ...................................................................22

Electoral Rules and Frameworks..................................................................................22

Electoral Administration............................................................................................... 23

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................24

Options ........................................................................................................................... 25

TRADITIONAL SOURCES OF AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY ............................28

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................31

Options.............................................................................................................................31

RULE OF LAW......................................................................................................................33

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................34

Options ............................................................................................................................35

CITIZENS AND CIVIL SOCIETY......................................................................................36

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................39

Options.............................................................................................................................39

SAFETY AND SECURITY...................................................................................................41

SHORT-TERM PROVISION OF SECURITY.................................................................... 44

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................47

Options.............................................................................................................................48

CIVILIAN CONTROL AND OVERSIGHT.......................................................................49

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................50

Options.............................................................................................................................50
iv

STRUCTURING THE SECURITY SECTOR......................................................................53

Trade-offs.........................................................................................................................54

Options.............................................................................................................................55

CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................................... 59

Context.............................................................................................................................59

Regime Replacement......................................................................................................62

Stability Operations in Support of an Existing Functioning Regime .....................63

Bibliography..........................................................................................................................64

Endnotes.................................................................................................................................69

About the Contributors........................................................................................................77
v

FOREWORD

This Governance Guide, fourth in the PKSOI Papers Series to be published by the 

U.S. Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) and the Strategic Studies 

Institute (SSI), is designed to further U.S. military understanding of the critical nationstate building role that U.S. forces play during stability operations. During the last 8 

years, the Department of Defense (DoD) has experienced revolutionary change in its 

perception of its role in stability operations and more particularly, nation-state building. 

The introduction of DoD 3000.05, which placed stability operations on par with military 

operations, ushered in a new era of military operations focused on the reconstruction, 

rebuilding, and governance phase of peacekeeping. 

In October 2008, the U.S. Army issued Field Manual 3.07, Stability Operations Doctrine, 

which identified five key sectors as components of an integrated approach to stabilization 

and reconstruction (S&R) operations—security, justice and reconciliation, humanitarian 

assistance and social well-being, participatory governance, and economic stabilization and 

infrastructure. Government, or governance, has a central role in assuring the successful 

end-states for transition in each of these sectors.

This guide focuses on the military’s role in rebuilding and establishing a functional, 

effective, and legitimate nation-state; one that can assure security and stability for its 

citizens, defend its borders, deliver services effectively for its populace, and is responsible 

and accountable to its citizens. Neither a handbook nor a checklist, the document 

provides a comprehensive approach to planning and implementing a program to rebuild 

governance by U.S. peacekeeping forces during stability operations. Recognizing that the 

extent of U.S. Government and military involvement is determined by the mandate, the 

mission, the level of resources and most importantly, the host country context, this guide 

provides options and trade-offs for U.S. forces in executing these operations.

JOHN A. KARDOS DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Colonel, U.S. Army Director

Director Strategic Studies Institute 

Peacekeeping and Stability

 Operations Institute

vii

SUMMARY

The Army’s Field Manual (FM) 3-07, Stability Operations Doctrine, identifies five sectors 

as components of an integrated approach to stability and reconstruction (S&R): security; 

justice and reconciliation; humanitarian assistance and social well-being; participatory 

governance; and economic stabilization and infrastructure. Government has an important 

role in each of these sectors, so attention to restoring, rebuilding, and reforming the public 

sector in post-conflict societies is critical to achieving the end state conditions that FM 

3-07’s stability operations strategy establishes:

• A safe and secure environment;

• Established rule of law;

• Social well-being;

• Stable governance; and,

• A sustainable economy.

FM 3-07 describes two categories of the range of activities in stability operations for 

achieving these end state conditions: reconstruction and stabilization. 

Reconstruction is the process of rebuilding degraded, damaged, or destroyed political, 

socioeconomic, and physical infrastructure to create the foundation for long-term development. 

Stabilization is the process by which underlying tensions that might lead to resurgence in violence 

and a breakdown in law and order are managed and reduced, while efforts are made to support 

preconditions for successful long-term development.

This guide examines an intervening force’s contribution to creating a functional state 

that can deliver services effectively, is responsive and accountable to its citizens, and is 

capable of assuring security. For each of these three areas, the discussion summarizes key 

issues, trade-offs, and options for military strategists, planners, and personnel that relate 

to the restoration and rebuilding of government in the context of full spectrum operations. 

The guide provides counsel for military personnel in planning and executing stability 

operations tasks related to lines of operation to rebuild a capable government, but it is 

neither a blueprint nor a “how to” checklist. It is designed to supplement existing and 

emerging guidance, fill in gaps, and consolidate from some of these sources information 

specifically relevant to addressing the needs of public sector rebuilding in post-conflict 

situations. The material presented draws both from theory and from on-the-ground 

experience of military and civilian practitioners.

This guide will focus on three central aspects identified above but first will elaborate 

and clarify the central terminology and concepts—government, governance, and the 

social contract between citizens and the state. The Guide then discusses the three core 

functions of a state: 1) effective service delivery; 2) responsiveness to the citizenry; and 

3) security. This discussion is set within the context of a review of the state structure or 

model (federal or unitary) and the relationship between the center and the subnational 

units (decentralization).
1

GUIDE TO REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN STABILITY OPERATIONS:

A ROLE FOR THE MILITARY?

Many stability operations tasks are best performed by indigenous, foreign, or U.S. civilian 

professionals. Nonetheless, U.S. military forces should be prepared to perform all tasks necessary 

to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so. Successfully performing such tasks can 

help secure a lasting peace and facilitate the timely withdrawal of U.S. and foreign forces. Stability 

operations tasks include helping to develop representative government institutions

DOD 3000.05

GOVERNMENT AND GOVERNANCE

Without capable government institutions and committed local public officials, the 

end state conditions that U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 3-07, Stability Operations Doctrine, 

identifies will not be put in place; in fact, the absence of those conditions constitutes 

a failed state. However, a functional state depends on more than simply a competent 

and well-intentioned government. It requires actions and inputs by individual citizens, 

communities, local associations, civil society groups, and the private sector as well. How 

all of these actors behave, together with government, is the realm of governance and 

rebuilding all elements of the governance structure is critical to successful state-building. 

Some analyses treat government and governance as the same thing, but it is more accurate 

to distinguish them from each other.

Governance refers to the processes and rules through which state and nonstate actors 

in a society wield power and authority and how they influence and enact governmental 

policies and decisions. Governance is a broader concept than government, the principal 

elements of which include the constitution and the three branches of government 

(legislature, executive, and judiciary). 

Governance extends beyond the role and actions of public sector institutions, 

structures, and processes. It concerns how societies organize to pursue collective goals 

and interests. Some of these processes and institutions may be governmental, others 

may not. Governance combines public administration and state structures, politics 

and the exercise of power and authority, policymaking and implementation, and the 

relationships between government and civil society. In fragile and failed states, weak 

governance is recognized as a contributor to conflict and civil war and has highlighted the 

need for reformed governance in establishing peace and pursuing state reconstruction. 

Government alone cannot achieve the outcomes necessary for a functioning and stable 

society. Think of education: government can supply funding for schools, train and pay 

teachers, set standards, and supply textbooks. But if students do not attend school and 

commit to learning, if parents do not encourage their children and engage with teachers, 

and if the community does not support the schools, then education outcomes will not 

be achieved. The interactions among government (appointed and elected officials), 

education providers (schools and teachers), and service users (students, parents, and 

community members) comprise the “triangle” of relationships that establish governance 

in the education sector. 
2

GOVERNANCE, STABILITY, AND RESILIENCE

In terms of state-society linkages, failed states highlight the importance of positive 

relationships between a government and its citizens for stability. In failed and fragile 

states, these relationships are largely negative; citizens distrust and fear the state and hold 

low expectations that government has the ability, or the desire, to meet their needs. The 

Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation’s Development Assistance 

Committee (OECD/DAC) has explored state-society linkages in detail to explain why 

some states are fragile and others are stable. The shorthand concept that is at the core of 

these linkages is a “social contract” between the state and its citizens. This contract, the 

OECD/DAC argues, is a product of three interacting components:

• Expectations that citizens have of the state;

• State capacity to provide services within a secure environment and to obtain 

sufficient resources from its population and territory to provide these services;

• Political will to direct resources and capacity to meet citizens’ expectations.1

When these three components are in balance—that is, when citizens’ expectations 

match up with state capacity and political will—then the state exhibits resilience. 

Resilience in this sense is defined as to future conflict and state failure. Resilience leads to 

stability, but not in the static sense. Rather, resilience enables the state to adjust to new and 

different expectations, shifts in capacity, changes in external conditions, and changes in 

political will. A fit with expectations is important to mitigating possibilities for renewed 

conflict, reestablishing trust in government, and creating legitimacy. For example, a wellrecognized conflict driver and contributor to state fragility is distribution of services that 

systematically excludes certain ethnic, tribal, and/or religious groups. If a new interim 

government does not address the expected redress of perceived past unfairness and 

discrimination, it risks losing support and legitimacy among these groups.

Third, attention to expectations leads outside intervening forces to consider whose 

expectations need to be taken into account. As noted above, some citizens will expect a 

new political order and its government to right old wrongs and correct past inequities. 

Others will look to the state to retain key features of the former regime and preserve 

their privileges. Still others will anticipate reforming the underlying principles on which 

the state is based: for example, according religion a central position in state institutions 

(Taliban Afghanistan), or building a multi-racial society (post-apartheid South Africa). 

Post-Saddam Iraq is a good example of the challenges of different expectations within 

a society: Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurdish visions of an effective and legitimate state are quite 

different.

The fourth implication is perhaps the most fundamental, because it sensitizes stability 

and reconstruction (S&R) actors to different features of a state that meet the expectations 

of citizens as they define those features for themselves. The kind of government and 

the governance relationships that underlie the end state conditions in FM 3-07 reflect 

the principles of liberal democracy according to the Western traditions embodied by 

the nations of Europe, the Commonwealth countries, and the United States. These same 

principles find expression in the international development policies of the U.S. Agency 

for International Development (USAID). USAID considers good governance to “pertain 
3

to the ability of government to develop an efficient, effective, and accountable public 

management process that is open to citizen participation and that strengthens rather than 

weakens a democratic system of government.”2

HOW MUCH DEMOCRACY; HOW FAST?

What this means for stability operations forces is that the aim, implicit or explicit, of these 

programs is to set the host country on a trajectory that will lead to a governance system 

that closely resembles a Western liberal democracy with a rules-based, meritocratic, and 

efficient public sector. Since for a failed state the road to democratic governance is a longer 

one and often more difficult to achieve, given history, culture, and the economic structure, 

than can be accomplished within a given stability operation, the question becomes: How 

much democratic governance and how fast? One of the debates is where elections fall 

in the sequence of post-conflict reconstruction. Roland Paris, for example, argues that 

peacebuilding has focused on holding elections before the requisite institutions that 

enable an elected government to fulfill its governance functions are in place and capable. 

He calls for “institutionalization before liberalization.”3

 However, others have pointed 

out that citizens have limited tolerance for interim governments that are not elected, and 

will only accord them legitimacy for a relatively short period of time. Thus, ready or not, 

post-conflict countries need to plan for and conduct elections sooner rather than later 

because the idea that recovery includes democratically-based legitimacy has become part 

of the social contract. In summary, a legitimate government must develop the capacity to 

deliver on whatever societal consensus is forged, eventually on its own.

It is critical to recognize that host country actors will have different interpretations 

from the military forces and their interagency partners of what constitutes legitimacy, 

security, and an effective state. Unless stability operations strategies, plans and operations 

take these host country interpretations into account and incorporate them into S&R plans, 

governance restoration and reconstruction targets are unlikely to be achieved. This may 

lead to host country actors “going through the motions” of participating in democratic 

governance-enhancing activities, but the commitment is lacking.

Box 1 provides an example from Afghanistan 

of an indigenous perspective on appropriate 

governance that has impeded the extension of formal 

state authority outside of Kabul.4

 In societies where 

state-society relations are dominated by patronage 

and where favoritism and nepotism are ingrained, 

basic public administration principles such as 

competitive procurement and conflict of interest 

are neither recognized nor valued. The concept of 

democracy is another element of governance that is 

subject to differing interpretations. Most Westerners 

think of democracy as a political system where 

leaders are selected through a free and competitive 

process by popular vote. However, in failing or 

failed states, citizens may think of democracy as a 

Box 1. Pashtunwali in Afghanistan.

An example of an alternative 

perspective on governance comes 

from the southeastern regions of 

Afghanistan with majority Pashtun 

populations where the social code 

of Pashtunwali provides an ethnic 

governance structure based on identity, 

clan, individual freedom, honor, and a 

complex set of reciprocal obligations 

that combine hospitality, exchange, 

and revenge. Pashtunwali does not 

recognize the legitimacy of the central 

Afghan state, and rejects core modern 

state institutions such as courts, police, 

and formal laws.
4

“package” inseparable from economic opportunity and improved well-being, all under 

the same label. As a result, when the election of new leaders does not lead to immediate 

benefits, they blame democracy for failing to deliver on their expectations, which can 

delegitimize fledgling governments, putting them at risk of being seen as ineffectual. 

This can also delegitimize the idea of democracy itself as a governance system worth 

supporting. But, as the discussion below illustrates, there are some basic technical features 

of the three functions of governance—delivering services, improving responsiveness, and 

providing security—that apply across the board to all post-conflict situations.

For example, in the realm of service delivery, how to rebuild a power plant to restore 

electricity generation capacity is not culture bound nor society-specific. However, how 

restored power generation contributes to fostering legitimacy and reestablishing the 

“social contract” is generally state specific. Citizen expectations and historical patterns 

of state-society interactions will influence whether a new government receives credit 

(leading to increased legitimacy), blame (decreasing support and possibly leading to 

renewed conflict), or indifference for providing electricity. In Saddam’s Iraq, Baghdad 

received preferential access to electricity while the Shi’a south was systematically 

short-changed. In post-Saddam Iraq, the interim government made an explicit policy 

decision to distribute restored electricity more equitably, thus favoring the previously 

deprived Shi’a areas of the country (see Box 2).5

 When Baghdad’s power grid failed 

to deliver reliable electricity, Sunnis interpreted the rationed supply as discrimination 

against them, and “proof” that the new government would not treat them fairly. Sunni 

insurgents targeted the interim government’s power regeneration program for sabotage.

THREE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNANCE

In any society, the governance system fulfills a set of core functions: delivering public 

goods and services effectively, managing political participation and accountability, and 

assuring security.6 States vary in terms of how well or how poorly their governance system 

fulfills these functions, and government is central to the state’s success or failure in doing 

so. When these are done well, the state is seen as competent and legitimate. Legitimacy 

Box 2. Electricity in Iraq.

Coalition forces in Al Basrah were confronted with Iraqi citizens pressing them for the restoration of 

electricity, water, and sewerage. Post-conflict Iraq in 2003 had weak local administrative capacity, and 

the extensive sabotage and looting following the war had incapacitated local service delivery departments and destroyed most of their assets. The military turned to civilian contractors with the Local Governance Program (LGP) for assistance. LGP worked with local departments to assess needs, develop a 

list of necessary parts and equipment, and prepare an action plan for restoration of services. With rapidresponse grants and the introduction of competitive tendering, coupled with transparent oversight, 

LGP helped the Al-Basrah municipal service departments make emergency repairs and restore basic 

operations. The engagement of local staff and reliance on local talent, coupled with the introduction of 

transparency and accountability, gave credibility to the municipal departments and strengthened the 

legitimacy of Al-Basrah officials. Community residents volunteered to protect the restored service-delivery assets from sabotage. Neighboring governorates emulated the practices employed in Al-Basrah.
5

refers to acceptance of a governing regime as correct, appropriate, and/or right. Without 

a minimum degree of legitimacy, states have difficulty functioning; and loss of legitimacy 

in the eyes of some segment of the population is an important contributor to state failure. 

Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart describe the downward spiral of failing states that are 

unable to perform these governance functions. Such states end up with “contending centers 

of power, the multiplication of increasingly contradictory and ineffective decisionmaking 

processes, the loss of trust between citizens and state, the delegitimization of institutions, 

the disenfranchisement of the citizenry and ultimately the resort to violence.”7 Examples 

of this spiral are the cases of Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Effective Provision of Public Goods and Services.

Conflict and wars destroy basic infrastructure, disrupt the delivery of core services 

(e.g., health, education, electricity, water, sanitation), and impede the day-to-day routines 

associated with making a living. The inability of fragile and post-conflict states to provide 

fundamental public goods and services has impacts on the immediate tasks facing stability 

operations. In permissive environments, humanitarian nongovernmental organizations 

(NGOs) often take the lead in meeting citizens’ basic needs in the absence of state 

capacity. In nonpermissive situations, military forces often play a role in providing basic 

services directly and/or providing protection to NGOs, while also engaging in offensive 

and defensive operations. However, the danger in this combination of functions is that 

insurgent forces may then regard military-provided services and the NGOs as legitimate 

targets for attack.

While reliance on external sources of capacity may be necessary early in S&R operations, 

ultimately the capacity of the public sector must be rebuilt or created to take the lead. 

Effective service provision is associated with a functioning civil service, basic budgeting 

and management systems, and control of corruption. The general point is that an inherent 

element of restoring public services in the earliest reconstruction phases is the need for 

host country capacity building. Intervening forces and host country governments can 

cooperate on policy, resource allocation, and service planning, even when the majority of 

services are delivered by nonstate providers. S&R military forces can constructively align 

their capacity-building support, whether at national or subnational levels, with publicsector agencies to:

• Capitalize on existing sources of capacity (even if very small) as starting points to 

visibly demonstrate coordination,

• Undertake joint planning and budgeting exercises with public officials to build 

their capacities in these areas, and

• Structure service provision contracts with international NGOs and contractors 

to create incentives for local capacity-building and partnership with government 

actors.

The hand-off from international NGOs and contractors to host country governments 

becomes harder the longer the two sets of actors proceed down parallel tracks. Since in 

most countries effective basic services depend on more than government, it is also critical 

to rebuild the capacity of the private sector and civil society. While it may appear that a 
6

given failed state has very weak or no service-delivery capacity at all, it is likely that some 

“pockets of productivity” exist that can serve as building blocks for interim governments 

and their international partners.8

Beyond service provision, economic opportunity is a core public good, and getting 

the economy going following conflict is important for stability operations.9 Effectiveness 

here involves employment generation, sound macroeconomic and fiscal policymaking, 

efficient budgeting, promotion of equitably distributed wealth-creating investment 

opportunities, and an adequate regulatory framework. Failing and failed states generally 

exhibit the opposite: policies that privilege powerful elites, few budget controls, a thriving 

black market, and rampant corruption and cronyism. Moreover, patronage arrangements 

exist that keep opportunity in the hands of elites, siphon off public assets for private gain, 

and usually include a combination of punitive use of existing regulations and exemptions 

to benefit the favored few.

Service delivery and economic development are central elements to the social contract 

between the state and its citizens that contributes directly to legitimacy of the state. 

Particularly when coupled with ethnic tensions, weak states’ inability/unwillingness 

to provide services and deliver economic opportunity can be an important contributing 

factor to ongoing fragility and the eruption of renewed conflict. This area of governance 

also connects to security in that if youth are in school, job opportunities are available, 

and if families believe that their well-being will improve, citizens (including demobilized 

combatants) are less likely to engage in crime or be recruited into insurgency.

Managing Political Participation and Accountability.

While political participation is closely associated with democratic governance, all 

states, including authoritarian ones, manage political participation in some form or other. 

Mussolini’s Italy, Suharto’s Indonesia, and Mao’s China all were states with high degrees 

of political participation: strong popular engagement through mass organizations and a 

mobilized citizenry directed and controlled by their authoritarian rulers. Africa’s postcolonial history reveals a variety of one-party states that channeled participation through 

carefully manipulated structures and processes. Neo-patrimonial regimes, such as the 

19th century Latin American countries governed by the system called caciquismo (bossism 

or boss politics), ruled through interlocking pyramids of patron-client structures from 

the local to the national level, where leaders maintained power through exchange of 

economic favors for political support.

The implications for stability operations are twofold. First, S&R actors should not 

assume that all host country actors are unhappy with nondemocratic political systems. 

Second, the existing forms of governance may or may not provide fertile ground for 

building new political government structures based on democratic principles. For 

example, those who have assured their livelihoods under patronage-driven regimes may 

not be eager to trade what they depend upon for the untested and unknown benefits 

of a democracy. These dynamics are important because the starting point for S&R 

military force interventions in rebuilding host country government is often premised on 

proceeding along a democracy-building pathway; for example, peacekeeping missions 

to support the implementation of peace accords that incorporate power-sharing political 
7

settlements and the holding of elections. Further, FM 3-07, reflecting U.S. foreign policy, 

demonstrates a strong commitment to democratic solutions and, particularly, to political 

participation and accountability.

Putting in place genuinely democratic processes and institutions generally involves a 

significant reform of state systems, as opposed to rebuilding a system that was in place 

before did not work very well. The S&R mandate may include creating mechanisms and 

processes to expand participation and inclusiveness of excluded or oppressed groups, 

with the aim of reducing inequities and mitigating conflict. Besides supporting elections, 

stability operations may address drafting a new constitution, instituting civilian oversight 

of security forces, reestablishing the rule of law, and introducing new institutional 

structures that set up checks and balances and reallocate functions and authorities across 

branches and levels of government. 

While U.S. foreign policy seeks to promote democracy as a value in its own right, there 

also is practical empirical evidence suggesting that democracy is associated with stable, 

peaceful, and prosperous societies.10 The challenge, as is well-documented and argued 

about in the democratization literature, is making the transition from authoritarianism 

to democracy and staying the course. In numerous countries the path to democratization 

has proven tortuous, and the possibilities for getting derailed are legion.11 For example, 

traditional and informal sources of authority vie for power and legitimacy, sometimes 

constituting an alternate “state” within a state (e.g., regional warlords in Afghanistan) 

or sometimes seeking legitimization through assumption of the external trappings of 

democracy while retaining authoritarian control (e.g., various former Soviet Union states 

in Central Asia). S&R actors need in-depth knowledge of these traditional authority 

sources to recognize when they can contribute to governance reforms or when they might 

undermine such efforts.

Safety and Security.

Central to the social contract is the expectation of citizens that their government will 

provide security, both of persons and property, and maintenance of order. The ability 

of the state to provide safety and security within its territorial boundaries and to deal 

with armed intrusion across its borders through a monopoly on the legitimate use 

of force is a defining feature of state sovereignty. In failed and fragile states, security 

issues that citizens identify include: (a) war and civil conflict, (b) crime and violence, (c) 

depredation by police and soldiers, and (d) lack of access to justice. Without security and 

law and order, the other government functions cannot be fulfilled. Public services cannot 

be effectively provided if providers are fearful for their safety and their facilities (e.g., 

schools or clinics) are at risk. Government institutions such as courts and parliaments 

have difficulty operating if their members cannot be assured of protection from harm 

and injury. And the inability to conduct free and open elections in insecure situations can 

significantly hamper prospects for transitional governments to move forward.

Depending upon the particular host country’s post-conflict situation, stability 

operations will focus on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration—as well as 

dealing with the police, military and paramilitary forces, private militias, and insurgents 

and spoilers. Apart from maintaining security directly, military forces, along with their 
8

civilian partners, engage in a combination of rebuilding, professionalizing, reforming, 

and dissolving security forces. This governance area links very closely to legitimacy. 

Experienced peacekeeping forces (and insurgents) know that nothing can undermine 

a new government’s legitimacy faster in the eyes of its citizens than the inability to 

protect. 

STRUCTURING THE STATE

A common feature of failed and fragile states is the existence of deep societal cleavages 

among ethnic, religious, and territorially-based groups, and thus an important macrolevel issue for diplomatic peace negotiators and peacekeeping forces is how to structure 

the state so as to accommodate the pressures from these various groups for autonomy, 

self- determination, and enfranchisement (political, cultural, linguistic, religious, and/

or economic). Initial mission operational assessments by peacekeeping forces should 

incorporate an evaluation of these factors. Important factors are the history of interaction 

among divided groups and the international context within which conflicts among them 

have evolved. Macro-level structural solutions often focus on federalism and various 

forms of decentralization. Well-known examples of stability operations that sought to 

support the implementation of federal structures are those in the Balkans (see Box 3).12

Questions of federalism and decentralization also arose in post-Saddam Iraq. While 

S&R actors may not have a role in deciding upon or influencing which structural options 

a given new government in a post-conflict state will pursue, it is useful to understand 

the basic features of federalism and decentralization because host country actors may 

ask questions about them. In Iraq, for example, the citizenry’s lack of comprehension 

and misunderstanding of federalism fueled fears about the integrity of the Iraqi state 

and stoked misconceptions about how Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’a groups would fare 

under various decentralized governance scenarios. What follows is a quick overview of 

federalism and decentralization.

Box 3. Implementing a Federal Post-Conflict Solution in the Balkans.

The Dayton Accords, in the interests of achieving a peaceful solution to the bloodshed and violence in 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, created a federal state with significant weaknesses. In the new constitution, 

power and authority were allocated across two entities, ten federation member-cantons, 149 districts 

and (added in 1999) the District of Brcko. The central state ended up with only very limited authority: 

foreign affairs and a restricted set of inter-jurisdictional powers related to trade, customs, international 

criminal law, immigration, communications, and transportation. Further, it had no dedicated revenue, 

and little capacity. In an effort to move forward with post-conflict reconstruction, peacekeeping forces 

tended to go around the weak central structures put in place by the constitution and work directly with 

local actors, who were in many cases warlords and ethnic groups. This reinforced their power since they 

received international resources and were able to directly influence who benefited. These local groups 

strongly resisted the political elements of the peace accords—minority return and implementation of 

the new constitution—so donors focused on physical reconstruction rather than governance reforms. 

In the interests of rapid reconstruction, ethnic nationalists received large amounts of resources, but the 

international community did not push them to implement the new constitution.
9

Federalist versus Unitary Structures.

There are two main types of national governance systems: unitary and federal. Both have 

advantages and disadvantages in terms of the extent to which they support accountable 

and responsive democracy, promote efficient and effective government, create wealth and 

prosperity for citizens, and cope with conflict. All nations need to maintain their integrity 

as sovereign entities by integrating their social, ethnic, and territorial components into an 

integrated whole. They also need to cope with the pressures that arise for some degree 

of autonomy to accommodate differences within national boundaries. Any governance 

system involves tradeoffs between the demands of integration and autonomy. There is 

no single “correct” solution, and most real-world governments are a combination. In 

today’s world, federalist governance systems have broad appeal as institutional structures 

that can balance opposing pressures for integration and autonomy. Experience from 

around the world indicates that many unitary systems incorporate federalist elements, 

particularly as they move toward decentralization.

Unitary and federal systems tend to be defined as opposites, but in the real world 

countries often combine elements of both. Unitary governance accords primary authority 

to central government institutions. The central government can assign political and 

administrative functions to subnational levels, but ultimate decisionmaking authority 

and control remain largely vested with the center. The central government has the right 

to recall any authorities delegated to lower levels with or without their consent. In 

unitary systems, local governments tend to be agents of the center, rather than serving 

the interests of, and being accountable to, local residents, although this tendency can 

be countered where local officials are elected. In some systems, the central government 

treats subnational entities differently, according some more autonomy than others 

(e.g., Indonesia and Aceh, France and Corsica). An extreme form of unitary governance 

characterized Iraq before April 2003, although the Kurdish region in the north operated 

autonomously due to international protection.

Federalism is defined as a multi-tiered governance system that combines institutional 

arrangements for shared-rule with those for regional self-rule. The allocation of powers 

and functions at the national and subnational levels are specified in the constitution. (See 

Box 4.)13 Important features of federal constitutions and legal frameworks are that: (a) 

one or another level of government cannot unilaterally modify them, and (b) the process 

for modification is difficult, and thus is not undertaken lightly. These features contribute 

to stable governance arrangements.
10

In practice, federalism can take many forms, and in some cases blends elements 

of unitary governance systems (e.g., the United Kingdom [UK], which analysts classify 

as nominally unitary, but operationally quasi-federal). There are three types of federal 

systems:

• Federation: a system where the national government and the governments of 

the constituent units have separate constitutionally mandated authorities that 

distribute legislative, executive, and judicial powers between the two levels, each 

of which is accountable to its own electorate (examples: United States, Canada, 

Belgium, Brazil, Austria, India, Nigeria, and Germany).

• Confederation: a system where the constituent unit governments exercise a wide 

degree of independent authority and delegate a limited number of shared-rule 

functions to the common institutions of the confederacy (examples: pre-1847 

Switzerland, the former Soviet Union’s Commonwealth of Independent States 

[CIS], the European Union [EU], and the United States under the Articles of 

Confederation—1781-87). 

• Federacy: a system where a large political unit is linked to a smaller one, and the 

latter has a high degree of autonomy with little or no role in the larger government 

of the. The assent of both parties is required to dissolve the relationship (examples: 

United States and Puerto Rico, UK and Isle of Man, India and Kashmir, and 

Portugal and Madeira). 

Federalist and Unitary Systems.

The arguments for federalism can be divided into impacts on democracy promotion, 

government service delivery, and conflict mitigation and management. Federalism has 

been the subject of study and debate for a long time, and there is a huge literature.14

Unitary states that devolve authorities to lower levels of government share many of the 

same pluses as federal ones.

Democracy. Federalist structures and institutions can promote democracy by 

increasing potential opportunities for citizen participation, increasing the fit between 

citizen preferences and policies/services, and offering a range of policies/services in 

Box 4. Brazil: A Federal State.

With the overthrow of the monarchy in 1889, Brazil became a federal, decentralized state, with federal 

principles enshrined in the 1891 and subsequent constitutions. Comprising a large and heterogeneous 

geography, Brazil consists of 26 states and one federal district. Recognized as the most decentralized 

country in the developing world, the Brazilian federal system gives concurrent powers to federal, 

state and municipal governments in many sectors. The system is flexible and provides a great deal of 

autonomy to the states and municipalities. However, the existence of numerous concurrent powers 

brings ambiguities and conflicts, and historically the different levels of government have competed 

to increase their shares of public revenues. Brazil has faced persistent problems with subnational 

government debt and macroeconomic management. Historically, the Brazilian state has seen cycles 

of decentralization under elected governments and recentralization under military regimes. The 1988 

constitution reestablished decentralized autonomy for states and municipalities and created the current 

federal structure. 
11

different jurisdictions. Federalism can create political and policy “space” to develop 

local leaders and countervailing sources of power. It provides checks and balances 

across levels of government, limits ability of one level to dominate others, and preserves 

citizens’ rights and freedoms. It can also increase complexity and confusion due to a wide 

range of preferred options, and foster imbalances and inequities if central government 

is too weak or if resource transfer mechanisms are inadequate. Unitary states can be 

equally democratic as federal states, relying on the same mechanisms of elections or other 

means for the orderly transfer of power. Unitary systems, on the other hand, are more 

vulnerable to elite capture since there is only one central government with full authority, 

and subnational governments do not have their own constitutionally protected spheres 

of authority. However, peacekeeping forces can support the transfer of decisionmaking 

discretion and resources to subnational governments, which can strengthen them relative 

to central government.

Efficient/Effective Government. Federalist structures and institutions can assure that 

services are provided by the level of government closest to the intended beneficiary, 

which allows local governments to tailor policies/services to local needs. It can avoid 

policy overload at the center (because the center does not function as the sole locus of 

decisions), and offer opportunities for local experimentation and innovation. But unless 

intergovernmental relations are relatively well defined and agreed upon, federalism can 

also lead to duplication, overlap, contradiction, delays, and higher costs. A well-recognized 

problem is “unfunded mandates,” which occur when higher levels of government assign 

tasks and responsibilities to lower levels without providing the resources necessary to 

carry them out. Unitary states can delegate authority to regional and/or local governments 

to achieve the same advantages of subsidiarity.

Conflict Management. Federalism can create enduring structures and institutions 

that empower minorities to protect and promote their interests. This can help to defuse 

conflicts, and limit the ability of one group to dominate others. Federalism can provide 

multiple institutional venues to address conflict and to “socialize” decisionmakers 

to handle conflict. However, in some cases it has reinforced and exacerbated existing 

cleavages and conflicts, leading to policy gridlock. In Nigeria, for example, regional 

majorities have taken control of some states, leaving minorities in those states to look to 

the central government for support and protection.

Decentralization.

Decentralization is associated with federalism, but, as noted above, unitary states can 

decentralize too. Decentralization deals with the allocation between center and periphery 

of power, authority, and responsibility for political, fiscal, and administrative systems. 

Like federalism, decentralization has pluses and minuses. Particularly in countries where 

the center is weak, decentralized governance can allow subnational governments to be 

captured by local interests.

The most common definitions of decentralization can vary along a continuum where 

at one end the center maintains strong control with limited power and discretion at lower 

levels (deconcentration) to progressive delegation of central control and increasing local 

discretion at the other (devolution). The devolutionary end of the continuum is associated 
12

with more democratic governance. Decentralization also means that authority and 

responsibility are moved to organizations and jurisdictions in different physical locations, 

from the center to the local-level. And it has an institutional aspect in that these transfers 

involve expanding roles and functions from one central agency/level of government to 

multiple agencies and jurisdictions (from monopoly to pluralism/federalism).

In principle, accompanying the transfer of authority and responsibility and the 

expanded discretionary space to make decisions locally is a shift in accountability. Upward 

accountability to the center is supplemented with, or, in the case of devolution, largely 

superseded by downward accountability. And indirect accountability, mediated by higher 

level authorities—what has been referred to as the “long route” to accountability—is 

augmented with direct accountability, the “short route.”15

Central-local relations play an important role in influencing whether decentralization 

achieves democratic outcomes, particularly the configuration of power relationships 

between central and regional/local elites. The existence of multiple layers of government 

in decentralized democracies creates a separation of powers that can provide checks on 

actions at various levels. Different levels of government can then discipline each other. 

Central governments can exercise their power over subnational levels to support the 

achievement of national development objectives, such as poverty reduction. As described 

below, peacekeepers can support effective central-local relations in the realm of service 

delivery and development planning.

Federalism, Decentralization, and Stability Operations.

As noted above, federalism offers one avenue of solving the problem of how to 

bring diverse groups together under an institutionalized structure that enables both 

cooperation and collective coexistence. As such, it is at the core of the social contract that 

defines state-society relations. Principles of federalism (without always using the term) 

are incorporated into numerous peace accords in post-conflict situations, and into the 

constitutions that are drafted to provide the basis for state formation. Various observers 

have noted that one source of the predilection for federalist solutions to post-conflict 

situations is the members of the United Nations (UN) who vote on and provide resources 

for multilateral stability operations. They include countries with ethnic groups that 

have secessionist aspirations and these members prefer to support structural options for 

state building that (at least theoretically) can accommodate diversity without changing 

national boundaries. As Box 3 (page 8) illustrates, this factor can lead to a disjuncture in 

the social contract that peacekeepers seek to support. While the premise for governance 

reconstruction may be acceptable to the international community, ethnic stakeholders in 

the country may not necessarily share that premise.

Stability operations may or may not be directly involved in reforming the basic 

structure of the state in which decisions about federal versus unitary systems will be 

resolved. However, stability operations almost always will take place in settings where 

aspects of the basic structure of the state are challenged. The mission may not involve 

consideration of moving to a new structure, such as from a unitary state to a federal state. 

But the mission likely will confront, if not directly address, failures of a central system 

to meet basic services or security needs at the local level, or situations where an elite has 
13

captured the control of the state, effective checks and balances are no longer functional 

(if they were in the first place), and some groups are systematically excluded from the 

protection and benefits of the state.

Managing Political Participation and Accountability.

All states need institutions, structures, and procedures that enable government to 

function in ways that engage positively with civil society. The terms of that engagement, 

which might be called the “rules of the game,” provide the basis for political authority 

and the conduct of the state’s business. They become the source of whatever degree of 

legitimacy initially the state has in the eyes of its citizens. Even the most authoritarian and 

corrupt regimes need a functioning social contract to maintain power, but in fragile and 

failed states that contract often contains the seeds of instability, conflict, and potential state 

collapse. When participation in politics—the process of determining “who gets what” in 

the public sphere—is limited to elites, privileged minorities, crooks and thugs, and/or 

military or paramilitary forces, the machinery of government becomes the tool of the few 

and the powerful. History reveals that regimes dependent upon such narrow support are 

both inefficient as generators of economic wealth and well-being to its broader citizenry, 

and are inherently unstable.

A strategy is discussed for peacekeepers to enhance political participation and 

accountability so as to expand the foundation of legitimacy beyond a narrow minority. 

This legitimacy extends beyond simply the exercise of a monopoly of the use of force 

within recognized territorial boundaries, which is discussed later. It relates to establishing 

a government whose citizens see it as deserving of support in exchange for responding to 

their needs and desires, and for some basic level of accountability. Retooling the machinery 

includes two types of interventions: (1) fixing or replacing the “parts” (e.g., restructuring 

executive agencies, training judges); and (2) changing the “rules of the game” (e.g., new 

regulations and laws, new constitution, new electoral processes).

Several threads from the introduction are woven through the discussion. First, 

military or peacekeeping operations never start from a clean slate. Some “rules of the 

game” exist in all post-conflict situations, however dysfunctional they may be from a good 

governance point of view. Second, those rules serve somebody’s interests, so changing 

them will inevitably create a new configuration of political winners and losers. Often 

the losers are more powerful and better organized than the winners, relying upon their 

control of resources and often armed force they held during their period of dominance. 

Third, facilitating a transition to democratic governance can mean introducing significant 

reforms. Depending upon the type of change and the socio-cultural setting, those reforms 

may be met with a mix of incomprehension, acceptance, or rejection. Further, the time 

required for these reforms to become institutionalized is likely to extend beyond a 

given stability operation. Fourth, initiating reforms and putting them in place call for 

a combination of political will and capacity. For peacekeeping forces working with the 

host country, when reforms do not seem to be moving ahead, sometimes it can be hard 

to determine whether the slow pace is because resources and capacity are insufficient or 

because of lack of political will. 
14

INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE STATE

All states govern through a set of formal institutions. How many, how they are 

configured, what authorities they have, what resources they command, how they 

interact, and what levels they operate at (central and/or subnational) all combine to 

establish the institutional architecture of government. There are some defining features 

of this architecture that most states share. Institutions are divided into three branches of 

government: executive, legislative, and judicial. Executive agencies carry out the business 

of government under the direction of the head(s) of state, and are usually assigned sectoral 

responsibilities (e.g., education, health, agriculture, public works) or functional ones 

(planning, budgeting, law enforcement, administrative oversight). Legislative institutions 

include various types of representative bodies that develop and debate public policy, pass 

laws, and oversee the executive branch (e.g., parliaments, assemblies, senates, congresses, 

councils). In democracies, members are freely elected; in authoritarian states they may be 

appointed, although in semi-authoritarian ones they may be elected as well. The judicial 

branch contains a variety of courts (e.g., civil, criminal, appellate, constitutional) and 

adjudicatory bodies. Whether the state is structured as a federal or unitary system, and 

the extent of decentralization, influence how the three branches function. 

Distinct from the pre-modern state that was the personal instrument of an absolute ruler, 

the internationally sanctioned concept of the modern state is based on the principles of the 

separation of powers and checks and balances. In the ideal, these guide the functioning of 

the state’s institutional architecture, and are usually enshrined in the constitution in one 

form or another. In the real world, of course, even in Western industrialized countries, 

these principles are imperfectly adhered to. In fragile and failing states, the gap between 

the ideal and reality is even larger.

In most developing countries, the executive arm of government is the most powerful. 

This pattern derives from historical factors: in the post-colonial era, the leaders of newly 

independent countries sought to build national identities around the formal trappings 

of the state while consolidating their power at the center and controlling the distribution 

of the state’s resources. Reinforcing this centralized executive dominance was the idea at 

the time that economic development should be state-led, so national leaders combined 

both political and economic power to assure their hold on the state. In many cases, they 

strengthened their unchecked monopoly on power through controlling legislatures to 

rubber-stamp executive orders, manipulating the judiciary to enforce their edicts, and coopting security forces as enforcers. This pattern is a classic recipe for instability, although 

in some cases powerful leaders who have built up strong patronage networks can maintain 

their regimes for extended periods, particularly if they also enjoy international support 

for geopolitical reasons. Well-known examples from the past include Mobutu’s Zaire and 

Duvalier’s Haiti. More recent ones are Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and Musharraf’s Pakistan, 

where both leaders used their power to manipulate elections and control the courts.

Executive dominance and ineffective checks and balances have led to other, related 

common features of the (mal)functioning of the machinery of government. These 

include:
15

• Infiltration of the government by special interests of various kinds: ethnic, religious, tribal, 

and/or criminal. The result can be state capture, where these groups influence or 

control policy decisions, election results, resource allocation, court cases, police, 

and so on. Extended periods of conflict lead to concentration of resources and 

power in the hands of warring factions and political actors. Control of state assets 

is critical to maintain the ability of those actors to pursue campaigns of violence 

and ethnic cleansing, and to amass the resources that can be used to buy support 

and suppress political opposition.

• Weak ability of civil society to serve as a check on government. In such states, civil 

society groups such as churches, trade unions, or universities have a limited 

(or nonexistent) role in checking the power and authority of the government. 

They tend to be either co-opted or repressed. The media often are also in similar 

circumstances, either repressed or state-controlled.

• Multiple failures of accountability. The cumulative effects of executive dominance, 

weak legislatures, inept and politically beholden judges, weak civil society, 

corrupt police, and interlocking networks of patronage is a multi-faceted failure of 

accountability. The vertical accountability of the state to citizens through elections 

cannot function when elections are either cancelled or rigged, and when avenues 

for participation in policy debates and resource allocation are controlled by regime 

actors and their cronies. Horizontal accountability—the checks and balances 

within the state—is ineffectual when those institutions have no effective capacity 

or willingness to challenge overstepping of boundaries, malfeasance, wrongdoing, 

or corruption.

While each post-conflict situation is specific, most share elements of the institutional 

architecture scenario briefly sketched above. As noted, this scenario is frequently 

associated with a trajectory toward state failure and conflict. Extended conflict typically 

degrades or destroys the machinery of government as the parties to the conflict seek to 

preserve or rewrite the rules of the game.

The legacy of a dominant executive plus weak legislature and judiciary is challenging 

for S&R actors to deal with. On the one hand, an important priority of reconstruction 

will be getting key public sector executive agencies functioning. But without attention to 

legislative and judicial system strengthening and accountability enhancements, stability 

operations run the risk of recreating or reinforcing an overly powerful executive branch. 

Insufficient checks and balances open the door to renewed opportunities for state capture 

and corruption, and reactivation of the greed and grievance dynamics that contribute to 

instability.

In conflicts that are brought to an end through negotiated peace accords, the terms 

of those agreements often specify changes in institutional architecture, including power 

sharing arrangements, decentralization and/or federalism, and elections. Some peace 

accords pay particular attention to checks and balances, with clear delineating lines 

among the three branches of government, and emphasis on the judiciary as a guarantor 

of accountability and the rule of law. For example, the Guatemalan peace agreement 

specifies separation of powers, modernization and strengthening of the legislative and 

judicial branches to exercise oversight, professionalization of the civil service and police, 
16

and local development councils to foster increased citizen participation.16 Other peace 

agreements are vague, and leave the specifics of state-building for later negotiation in 

favor of provisions that lead to the cessation of conflict and violence.17

Thus, S&R lines of effort and interventions in post-conflict situations will be shaped to 

some extent by the international community’s commitments to support the implementation 

of the agreements. 

Trade-offs.

Peace accords lay out the long-term roadmap for returning to peace and achieving 

state resilience, often as noted above, leaving the details related to the machinery of 

government relatively vague beyond statements about reform and modernization to 

reinforce checks and balances and increase capacity. 

Short Term versus Long Term. One critical trade-off is short term versus long term. 

The short-term need to provide services immediately usually takes precedence, which 

leads S&R actors to turn to international NGOs and contractors to step in and fill the 

gaps. To the extent that the host country government is involved, that engagement 

tends to be with the sectoral agencies within the executive branch responsible for service 

delivery. Yet, for long-term government effectiveness and sustainability, other functional 

executive agencies (e.g., ministries of finance, planning, trade, etc.) need to be included, 

as well as legislative bodies. And for putting in place the building blocks for responsive 

and representative government, avenues for citizen participation need to be opened up 

sooner rather than later.

Urgent Needs versus Fostering Legitimacy. A second related trade-off is between 

meeting urgent needs and fostering legitimacy in the political machinery of the state. 

The effect of S&R actors largely bypassing host country government is that citizens see 

the government as ineffectual and irrelevant to meeting their needs. During the period 

following the establishment of an interim government, however, it is important to find 

ways to include public agencies and officials in reconstruction planning, budgeting, and 

decisionmaking so that citizens can perceive their government as responding to their 

needs and those of the country. These perceptions contribute to rebuilding citizen trust 

in the state as the legitimate governing authority. Of course, there are numerous obstacles 

in dealing with this trade-off. Budget execution capacity is likely to be weak, even though 

government officials may want a larger role in managing reconstruction resources. Newly 

installed ministry heads may be more interested in political power and patronage than in 

effectively fulfilling their service delivery responsibilities. Plus, basic capacity to provide 

services may be critically weak.

Options.

There are several options that can restore the machinery of government to enable 

basic government decisionmaking, help to connect new leaders to citizens, address 

immediate capacity building, and lay the groundwork for creating legitimacy. The degree 

of destruction and debilitation of the institutions of the three branches of government 

will strongly affect how quickly and easily peacekeeping forces and their host country 

counterparts can pursue these options.
17

Transfer Political and Budget Authority to the Host Country Government as Soon as 

Possible. As noted above regarding trade-offs, the influx of donor resources programmed 

according to donor procedures runs the risk of marginalizing the new government. Postconflict states share the problem faced by all donor-dependent developing countries that 

have few resources: political leaders and legislatures have very little power regarding 

priority-setting and spending because the majority of resources come from donors. It 

is important for legitimacy and trust-building purposes to provide new governments 

with opportunities to exercise decisionmaking authority. Providing such opportunities 

does not mean giving up all control, which, since budget planning and management 

capacity is weak and corruption is a serious risk, would be unwise. Liberia’s Governance 

and Economic Management Assistance (GEMAP) Program, summarized in Box 5, is a 

good example of a solution that maintains controls while engaging the government in 

decisionmaking and building capacity.18

Build Key Capacities to Enable the Exercise of Political and Budget Authority. Faced 

with the broken and destroyed government machinery found in post-conflict states, it 

is difficult for military actors to determine where to target immediate efforts. In tandem 

with the transfer of authority, capacity building is needed to enable executive agencies, 

legislatures, and justice organizations to function. For example, basic revenue collection 

and management capacity is important for service delivery, as noted, but it is also critical 

for political legitimacy and accountability as a demonstration to citizens that the state 

seeks to meet their needs responsibly.

Box 5. GEMAP in Liberia.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2003 established a national transitional government of Liberia 

(NTGL) and a timetable for elections in 2006. Under the terms of the agreement, members of the NTGL 

were prohibited from running for office. The United Nations agencies, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union, the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS), and various 

bilateral donors provided technical assistance to support the NTGL in fulfilling basic governance functions—including improving public budgeting, procurement systems, financial management—under 

the peacekeeping umbrella of United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). However, it became apparent in 2004 that members of the NTGL lacked commitment to reconstructing the state and were more 

interested in siphoning off donor resources for personal gain.

An audit by the European Commission revealed the breadth and scope of the corruption, and triggered 

the start of an intense round of technical, diplomatic, and political discussions among the donors, UNMIL, the NTGL, ECOWAS, the U.S. government, African heads of state in the region, and ultimately the 

UN Secretary-General. The international community proposed a mechanism that would create external 

controls on Liberia’s revenue generating entities; natural resource concessions and contracts; management of the central bank, finance ministry, and state-owned enterprises; procurement processes; and 

anti-corruption and judicial reform.

The negotiations through various iterations of the proposal culminated in the creation of the Governance 

and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP) in September 2005. Little happened in 

the final months of the NTGL, but the new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, declared the commitment of 

the new government to implement the program. GEMAP allocates monitoring and oversight authority 

to international experts, and gives them co-signatory authority for financial management decisions. It 

also provides a variety of technical advisors, who are to develop capacity for an eventual hand-off to 

national actors according to an “exit strategy” whose terms are unspecified. 
18

Another key capacity area is the functioning of the cabinet, which is the point of 

intersection between the politically designated ministers or department secretaries and 

the president or prime minister, or their designees. In many developing countries, the 

translation of policy into practice is impeded by limited capacity of the cabinet to operate 

efficiently and effectively. For example, briefing materials that summarize key issues are 

poorly prepared, decision criteria are not clearly articulated, meetings are not efficiently 

managed, and follow-up is lacking. These relatively mundane but nonetheless essential 

functions are necessary for interim governments to move from policy to implementation 

and to deal with emerging problems and issues expeditiously. While there may be political 

sensitivities to involving peacekeepers in the affairs of the cabinet, dealing with capacity 

building as a set of technical functions is a proven avenue for providing assistance.

Legislative strengthening is another capacity important for responsive and 

representative government, as well as the effective exercise of oversight. In post-conflict 

situations, those elected to parliaments and assemblies may not have much experience 

with serving as elected officials and may be unfamiliar with the tasks involved: policy 

deliberations and lawmaking, representation of the interests of the electorate, constituent 

service, and oversight of the executive.19 For example, in Iraq, USAID’s Local Governance 

Program developed and delivered extensive training for elected members of provincial 

councils in the basics of their role. Obviously, sequencing of assistance from peacekeeping 

actors aimed at legislators and legislatures comes after elections have been held successfully 

(see the discussion below on elections).

Focus on Pockets of Productivity and Commitment. In a given post-conflict state, 

not all the machinery of government is eroded or destroyed to the same degree. Military 

forces involved in S&R operations should seek out host country actors who have some 

level of capacity and commitment and build on them. For example, in Basra, Iraq, public 

works engineers were eager to get municipal services operational, but lacked spare parts 

to repair equipment. With the help of rapid response grants and some training, the public 

works department made quick progress. In Afghanistan, accountants in the finance 

ministry in Kabul had meticulously maintained the national chart of accounts on paper 

during the Soviet and Taliban era regimes, which provided the basis for military forces to 

move quickly to assist the new government in budgeting and planning.

In seeking out productivity and commitment in local actors, S&R actors will need to 

conduct some basic due diligence to make sure that those they are considering working 

with are genuine in their expressed desire to restore government functioning. FM 3-07 

points out the importance of vetting local actors as part of the process of identifying 

existing and emergent leadership.

Introduce and Demonstrate New Behaviors and Mechanisms Early. In societies that 

lack traditions of rules-based administration, transparency, responsiveness to citizens, 

and participation in policy and administration, the early introduction of such practices can 

help to lay the groundwork for reform in the context of reconstruction. S&R actors do not 

necessarily have to wait until formal procedures are developed and new laws are passed. 

For example, military forces can introduce informal consultative procedures that connect 

citizens to host country public officials as part of the protocol for deciding upon use of 

the Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds, rather than simply responding 

on an ad hoc basis to community requests. In Iraq, the creation of local advisory councils 
19

began as a joint effort with U.S. military civil affairs personnel and civilian technical 

assistance providers (see Box 9, page 29, for discussion of options). At that time there was 

no legal provision for local councils, but an incremental process built a council structure 

and protocol for council formation that led to a rapid expansion of councils nationwide 

and eventually supported the inclusion of elected local councils in the new constitution.

Advisors working with host country counterparts can model new behaviors in the 

course of their work, suggesting for example that citizens be consulted prior to making 

decisions that affect them, or recommending that information on decisions taken be made 

available to the public and the media. These kinds of activities can help to make concrete 

such abstract concepts as democratic participation and accountability and can contribute 

to building political will for change.

CONSTITUTIONS

Writing or revising the constitution is a milestone on the path to restoring governance 

and rebuilding the state following conflict. Constitutional design is essential to grounding 

the state in democratic principles and institutions, and to framing the relationship between 

the state and citizens (recall the idea of the societal pact presented in the introduction). A 

widely accepted constitution provides strong support to the legitimacy of the state, even 

before the state has the capacity to generate legitimacy by responding to citizens’ needs 

and delivering public goods and services. Constitution making in post-conflict situations 

becomes emblematic of a fresh start on governance and gives effect to the terms of the peace 

accords through the constitutional framework that defines and distributes state authority 

and power. Not all post-conflict situations call for a completely new constitution. Where 

the existing constitution offers a legal framework that is acceptable, reforms will focus on 

amendments of particular provisions or development of new supporting legislation.20

The traditional notion is that legal experts and political elites write constitutions. 

However, constitutional design is not 

simply a question of substance in a 

written document. It is also a process that 

can contribute to consolidating peace and 

building stability through reconciliation 

and accommodation. Done right, this 

process results in a constitution that 

citizens will endorse as an acceptable and 

legitimate expression of “we the people” 

and that political actors can live with as 

a workable compromise regarding the 

allocation of state power and authority. In 

a variety of countries, the constitutional 

drafting process has engaged citizens 

in participatory forums, civic education 

programs, and referendums. Rwanda’s 

is an example of an extensive process of

Box 6. Rwanda’s Constitutional Consultation 

Process.

As one element in the implementation of the 1999 

Arusha Peace Accords, a participatory process for 

drafting, reviewing, and voting on a new constitution 

was pursued. The Rwandan government’s action 

plan included: training and sensitization of the 

population; extensive citizen consultation forums, 

both prior to and during constitutional drafting; 

citizen validation of the draft text; and a referendum 

vote in May 2003 on the constitution following 

parliamentary approval. Voter turnout was high 

and the referendum resulted in a 93% approval for 

the new constitution. While the level of effort and 

the cost (around US$7 million) were high, observers 

credit the process with providing a firm base of 

legitimacy for the post-genocide Rwandan state. 
20

participatory consultations and citizen education that the Constitutional Commission 

conducted over a 2-year period, 2002-03. Box 6 contains a brief summary.2

Constitutional design is closely connected to the institutional architecture of the state, 

discussed previously, and electoral systems and elections, presented in the next section. 

How the design and consultation process unfolds and how contentious issues are handled 

figure prominently in influencing the mix of incentives for political actors to represent the 

interests of their constituencies, play on ethnic and religious divides and fears, and/or 

push for regional favors and autonomy. Dangers include dispersing power so broadly 

that central government is incoherent and toothless and opting for ambiguity as a way 

to obtain agreement among factions. These can open the door to instability and future 

conflict. 

Trade-offs.

Resolving significant differences and sufficient consolidation of power to govern 

effectively. The major trade-off in constitution making is between: (a) crafting a state 

structure that can patch the divides that contributed to the conflict within a document that 

host-country political actors are willing to abide by, and (b) one that lays the foundation 

for a state that can govern effectively. Constitutions that impose unacceptable limits on 

powerful political actors may be ignored or undermined, thereby risking the viability 

of the peace agreement and increasing the chances of a return to conflict and violence. 

Frequently the solution is a federalist constitution that spreads authority widely across 

autonomous units of government and creates a weak central government (see Box 3, page 

8, on Bosnia).

Specificity versus ambiguity to avoid contentiousness. A second trade-off is between 

specificity on key provisions that are likely to be contentious and vagueness. Efforts 

to push toward specificity may lead political actors and their supporters to entrench 

themselves behind firm positions, which can delay implementation of peace agreements 

or, in the extreme case, reignite violence. For example, the Iraqi constitution affirms the 

principle of oil revenue as a national resource to be equitably apportioned to all citizens, 

but is silent on the specifics of how that apportionment would be carried out. The Afghan 

constitution states that no law may contravene Islam, but does not make clear how that 

determination will be made or which body of Islamic law is referred to. Vagueness and 

ambiguity solve an immediate issue at the expense of divisiveness and potential conflict 

in the future. If the post-conflict state fails to establish political structures and procedures 

that enable actors to work out the deliberate ambiguities and disagreements peacefully, 

vague and ambiguous constitutional provisions can carry the seeds of future governance 

problems.

Options.

As with numerous aspects of stability operations, the terms of the peace strongly 

influence the tasks and options for S&R actors. As noted, the substance of new constitutions 

embody key provisions of peace agreements. S&R actors can provide technical expertise 

on constitutions and constitutional drafting, and can support the process side of 
21

constitution-making with planning expertise and financial resources. As with elections, 

S&R military personnel can provide security and logistics for public events that assemble 

large numbers of citizens for consultations and referendums in situations where law and 

order and public safety cannot be assured by the host government.

Provide technical support for constitutional drafting to ensure inclusion of 

international good practices. The appropriateness and utility of foreign expertise 

regarding the substance of constitutional provisions will depend upon the particular postconflict situation and are subject to a certain amount of debate.22 Technical support that 

assists host-country constitutional commission members to understand issues related to 

federal and decentralized structures, separation of powers, and electoral issues can be 

particularly useful. There are several constitutions that offer models of potential utility to 

countries emerging from conflict (e.g., South Africa).23 Host-country actors often want to 

consult with people who can summarize how their own and other countries’ constitutions 

have confronted and solved complex and divisive issues.

Facilitate inclusive and participatory constitutional consultative processes. As the 

example from Rwanda (Box 6, page 19) shows, broad consultative processes that educate, 

inform, and engage citizens regarding constitutional questions underlying the foundation 

of the state can have a significant impact on legitimacy and subsequent acceptance of 

government authority. Such processes can be combined with civic and voter education 

(see the elections options below). For example, in Iraq in 2004-05, USAID supported the 

conduct of a massive civic/democracy dialogue program to educate Iraqis regarding 

federalism, constitutional issues, elections, and democracy. The program used Iraqi 

facilitators to hold a variety of seminars and forums throughout the country, eventually 

reaching nearly 800,000 citizens.

ELECTIONS

In post-conflict transitions, the holding of elections to establish new and legitimate 

political leadership is a key action and a top priority, often mandated by peace agreements. 

Elections, like new constitutions, mark the transition to restored sovereignty and a fresh 

start for the country. Elections are central to democratic governance. They embody the 

process of orderly contestation for power, yet due to their competitive nature (assuming 

they are free and fair) their outcomes are uncertain. These features mean that they hold 

the twin potentials of fanning the flames of conflict as well as dousing them by installing 

the winners in the seat of power. In fragile states, the ability of elections to inflame 

conflict can be strong: for example, Rwanda, Burundi, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Angola. 

Even in countries where democratic processes seem firmly in place, elections can trigger 

violence. The recent experience of Kenya, where the presidential election unleashed a 

storm of inter-tribal violent strife, comes to mind. Thus for stability operations, assisting 

post-conflict countries to hold elections is simultaneously highly important, visible, and 

risky.

While the common perception is that an election is a discrete event that happens on 

a particular day, it is more accurate to consider election-day voting as one element of a 

larger electoral process that includes political party formation and operation, electoral 

rules and frameworks, electoral administration, electoral oversight, and voter education 
22

and participation. Each of these can be both a driver and a damper of societal conflict. 

Here are the major issues related to elections in post-conflict situations that can affect 

stability operations.24

Political Party Formation and Operation.

Political parties are the mechanism for articulating, aggregating, and representing 

citizens’ interests. In principle, parties assemble a programmatic platform that seeks to 

appeal to citizens’ interests in health care, education, tax reform, or government efficiency. 

The reality, though, in many developing countries is that party platforms are based on 

ethnic, religious, and/or territorial identities, and/or on individual personalities of 

party leaders. Such platforms appeal to both grievance and greed; they often focus on 

resentments, a mythologized view of a glorious past, demonization of other societal 

groups, and a sense of victimhood. In the Balkans, for example, Slobodan Milosevic and 

his cronies were masters at creating and exploiting a sense of historical injustice among 

the Serbian population for political gain. When armed conflict breaks out, parties can 

cross the line and become armed militias.

A critical post-conflict stabilization task is to delink political party activities from 

paramilitary ones as part of programs for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration 

(DDR). Where political violence is institutionalized, as in Jamaica where criminal gangs 

affiliated with political parties are an ongoing menace to peaceful elections, rooting it out 

is difficult. Similarly, in the Middle East groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah combine 

insurgency and violence with politicking. In countries where bossism or warlord rule 

dominates politics, political stature and legitimacy derive from controlling armed goons 

and gangs.

Electoral Rules and Frameworks.

The choices made regarding the rules and how they influence the electoral system have 

a large impact on election outcomes and the possibilities for polarization and conflict or 

progress toward reconciliation and peace. Elections experts identify three aspects of the 

rules as defining the system:

• The number of office holders per given geographic district. Rules are usually 

based on population size within a designated geographic unit (as in the number of 

members of Congress per state in the United States), or a uniform number per unit 

(as in the U.S. Senate).

• The structure of the ballot that voters use to make their choices. Factors include 

such items as how candidates are listed on the ballot, how ballots are designed for 

voters with low levels of literacy (e.g., pictures, symbols, colors), and how long 

and complicated the ballots are.

• The formula that determines who wins. The two basic formulas are proportional 

representation, where multiple candidates are elected based on their share of the 

votes cast, and so-called “winner take all” formulas, where single candidates win 

or lose based on whether they get either a majority or a plurality of the votes 
23

cast.25 There are many variations on these formulas, such as whether voters choose 

individual candidates or party lists, whether those lists are open (voters influence 

the order in which party candidates are chosen) or closed (no voter say in which 

candidates are selected), etc.

Taken together, these rules influence the mix of candidates and parties who participate 

and win, the chances for a coalition government, the representation of minorities, the role 

of women, voter participation rates, and the stability of political leadership and the power 

of political parties. All of these can play a role in how effective representative bodies can 

be in resolving issues, working together, and making decisions in the public interest (as 

opposed to narrow sectarian gains). Box 7 illustrates the impact on rules in elections in 

Afghanistan. 26

Electoral Administration.

Managing elections is assigned to a government entity that is charged with handling 

the various tasks involved: political party and candidate registration, voter registration, 

identifying and training poll workers, contracting for ballot printing and delivery and 

for ballot box delivery, managing the polls, assuring security at the polls in cooperation 

with police and/or military forces, secure ballot collection and transfer, vote counting, 

and certification and communication of results. In some countries, this entity also is 

responsible for dispute resolution. This list is a challenging one for electoral commissions 

in any developing country, much less in one emerging from violence and conflict.

For example, conflict usually displaces large numbers of people, so registering voters 

becomes a major hurdle. In the case of national elections, the scale of the administrative 

task is enormous. For Afghanistan’s presidential elections in October 2004, approximately 

22,000 polling stations distributed throughout all the country’s provinces, plus 2,800 

stations in Iran and Pakistan to accommodate Afghan refugees, processed more than eight 

million voters.27 A key issue in post-conflict situations is whether the electoral commission 

is—and is perceived to be—neutral and fair. When election results are contested, the 

intended legitimacy outcome and the likelihood of maintaining progress toward peace 

are at risk.

Electoral oversight. A contributor to the perception and the reality of fairness and 

neutrality is providing for electoral oversight. In many, if not most, post-conflict situations, 

international elections observers have played an important role and have helped to 

Box 7. Afghanistan’s 2005 Parliamentary Elections.

Observers of the September 2005 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan noted that the rules used 

(called the single non-transferable vote, or SNTV) led to a fragmented parliament because the voting 

system discouraged the formation of political parties and allowed candidates to win with extremely 

small numbers of votes (in some cases only one or two percent of total votes). Because candidates could 

be elected with such small percentages of district votes, few incentives existed to form coalitions or to 

aggregate interests beyond narrow ethnic and local concerns. Former militia commanders and associates of the previous mujahedin parties were among those elected, and a number of them were able to 

gain control of parliamentary committees.
24

stem abuses by those seeking to influence outcomes through fraud, manipulation, 

intimidation, and violence. However, including host country actors in oversight is critical 

too and contributes to capacity for future elections and the development of civil society 

groups that have the skills and commitment to keeping elections free and fair by serving 

as a check against abuses. In situations where local actors are put at risk in exercising 

oversight, the presence of international observers can sometimes afford some protection 

due to the extra resources and the international media spotlight they attract.

Voter education and participation. Educated and informed voters are necessary for 

democratic governance to function effectively. Elections where voters are swayed by the 

greed and grievance arguments and misinformation of ethnic, religious, and territorial 

based campaigning are unlikely to provide a basis on which to build a peaceful and 

resilient state. Citizens may be misinformed, fearful, or ignorant of what the electoral 

process means, how it functions, and what their role is, particularly in post-conflict 

countries without a history of voting. As with the notion of democracy more generally, 

in some cases citizens’ expectations of what the act of voting will mean for them are far 

from realistic. Sometimes, citizens may be quick to revert to violence if they feel that their 

expectations are not met, and this may be encouraged and abetted by spoilers aiming to 

profit from ongoing chaos and instability. Managing expectations of what a democracy will 

deliver is important in all new political processes and is especially important in elections. 

Voter education can be combined with broader civic education. In post-conflict situations, 

civic education programs often use public forums (newspapers, posters, billboards, radio 

talks shows, and popular dramatic media such as soap operas) and focus on explaining 

the terms of the peace agreement, the role of citizenship in democratic governance, and 

political party functioning, as well as elections and voting.

Trade-offs.

Early versus later elections. The major trade-off with elections has to do with the 

time frame: elections sooner versus later. The downsides of early elections have been well 

documented, with the potential for electoral campaigns and voting to reignite violence 

and conflict and to harden societal divisions being the key concern. Examples are Angola 

in 1992 and Bosnia in 1996. In volatile post-conflict situations where the restoration of 

security is incomplete, ethnic and/or religious tensions remain high, and political 

campaigning capitalizes upon and exacerbates societal cleavages, holding elections can 

provoke instability and violent outbursts leading to riots, politically motivated killings, 

attacks at polling places, and roving gangs of armed criminals disrupting efforts to maintain 

order. Another downside is that early elections can provide anti-democratic leadership 

with a veneer of legitimacy that masks efforts to dismantle reform and progress toward 

genuine democratic governance. Holding elections before the machinery of government 

is sufficiently capable of exerting checks and balances opens the door to entrenching 

authoritarian “wolves” in democratic “sheep’s” clothing.28

The case for elections sooner rather than later rests on a couple of points. First, electoral 

timetables are often specified as part of peace negotiations, and thus S&R actors do not 

have the leeway to postpone elections unilaterally. Second, pressures in the host country 

to move relatively quickly to install a legitimately chosen government and to return to 
25

sovereignty can drive stability operations toward early elections. For example, in Iraq in 

2004 the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) scrapped its plans for a gradual transition 

to sovereignty under intense pressure from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior Shi’a cleric. 

Thousands of his supporters demonstrated against the CPA’s proposed timetable of 

regional caucuses leading to general elections a year later and demanded direct elections 

within the year.

Short-term convenience versus long-term resiliency. Another trade-off is between 

convenience and cost for electoral systems versus a system that offers the best chances 

for long-term political resilience. In post-conflict countries, where the capacity to hold 

elections is limited, S&R actors are often the ones making decisions regarding the electoral 

system parameters enumerated above and recommending them to host country interim 

governments. For example, as the above box on Afghanistan’s 2005 parliamentary 

elections shows, the single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system failed to put in place 

a foundation for cohesive political parties and collaborative policymaking. SNTV was 

selected in part because it was easy to explain to uneducated voters and its simplicity 

facilitated balloting and vote counting.29

In post-Saddam Iraq, the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) chose 

nationwide proportional representation on recommendations from the UN because it 

solved several operational problems. It avoided having to create electoral districts and 

conduct a population census, it sidestepped the problem of having to assign internally 

displaced persons and diaspora members to districts (since the entire nation was the 

voting district), and it made the mechanics of voting and vote counting relatively easy. 

Although some democracy experts argued that data from Iraq’s last census and from 

citizens’ food ration cards could be used to allocate parliamentary seats by province, 

thereby enabling subnational level proportional representation, the CPA and the IGC 

opted for the national-level electoral system based on its simplicity and the fact that it 

avoided potential controversy over assigning numbers of seats in the absence of current 

census data. The outcome, as numerous critics pointed out, was that Sunni provinces 

(where insurgency combined with a lack of timely political mobilization and a disastrous 

decision on the part of some Sunni groups to boycott the election led to low voter turnout) 

ended up seriously underrepresented in the new parliament. This outcome fueled 

polarization and expanded violent insurgency.30

Options.

As previously noted, options here may be limited by peace accords that establish 

preset timetables and by senior-level decisions of the international community. In postconflict countries, S&R actors often play a strong role in supporting this key component 

of state reconstruction because of the administrative demands and the costs of organizing 

elections. Given the highly technical nature of electoral systems design and electoral 

administration, the options identified here cannot cover the full range of S&R actions 

that are necessary and desirable. In post-conflict countries, it is usually the UN that takes 

the lead on elections. Several organizations focus specifically on democracy assistance 

related to elections and electoral systems and constitute a key resource for additional 

options and details on what can be undertaken.31
26

As part of DDR programs and/or other security lines of effort, pay particular attention 

to breaking the link between armed groups and the political process. Because the timetable 

for elections in post-conflict situations does not always match up with progress on restoring 

security, the risk of armed groups becoming involved in election violence can be high. 

In quite a few countries, former combatants seek to create political parties, run for office, 

and maintain their paramilitary connections. In others, politicians turn to criminal gangs 

and militias to bolster their political clout, intimidate rivals, and improve their chances of 

exploiting opportunities in the future. In Haiti, for example, peacekeepers identified four 

categories of gangs, three of which related to political activity: gangs fighting for political 

change in support of ex-president Aristide, thugs hired by Aristide’s cronies working for 

pay, gangs associated with political parties, and criminals exploiting Haiti’s chaos.32

This option clearly demonstrates the intimate connection between the state’s security 

function and political participation and accountability. Military forces engaged in 

stability operations can play a role directly through disarming groups as part of DDR. 

In nonpermissive environments, they can take part in vetting host country actors who 

may have political ambitions to identify those with links to militias or insurgents. During 

electoral campaigns, military forces can provide training to host country security actors 

to improve their capacity for protecting people at political rallies, maintaining security at 

polling stations, and dealing with post-election unrest once results are announced.

Support political party formation to build inclusive parties. Since ethnicity, religion, 

social exclusion, and territorial inequalities are key drivers of conflict, they become 

the critical political issues in post-conflict societies. The political parties that emerge to 

exploit them tend to be organizationally weak, sectarian, ideological, and lacking in a 

programmatic agenda. Efforts to ban party formation along ethnic, religious, or regional 

lines have not proved terribly effective, serving largely to push those divides inside of 

parties as opposed to between parties. Some basic regulation on legal status, funding, 

and membership is necessary.

Support to party formation can take the form of training and support for dialogue on 

core principles of inclusion and tolerance: for example, acceptance of the rights of people 

to hold alternate political views, adherence to the view that political disputes should be 

settled through elections, and acceptance of the value of discourse and dialogue. Fostering 

coalitions of different parties that represent various societal groups is another possible 

form of support. Early in stability operations, this could take the form of meetings to 

establish trust and open the door to dialogue. Further into post-conflict reconstruction, 

host country actors can take the lead on collaboration. For example, with international 

donor support, 20 political parties in Guatemala assembled in a forum in 2002-03 to 

review progress on the 1996 peace accords and develop a new policy platform for the 

future. The multi-party forum produced a Shared National Agenda that endorsed norms 

of political compromise and democracy in addition to proposing a set of governance 

reforms.33 Despite some successes, political engineering by external peacekeeping forces 

can only be limited. While centrist, programmatically based parties may be the ultimate 

aim in stability operations, forming parties on this basis in situations where identity 

politics is what engages people runs the risk of party formation with no real roots in 

the country. Military actors can provide advice and some resources, but ultimately host 

country political actors need to define and own their agendas.
27

Build host-country capacity for elections management and monitoring. Successfully 

managing and overseeing elections is important to setting post-conflict states on the 

path to stability. However, the tasks involved, particularly, for a national campaign 

and election, are formidable for a new or fragile governments with few resources and 

organizational capacity. Numerous international NGOs that specialize in elections can be 

contracted by donors to fill the capacity gap. As noted, relying on international expertise 

allows elections to move forward on what are often quite ambitious timetables, but part 

of the scope of work for the international organizations contracted for this assistance 

needs to be focused on transferring capacity to host-country public sector entities, such 

as electoral commissions. In addition, host-country election monitoring capacity needs to 

be built as well, which targets local civil society groups, associations, and political parties. 

International observers can be welcome 

contributors to election monitoring, 

and can add to the certification of 

free and fair elections that confers 

legitimacy on the outcome. The value 

of local observers should be recognized, 

though, since their presence and 

capacity will be key to future democratic 

transitions. Sometimes overlooked as 

sources of expertise are organizations 

based in the developing world. The 

Electoral Institute of Southern Africa 

(EISA) is an example of an African 

NGO that can provide assistance to 

host-country actors and build their 

capacity; it is also illustrative of a 

regional organization that is working 

with post-conflict states in Africa. 

Box 8 provides some details.

Another critical capacity for holding elections is security. As noted, the elections 

process in post-conflict states takes place in situations with limited state capacity to 

assure basic safety and security, police forces with weak capacity to enforce the rule of 

law, and actors with access to weapons. Politicians with private militias, and/or with 

the ability to mobilize the disaffected and employed for political purposes, are a risk 

to an election process that strives to avoid placing citizens in danger at political events 

and at the polls and that will legitimize the outcome as free and fair. Assuring security 

directly and training local police and military in crowd control and poll station security 

are important roles for military actors as part of stability operations.

Build representative local government. In most post-conflict situations, S&R 

operations have a primary focus on national elections and a secondary focus on provincial 

or regional elections as the main markers of transition to a new government founded 

on formal representative legitimacy. However, below the provincial or regional level 

is another governance arena: municipalities, towns, and villages. The discussion of 

decentralization above recounted how efforts to assign responsibilities to lower levels 

Box 8. Capacity Building for Elections Management 

and Monitoring.

EISA is a South African NGO founded in 1996 

to provide capacity building for government 

departments, electoral management bodies, political 

parties and democracy civil society organizations in 

the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) 

and beyond. EISA aims to advance democratic values, 

practices and enhance the credibility of electoral 

processes. EISA is currently the secretariat of the 

Electoral Commissions Forum composed of electoral 

commissions in the SADC region and established in 

1998. EISA is also the secretariat of the SADC Election 

Support Network comprising election-related civil 

society organizations established in 1997. EISA has 

field offices in Mozambique, the Democratic Republic 

of Congo, and Madagascar. See www.eisa.org.za.
28

of government are often included in the reforms that military operations are charged 

with putting in place and supporting. That discussion remarked that decentralization 

of responsibilities does not necessarily mandate that the determination of local office 

holders be decided by elections; however, instituting local elections can lay groundwork 

for broader democratization. Representative local government mechanisms encourage 

dialogue, problem solving, and conflict resolution on a manageable scale around issues 

of common community concern. In Phase III and Phase IV operations, they also give 

military forces a point of contact with localities.

The absence of a formal legal framework for local representation does not automatically 

rule out building such structures. Depending upon the country, there may be traditional 

structures that can fulfill this function. Or local councils can be created on an ad hoc 

basis, and rather than have S&R actors designate their membership, informal “selection” 

processes can be used to establish some measure of representation. S&R actors used 

this approach successfully in post-Saddam Iraq and established a nested hierarchy 

of councils that began at the neighborhood and reached upwards to municipalities, 

districts, and provinces. The creation of councils helped to foster an Iraqi constituency 

for decentralized and representative local government that ultimately found its way into 

the new constitution. Box 9 provides some guidance on the formation of local councils.34

TRADITIONAL SOURCES OF AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY

As discussed in the introductory section, the type of government that stability 

operations seek to establish is based on the fundamentals of the nation-state and Western 

democracy, with formal institutions in the three separate branches of government subject 

to the rule of law.35 These institutions regulate the state through the constitutionally 

defined framework of checks and balances and ensure democratic governance through 

popular elections. The authority and legitimacy of the modern state rest on this secular, 

formal foundation. However, in much of the non-Western world, authority and legitimacy 

flow from indigenous sources grounded in religion, ethnicity, tribal or kinship affiliation, 

and/or territorial identity. In post-conflict countries where the effective reach of the 

formal state is often limited; where the formal state has been damaged or destroyed; or 

where the formal state behaves in a predatory manner; traditional sources of authority 

can provide an alternative to, or a refuge from, state incapacity or depredation.

S&R actors have sought to enlist traditional authority sources in stability operations to 

curb violence and restore security and to implement political settlements and governance 

reforms. In Iraq, village mukhtars, tribal sheikhs, and Islamic clerics have all been tapped 

by military and civilian S&R actors for these purposes. The “Awakening” movement in 

Anbar province, where Sunni sheikhs joined with Coalition forces to confront al-Qaeda 

in Iraq is one security-related example. Post-conflict governance reconstruction efforts in 

Sierra Leone and Liberia have included reaching out to local chiefs as a means to restore 

governance, though this needs to be done with care, as Box 11 (page 30) on Sierra Leone 

shows.
29

Box 9. Local Council Formation in Iraq.

A priority of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was to establish a new city council in Baghdad 

in 2003. The USAID-funded Local Governance Program (LGP) worked with the military, CPA, and 

Baghdad City officials to design a council system for the Baghdad metropolitan area. The group’s efforts 

led to a design with three levels of councils: neighborhood advisory councils (NACs), district advisory 

councils (DACs), and an interim city council (ICC). It was decided to build up the city council by first 

holding town-hall-style gatherings in each neighborhood. At the initial town meeting, the concept of a 

neighborhood council to represent residents to coalition military authority, the CPA, and ultimately to 

the city was explained. After one or two additional meetings, those attending the meeting then would 

elect the council by secret ballot. Candidates could be self-nominated or nominated by others attending. 

Individuals not attending the meeting also could be nominated by someone at the meeting. Candidates 

then made brief speeches on why they should be elected.

A key question was the number of people to have on the councils. Too large councils risked being 

dysfunctional; too small ones would not be representative in any meaningful way. The design settled 

on was proportional representation at the neighborhood and district levels, based on population size, 

with a limit of three representatives per district to be chosen for the city council. The ICC ended up with 

42 members, plus a few slots added to assure minority representation. NACs varied in size from around 

10-15 depending upon population, and each NAC sent 3-5 representatives to the district councils, whose 

size varied according to the number of neighborhoods in the district.

The formation process could not be formal; the legal framework was in flux (the CPA had suspended 

the constitution); electoral rules and voter rolls were nonexistent; and neighborhood and district 

populations could not be accurately determined in the absence of a recent census. Necessarily, the 

process that emerged was an informal one, based on democratic principles but falling short of full-scale 

representative democracy. The town-meeting notion, and holding two or three publicized meetings 

before informal election of the council, was the formation process employed. Procedures for removing 

and replacing advisory council members were recommended to the ICC by S&R personnel, and quickly 

adopted and mandated for the DACS and NACS. The procedures required open meetings to discuss 

reasons for dismissal and at least 60 percent approval of the advisory council members. The advisory 

councils thus became self-policing when individual members were perceived as not representing the 

neighborhood, district, or city.

Traditional decisionmaking and conflict resolution mechanisms are of particular 

appeal for stability operations in that they can serve to address key post-conflict concerns, 

such as the need for restorative justice (see Box 12, page 34, and the rule of law section) and 

legitimization of consultative processes to introduce new governance rules (for example, 

new constitutions or legislative bodies), or to build consensus among social groups on a 

path forward toward peace and reconstruction. In Afghanistan, the jirga and the shura are 

traditional mechanisms for deliberation and conflict resolution that have been integrated 

into stability operations and formally into the constitutionally-determined design of 

legislative bodies. Box 10 provides a brief overview of these two council structures.36

Traditional authority sources raise several issues for stability operations. First, 

traditional authority structures and procedures are inherently exclusionary, given 

their ethnic, tribal, and/or religious foundation. It is important to recognize that some 

countries are multi-ethnic, so there is not one single constellation of traditional and 

informal authority, but several. What one group recognizes and is comfortable with will 

not necessarily be accepted by others. Thus, as instruments for broad social inclusion,
30

traditional authority structures and procedures have limits. Second, the values embodied 

in traditional authorities are often nondemocratic (or as sometimes characterized, predemocratic,) discriminatory to women, and contrary to international standards for 

human rights. So without some changes, they may not serve to inculcate democratic 

governance that will build a solid base for stability and legitimacy. Third, traditional 

authorities, as enduring features of the socio-cultural landscape of the host country, may 

by virtue of past history be among the sources of grievance that led to conflict, violence, 

and international intervention. If their past record and practices are not recognized, their 

inclusion in S&R governance reform may sow seeds of future conflict, as Box 11 illustrates 

in Sierra Leone.37

These caveats mean that S&R actors need to “do their homework” to develop an 

understanding of the political, cultural, and historical factors related to traditional 

authorities to appropriately leverage the contribution they can make to stability 

operations.38 Part of this understanding is the recognition that when S&R actors use 

governance terms such as democracy, participation, equity, rule of law, and so on, host 

Box 11. Local Chiefdoms and Governance Reform in Sierra Leone.

The chiefdom system is recognized as one of the sources of the war in Sierra Leone. Local chiefs abused 

their powers of taxation, land allocation, labor mobilization, and village citizenship granting, which 

exacerbated social exclusion and alienated youth. The disaffected became targets for recruitment by the 

Revolutionary United Front. Post-conflict governance reconstruction programs focused on decentralization run the risk of reinforcing the powers of local chiefs without sufficient checks on their arbitrary 

use of power. The relationship of the traditional chiefdom system to a new decentralized district administration has yet to be clarified. In neighboring Liberia where there were similar dynamics, an alternative to chiefs was the formation of councils that provided basic democratic rule at the village level. 

Box 10. Afghanistan’s Jirgas and Shuras.

The jirga is a Pashtun institution for discussing and resolving social issues. Participants are all male and 

decisions are made by consensus according to the code of Pashtunwali (see Box 1). Jirgas may be convened at various levels of tribal organization, from individual clans to tribal confederations. Especially 

in remote rural areas, Afghans have preferred jirgas to the cumbersome and frequently corrupt formal 

justice system of various central administrations for resolving disputes. Afghans have preferred jirgas 

to the cumbersome and corrupt formal justice systems for resolving disputes. The equivalent institution 

for Afghan Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks is the shura, which is both an advisory council and adjudication body comprised of local elders and elites. Shuras effectively replace the court system for rural 

tribal areas, although they are limited in that women are not culturally able to appear in these forums. 

Women, in general, are represented by male counterparts in the formal and informal judicial systems, 

making justice problematic for this population. On a local scale, district mullahs act as decision-making 

adjudicators of family, civil, and criminal cases in predominantly rural areas.

Reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan has made recourse to these traditional authority mechanisms to legitimize the process of state-building, from the well-known 2002 loya jirga (grand assembly) 

that sought to combine reconciliation with consensus on the way forward, to their incorporation into 

the Afghan constitution. The two houses of the parliament have been designated the mashrano jirga 

(upper house) and wolasi jirga (lower house).
31

country actors will interpret these through their traditional lenses. The result is likely 

to be a very different image from the democratic institutional architecture that is the 

intended objective of stability operations. It is also important to recognize that traditional 

authorities have their own interests and agendas; these may not necessarily coincide with 

the aims of stability operations. In many post-conflict situations, traditional authorities are 

active in the formal political arena and thus bridge the traditional, indigenous governance 

mechanisms and the new governance architecture under construction with the assistance 

of international peacekeepers.

Trade-offs.

Traditional sources of legitimacy versus formal, institutional structures to generate 

legitimacy. The key trade-off with traditional authorities is between building democratic 

governance on a traditional foundation that, if effective, enjoys some legitimacy and 

supports stability in the near term, but may not be supportive of democracy-enhancing 

values, norms, or practices in the longer term. The achievement of the end-state conditions 

calls for adaptation of basic democratic governance principles to the political and cultural 

realities of the host country. Reaching stability objectives can be accelerated by building 

upon the local power and authority bases of traditional leaders and by seeking to create 

win-win solutions for them and for peacekeepers. 

The risk is that such accommodation can reinforce the status quo and empower 

those who already have power. The danger is that it can entrench nondemocratic (or 

anti-democratic) actors—particularly because cooperation with peacekeeping missions 

usually translates into access to, and control over, externally provided resources—and 

inhibit later reforms. The worst-case scenario here is a reinforcement of abusive wartime 

power-holders, exacerbation of societal divisions, and a reigniting of violent conflict.

Cooption of traditional authorities versus the risk of undermining their source 

of authority. Another trade-off is between inclusion of traditional authorities and 

mechanisms in stability operations and the risk that they may be delegitimized in the eyes 

of some host country societal groups. In this situation, the benefits that peacekeepers seek 

to gain through connecting their reforms to culturally recognized and valued traditional 

sources of legitimate governance may have the opposite effect. Some in the host country 

population may see them as corrupted by foreign influence and reject them.

Options.

The choice here is not between whether or not to interact with, and seek to integrate, 

traditional authorities as part of stability operations. Clearly, obtaining the buy-in of 

local leaders is central to successful peacekeeping, as experience in Iraq and Afghanistan 

demonstrates. Further, traditional mechanisms, such as jirgas and shuras can help to move 

governance reforms forward in ways that introduce change but resonate with culturally 

accepted and valued practices. 

Assess traditional authority structures and procedures as sources of support and 

legitimacy for governance reforms. FM 3-07 stresses that stability operations need hostcountry ownership to succeed. That ownership needs to extend beyond state actors in 
32

ministries, departments, formal courts, and the military. Their buy-in is important, but in 

many post-conflict societies the reach of the state has been limited and—for much of the 

population—distrusted and feared. So the question becomes, beyond the formal state, 

what traditional actors and governance mechanisms do citizens trust and turn to? S&R 

actors need to identify who in the host-country traditional society commands respect and 

authority, and what structures and procedures they employ to exercise that authority. 

In the immediate post-conflict period where peacekeepers face a debilitated or 

destroyed state, these traditional sources of authority may be among the only functioning 

governance mechanisms available outside of a few pockets of capacity in the capital city. 

Importantly, citizens are much more likely to put their faith in these trusted authority 

figures than in the untried and weakly established systems of a new government, 

especially when the perception of loyalty and constraints on betrayal that come with 

ties within tribe, religion, or ethnicity lead to distrust of government officials from other 

groups. For example, public opinion surveys conducted in Iraq in 2003-05 revealed that 

citizens’ trust in imams (Islamic clerics) was consistently higher than in public officials of 

the interim government.

Integrate traditional and new governance mechanisms to enhance cultural relevance 

and acceptability of the new while addressing the democratic deficiencies of the old. As 

noted, S&R actors face the challenge of relying on traditional authorities and governance 

mechanisms to move the stabilization process forward while at the same time building 

bridges to a new political and administrative order. Experience suggests that a middle 

road can be found between simply reinforcing already powerful traditional actors and 

wholesale replacement by a new system. 

Following this middle road means engaging with traditional authorities and using 

indigenous governance mechanisms, but opening them up to include new participants 

and to modify some of the decision rules. This option creates hybrid mechanisms that 

combine the old and the new. For example, Afghanistan’s 2002 loya jirga included 

traditional leaders, but introduced popular representation and the inclusion of women 

in the deliberations.39 UN-sponsored community development programs in Afghanistan 

used the shura as a model to create consultative committees for local decisionmaking 

whose membership extended beyond male village elders. In Iraq, local council formation 

in provincial municipalities began by consulting mukhtars to identify council member 

candidates, and then gradually instituted more representative and transparent candidate 

selection procedures. 

A model for allowing local communities to manage development of key infrastructure 

needs has been a common program in post-conflict societies. This model often utilizes 

the accepted traditional leadership of a community but introduces transparent processes 

in decisionmaking and management of funds, publicizes decisions, and provides for a 

recall process.40 Hybrid mechanisms for dispute resolution are important for integrating 

elements of internationally accepted legal standards into indigenous adjudication 

institutions, as discussed below in the section on rule of law. Such hybrid mechanisms 

can build egalitarian and human rights principles into patriarchal and customary legal 

practices. 
33

RULE OF LAW

An established rule of law (ROL) is one of the end state conditions listed in FM 3-07. 

ROL plays a critical role in enforcing the “rules of the game” and in making checks and 

balances fulfill their intended function by imposing legally defined limits on the state’s 

ability to exercise power arbitrarily. ROL concerns the protection of persons and property, 

the eradication of impunity, and the establishment of procedures and institutions that 

operate fairly and transparently throughout the national territory.41 The effectiveness of 

the rule of law depends upon how it is applied in practice by the state’s justice-sector 

institutions and security forces and the extent to which the population accepts it as just 

and legitimate. As the preceding section illustrates, this latter effectiveness requirement 

can be enhanced by incorporating local cultural, ethnic, and religious traditions into 

ROL. 

Achieving ROL gains in post-conflict environments will depend upon rebuilding 

(or creating) functioning police forces and judicial systems with the capacity to resolve 

disputes, adjudicate court cases, regulate commercial activities, and ensure that criminals 

are apprehended, tried, and incarcerated humanely. However, making progress on ROL 

in post-conflict countries is difficult; ROL is either seriously dysfunctional and corrupt, or 

destroyed and nonfunctional. For example, in Liberia, S&R actors found that courthouses, 

prisons, and police stations were severely damaged or destroyed. Personnel (e.g., clerks, 

bailiffs, etc.) were insufficient, and those remaining had few supplies (no stationery, law 

books, legal forms) and little operating infrastructure (no means of communication, no 

electricity).

Of critical concern in countries where the conflict involved serious misdeeds and 

abuses is restorative justice as part of the healing and trust building necessary for a 

functional social contract between the state and citizens and among various ethnic, tribal, 

and religious groups in society. Dealing with this need is usually accomplished through 

truth and reconciliation commissions, whose resource requirements and demands on an 

already devastated justice system can be daunting. For example, Rwanda had 130,000 

people imprisoned for genocide-related crimes in the mid 1990s. The post-genocide 

government employed a modified version of a traditional dispute resolution system, 

the gacaca court, to address both accountability and reconciliation functions for certain 

categories of crimes. Some 10,000 gacaca courts were established. The formal courts 

handled the most serious category.42 In Liberia, councils were created to settle disputes 

and promote stability. These councils provided a participatory mechanism for addressing 

disputes and other issues of the village, often replaced the village chief, and established 

principles of inclusion, transparency, and democratic behavior that provided some basis 

for follow-on programs to rebuild the justice system.43 Box 12, on traditional reconciliation 

processes in Papua New Guinea, is another example of restorative justice via informal 

traditional means.44
34

Box 12. Restorative Justice in Papua New Guinea.

Traditional adjudicatory and conflict resolution practices can link reconciliation at the grassroots level 

with progress with peace negotiations at the political level. Western concepts of justice emphasize 

establishing guilt and enacting punishment. In Papua New Guinea, traditional concepts of justice differ 

by putting the “healing” of the community at the forefront. This is achieved through negotiations in 

which the parties to a conflict identify a common solution with the help of a mediator. At their core is a 

process of shame, forgiveness, restitution and reconciliation. Shaming serves to internalize the guilt and 

repentance, and affects the whole family or clan. Restitution implies offering gifts as a sign of genuine 

regret. Forgiveness implies the acceptance of remorse, which leads to reconciliation. This permits the 

restoration of normal life and is accompanied by a ceremony of restoration that includes the whole 

community. In Bougainville, following the secessionist violence, churches, women’s groups, and NGOs 

supported a grassroots-level reconciliation process, training mediators and supporting the conduct of a 

large number of mediation sessions.

Linking the formal peace negotiations from above with these informal reconciliation processes from 

below contributed to the success of post-conflict peace-building. Customary practices were also included 

in political reconciliation: prominent political figures participated in similar ceremonies, which further 

connected the formal and informal processes. The long-term challenge is scaling up these processes and 

linking them to the formal justice system. The Constitution of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville 

lays the legal foundation for this connection by recognizing “the aspiration of Bougainvilleans for the 

integration of custom and introduced law” (section 45(2) (a)) and the need to encourage the utilization 

of customary dispute resolution and reconciliation practices (section 51 extensively, section 13 and 115 

among others).*

*See www.paclii.org/pg/legis/consol_act/ac185/.

Trade-offs.

Short-term versus long-term. Several trade-offs stand out in considering ROL in 

post-conflict situations. The most salient is the timeframe issue: short-term versus longterm. Given the levels of dysfunction and destruction in the justice system in most postconflict countries, what should be done immediately and what should become longerterm initiatives? There is general agreement that in the short-term ROL lines of effort 

that directly support the restoration of security are the highest priority; for example, 

police force vetting and training in proper procedures and human rights combined with 

community engagement and oversight. However, such early interventions need to be 

supported by the restoration of functioning courts, limits on political interference in 

judicial proceedings, and effective operation of checks and balances to address impunity 

and accountability. Otherwise the initial gains will not be sustained, as Box 13 on Haiti 

illustrates.45

Formal justice systems versus traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. A 

second trade-off is between access to justice through the formal justice system versus 

through traditional justice and alternative dispute resolution. A recognized bias in ROL 

reforms is a focus on formal institutions and procedures. Whole-of-government teams 

in peacekeeping missions tend to draw upon lawyers whose experience in developing 

countries may be limited. Their orientation is to import legal frameworks and practices
35

from the United States or Europe that are a poor fit with the host-country legal system 

and its shattered capacity. In many post-conflict countries, access to the formal justice 

system for the majority of citizens—especially the poor and those in remote regions—is 

infeasible, and traditional justice mechanisms may be the only viable option they have. 

Further, the justice abuses inflicted upon citizens by the previous government, and that 

led them to fear and distrust the formal justice system, make it unlikely that they would 

seek out the formal system even if it were available. So, particularly in the short term, 

informal traditional conflict resolution mechanisms involving local chiefs or tribal elders 

can be useful in rebuilding ROL. At a minimum, S&R actors should consider recourse 

to such mechanisms as a complement to rebuilding the capacity of the formal justice 

system. 

Options.

There is debate regarding the effectiveness of ROL interventions wherever these have 

been undertaken, not just in post-conflict countries. Clear paths to successfully restoring 

or building a state grounding in ROL are highly context specific. One important lesson 

that affects options is that focusing on the formal features of the country’s legal and justice 

system misses the mark if it leads to overlooking how the system actually functions and 

where citizens traditionally turn for dispute resolution and legal protection. 

Useful guidance on options for S&R actors can be found in the U.S. Army’s ROL 

handbook (Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, U.S. Army, 2008) and 

the ROL toolkit for post-conflict states of the United Nations High Commissioner for 

Human Rights (UNCHR).46 FM 3-07’s Chapter 3 enumerates stability operations tasks 

associated with ROL. Their extensive guidance is not repeated here. A few key action 

options that relate directly to the legitimacy issue that is one of the major threads are 

discussed below.

Focus on specific deficiencies in the legal system that host-country stakeholders 

are concerned about. For stability operations, the menu of immediate options should 

address key concerns that citizens and public officials have that can be addressed in the 

here-and-now. The longer-term transformation and institutionalization of ROL into an 

effective check on abuse of power, overseer of the executive, adjudicator of disputes, and 

keeper of law and order cannot be achieved within the timeframe of most international 

Box 13. Backsliding on Police Practices and Human Rights in Haiti.

From 1993 to mid-1996, the Organization of American States/United Nations International Civilian 

Mission in Haiti (known as MICIVIH) placed human rights observers throughout the country. The 

mission expanded beyond human rights monitoring to include training for police, judges, and 

prosecutors; medical services for victims of human rights abuses; civic education and legal awareness 

building with NGOs; and eventually elections monitoring. A United Nations Support Mission took 

over from MICIVIH. The efforts of MICIVIH and subsequent interventions realized some success in 

improving human rights and curbing police abuses. These efforts, though, were not supported by 

effective medium-term justice system reforms, and were undermined by the political maneuverings of 

the Haitian elite. The police have reverted to corrupt and abusive practices.
36

peacekeeping missions. Thus any short-term interventions will necessarily be piecemeal 

and incremental. Begin with an assessment of how dispute resolution and justice are 

currently taking place, compare these practices with the existing formal system, and 

identify what reforms are possible and desirable.47 This may mean, for example, making 

adjustments in existing laws and regulations, or formalizing traditional practices to make 

them fairer, more efficient, and better aligned with international standards. Within the 

legal community, there are some debates on how best to link traditional practices to formal 

systems. For example, the Afghan Judicial Reform Commission argues that jirgas and 

shuras will not be needed once the formal justice system is in place. Senior judges, though, 

consider that such traditional structures cannot be supplanted if citizens throughout the 

country are to have access to justice.

Introduce and model behaviors consistent with international ROL standards. When 

peacekeepers are working with host-country police and/or military forces to assure 

security, it is important for them to demonstrate behaviors in their interactions with 

citizens that align with international standards for ROL and that show respect for local 

cultural practices. These standards are communicated in training sessions and one-on-one 

coaching with host-country security forces, but modeling the appropriate behaviors in 

joint missions will reinforce the changes the training and coaching seek to instill. Because 

police and military are the main points of contact citizens have with the state’s formal 

justice system, the quality of those interactions strongly influences perceptions of the 

state’s legitimacy. Ensure that training programs introduce rules for transparency and 

accountability and find ways to bring these new processes into a public debate through 

use of the media. Doing so builds expectations of future forms of governance.

Recognize that the key to sustainable ROL reforms will lie to an important degree 

outside the justice system. Various observers and analysts have noted that conceiving of 

rebuilding ROL in terms of train-and-equip strategies alone leads to applying band-aids 

when major surgery is required. Box 13 (page 35) on Haiti is a case in point. ROL reforms 

cut to the heart of the politics and economics of post-conflict governance reconstruction. 

Political constraints—such as the delicate dynamics of power-sharing agreements, the 

lack of political will to address past abuses, the entrenched power of economic and 

military elites to resist change—have a strong influence on the potential for progress. 

Besides providing resources and assistance for the technical dimensions of rebuilding 

ROL, S&R actors need to engage with those actors whose interests and incentives will be 

affected by justice and other governance reforms to bring them on board, or neutralize 

them if necessary.48 Again, there is evidence that building processes that both address 

key needs (make important differences in the lives of citizens) and establish expectations 

of reform can expand and enhance pressures for change. 

CITIZENS AND CIVIL SOCIETY

In the modern state, the ultimate accountability relationship is to citizens. As noted 

above, the “social contract” means that government is accountable to meet the expectations 

of its citizens. In principle, democratization opens up the state to increased accountability 

to the citizenry, both through the political process and through administrative systems 

that are more transparent and responsive. Social, economic, and political factors are 
37

important in that differential access to power and influence plays an important role in 

shaping those citizens to whom governments are more or less accountable. 

A large amount of experience and analysis has shown that the extent to which the state 

is accountable to citizens depends, among other factors, upon how citizens are organized 

to exercise voice and advocacy. Without the ability to come together to aggregate their 

interests, individual citizens are unlikely to be in a position to push for accountability 

when public actors may be disinclined to be responsive. Thus, the role of civil society, as 

a collective set of organizations, comes to the fore.49 Civil society organizations (CSOs) 

help to aggregate citizens’ interests and pursue advocacy. CSOs are also critical for 

providing information on, and demystification of, government policies, regulations, 

and responsibilities so that citizens can become knowledgeable consumers of policies 

and programs, as well as informed voters. CSOs often collaborate with the media to 

disseminate their message. Indeed, an active and free press is key to both generating and 

disseminating the information necessary for citizens to hold public officials and agencies 

accountable.

In the developing world—and especially in failed and post-conflict countries—the 

nature and quality of state-citizen relations briefly outlined here are far from the reality on 

the ground. Weak states have little capacity or political will to respond to citizens’ needs 

or preferences. As the introduction describes, when the resources and power of the state 

are the “prize” societal elites seek to control and capture, the relationship between state 

actors and citizens becomes either predatory or patronage-based. Citizens attempt to ally 

themselves with powerful patrons who can offer them protection and basic necessities, 

or they seek to avoid any contact with state actors, out of fear. 

Because many of the drivers of conflict derive from societal division and exclusion 

(ethnic, tribal, religious, or territorial) and these are augmented by conflict, civil society 

tends to be organized along these same societal fault-lines. This dynamic fractures relations 

among citizens and among CSOs, not simply creating negative relations between citizens 

and the state but destroying social capital (defined as trust and communication within 

and across social groups). A weak and divided civil society bereft of social capital then 

contributes to conflict and can lead to violence.

It should be noted, however, that all societies experience conflict among social groups 

of some kind, but not all conflict leads to violence. In pluralist political systems, both 

democracies and, to some extent, semi-authoritarian states, that conflict is channeled 

through the institutional architecture of the state: issues are debated in parliament and 

public forums, laws are passed, court cases are pursued, public agencies hold citizen 

consultations, and so on. Civil society participates through lobbying and advocacy, 

supporting political parties and candidates, and on occasion by demonstrations in the 

streets. When conflict moves beyond these institutionalized channels for mobilization 

and expression, the potential for violence emerges. This potential increases when the state 

is weak, cannot maintain its monopoly on the use of force, and is captured by one group 

of elites or another. Then mobilization in civil society can lead to riots, targeted attacks 

on individuals or groups, and ethnic cleansing, in some cases with complicit acceptance 

or active encouragement by state actors. The ensuing process of the breakdown of order 

and descent into state failure and societal collapse destroys trust among members of civil 

society and in the state. 
38

Stability operations face two interconnected sets of tasks related to civil society and 

governance. The first is rebuilding relations among citizens within civil society. One of 

these tasks has already been addressed above in the discussion on ROL; that is the pursuit 

of reconciliation and restorative justice, which are about healing societal divisions as 

well as restoring faith in the state’s ability and willingness to confront injustice. Another 

of the tasks here involves looking forward and building the capacity of civil society to 

deal with conflict in nonviolent ways and cooperating to achieve shared purposes. S&R 

activities include training for CSOs in conflict resolution, cultural and ethnic tolerance, 

democracy, and human rights. S&R actors also promote informal activities to rebuild 

positive relations and trust within civil society, such as youth clubs and sports events.

The second set of tasks concerns establishing constructive relations between civil 

society and the state: how citizens and the state connect (a) for service delivery and (b) for 

accountability and responsiveness, which is the focus here. The democratic governance 

agenda of stability operations includes assistance to civil society with the ultimate aim 

of strengthening the voice of citizens in relation to their government. The challenges for 

S&R actors in post-conflict situations are similar to those faced by international donors 

in countries not suffering from collapse and conflict: distinguishing genuine civil society 

actors from opportunists and spoilers, resistance from state actors, internal divisions 

among and within local CSOs, low understanding and internalization of democratic 

norms, weak societal roots, and feeble capacity to mobilize and form networks.50

The injection of external resources to support civil society that accompany stability 

operations stimulates the creation of local CSOs to tap them. Such resource flows, largely 

channeled through international NGOs who then look for local partner organizations, 

often lead to a proliferation of short-lived local CSOs that rarely outlast the project 

funding. Box 14 summarizes the negative outcomes that can result.51

Box 14. Civil Society Strengthening in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Among the reconstruction programs following the NATO-imposed peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 

1995 and the arrival of peacekeepers were projects intended to build a new kind of civil society distinct 

from the state-led mass organizations of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Projects ranged from infrastructure repair 

and service delivery to democracy promotion, multi-culturalism, human rights, and refugee return. 

Some self-help associations had survived the ethnic cleansing and population displacement, but the 

international community preferred to fund new organizations unconnected to the divisive issues of the 

past. By 1997, around 1500 local CSOs were registered and were tapping donor funding. A significant 

number of these organizations were created solely for purposes of acquiring funds.

While some of the projects provided useful services, observers on the ground considered that the 

cumulative effects of the influx of funding under the civil society strengthening umbrella were largely 

negative. The preoccupation with service delivery and piecemeal social reconstruction crowded out a 

broader rebuilding of an independent and societally-rooted civil society capable of advocacy, dialogue, 

and negotiation with state actors. Because donors had turned to CSOs for service delivery, government 

actors at multiple levels became openly hostile to civil society groups due to perceptions that CSOs 

were trespassing into government responsibilities and competing for donor funds. 
39

Trade-offs.

Working with existing social structures and groups versus creating new CSOs. One 

trade-off, illustrated by the box on Bosnia and Herzegovina, is between creating new 

CSOs, or building on the foundations of previous social organizational structures. Existing 

organizations may have the support of local communities and be accorded legitimacy, as 

well as possess an innate resilience by virtue of having survived the conflict. However, 

such CSOs are likely to be associated with the ethnic, tribal, religious, and/or territorial 

divides that contributed to the violence. As a result, they have a high probability of 

becoming barriers to peace and of serving as willing partners with political parties, 

militias, and other conflict entrepreneurs. While funding the creation of new CSOs may 

not lead to major results in the immediate term, it can avoid the hazard of fueling ongoing 

violent conflict. 

Focusing S&R activities on community groups that seem agreeable versus a dialogue 

with groups who may seem to oppose S&R objectives. A second trade-off for S&R 

actors is between working with, and providing support to, those civil society groups 

whose interests and capacities appear closely aligned with the peacekeeping mission, or 

choosing those groups who may appear less relevant, less interested in, or even opposed 

to stability objectives. This trade-off is a common dilemma for stability operations. S&R 

actors need the cooperation of citizens and CSOs, and thus opting for collaboration with 

groups that demonstrate willingness and commitment is an important choice for making 

progress. However, engaging with “fence-sitters” and opposition groups may ultimately 

be as important, if not more so, for long-term stability, peace, and governance restoration. 

As noted, host-country actors have their own motivations and interests, and these are not 

always transparent to outsiders. 

S&R actors who pick (or create) favorites, either consciously or inadvertently, as a 

function of who they work with, may miss opportunities to deepen civil society capacity 

in ways that can lead to sustained change. In several post-conflict countries, including the 

Balkans, experience has shown that international donors have neglected working with 

traditional CSOs that are deeply embedded in society in favor of the supply-driven CSOs 

that have emerged in response to donor funding availability. Often these new NGOs have 

Western educated leaders who “speak the language” of peacekeepers, communicate well—

often in English—and develop relationships along cultural lines that give them favored 

status with S&R actors. These traditional CSOs—for example, professional associations, 

labor unions, religious organizations, war veterans and widows associations—often have 

strong roots in ethnic, religious, and tribal divides, and focused attention on them can be 

critical to reconciliation and conflict resolution.52

Options.

There are no easy answers to the issues and trade-offs related to civil society. S&R 

actors are necessarily limited in terms of what can be done from the outside to facilitate 

the creation of social capital, promote “civility” within civil society, and build citizens’ 

capacity to establish new accountability relations between the state and citizens. Since 

a key element in the development of civil society is in essence promoting citizenship, 
40

awareness building and education will be important. The civic education option discussed 

above under the section on elections is relevant here as well. In addition, experience 

suggests that the following options can be helpful.

Develop an accurate understanding of the civil society “landscape” in the host country. 

As FM 3-07 makes clear, all aspects of stability operations depend upon accurate and upto-date information on the situation in which S&R actors find themselves. Sorting out 

“who’s who” will help to make decisions on priorities, specific lines of effort, and pitfalls 

to avoid. As noted above, civil society actors (along with everyone else) will have their 

own particular agendas and concerns, and just as S&R actors will be trying to see who 

in civil society can usefully be engaged to restore stability and rebuild governance and 

who they need to watch out for, host-country actors too will be assessing the outsiders in 

terms of opportunities and threats. Eisenstadt’s conclusion for military forces in stability 

operations regarding in-depth understanding of tribal histories, practices, and values 

applies to the broader category of civil society actors as well: cultural knowledge offers 

“greater security than firearms.”53 Being sensitive to why some leaders and groups enjoy 

more legitimacy and others less will tell actors what is important and will build credibility 

in program design. Beyond security, this understanding will inform S&R efforts to help 

the host country rebuild social capital and create the foundations for a capable and 

effective civil society.

Provide resources and assistance to CSOs through flexible mechanisms that do 

not predetermine recipients, activities, or objectives. While the programming and 

financial management requirements of international donors place limits on the extent to 

which assistance can be flexible and open-ended, within those boundaries, S&R actors 

should provide resources and assistance in ways that respond to the needs and issues 

of indigenous civil society and empower CSOs to determine their own objectives and 

activities. An example of such a mechanism is the USAID-funded Community Action 

Program (CAP) in Iraq. The CAP combines democratic skill building and conflict 

resolution with locally determined projects to meet immediate community needs and 

desires. CAP projects require the formation of a community action group, a community 

contribution (in-kind) of 15-25 percent of the project’s cost, and community oversight and 

verification of completion as conditions for disbursement.54

Support forums to bring civil society actors together to build collaborative 

relationships, share strategies for addressing obstacles, and develop joint action plans.

Provide opportunities for CSOs to participate in national and regional conferences and 

workshops. Such events can increase communication, knowledge sharing, and mutual 

understanding when groups from different social and ethnic backgrounds assemble. S&R 

actors should provide the space for host-country CSOs to define their own agendas, and 

should not pre-determine outcomes. Forums can facilitate networking, thereby creating 

opportunities for CSOs to come together around specific issues. Events should not 

necessarily be restricted only to CSOs. Forums can convene CSOs, media, and government 

officials to interact, exchange views, and better understand substantive issues. These 

interactions also contribute to enacting their respective roles in a democratic society.

Target civil society cooperation on issues that crosscut societal cleavages. Restoring 

services can have a positive impact on reducing conflict and building stability. This 

activity is not restricted just to public sector agencies with service delivery responsibility, 
41

but can involve civil society as well. The UN-supported community development 

consultative committees based on the shura model in Afghanistan are one example of 

how citizens can be brought into governance that can cross ethnic, tribal, or religious 

lines. The participatory process of assembling Provincial Development Plans in Iraq, 

which consulted with citizens’ groups on service and infrastructure needs, is another 

example. The CSO coalition of citizen committees, NGOs, religious groups and women’s 

organizations that participated in municipal planning and budgeting in the Indonesian 

city of Madiun is yet another. Each of these examples illustrates how CSOs, along with 

government, can cooperate to solve service delivery problems that all can agree are 

important to address. It is worth noting that not all ethnic, tribal, or religious conflicts 

are about ethnicity or tribal/religious identity. There are interests that transcend these 

divisions that can provide a basis for negotiation, bargaining, and cooperation.

SAFETY AND SECURITY

As a state governs security, it assumes a monopoly on the use of force and authorizes 

certain organizations to use force in defense of the state or to maintain public order. 

While other public services may be completely absent, it is likely that there will be a 

state or nonstate force in place that has provided public security of some sort. Indeed, 

an unstable post-conflict environment has typically created conditions that encouraged 

groups to vie for a monopoly on the use of force, and this condition has contributed to the 

instability. The dynamics that led to and developed around contestation for power and 

a monopoly on use of force are still in play. Extended periods of conflict will have led to 

concentration of power in the hands of the parties to the conflict—often supported by 

control of state resources—and some of the armed entities contending for control (armies, 

militias, rebels, insurgents, or guerillas) will try to establish themselves as powerbrokers, 

challenging the government’s monopoly on the use of force.

The security governance task during S&R operations is similar to provision of other 

public services such as garbage collection, electrical power, and water: to create conditions, 

tools, and processes that make security provision into public security provision in that it 

is perceived to be effective, fair, responsive to the constituency but not serving primarily 

one group, and protective of rights of minorities. The issues and possible solutions are 

closely tied to the development of governance legitimacy, the acceptance of and skillbuilding around democratic governance processes related to provision of other services, 

development of rule of law, development of the justice system, and the protection of 

minorities. As in other sectors, poor security governance leads to unevenness in provision 

of public security and often contributes to violence and instability. Establishing good 

governance of security forces relates directly to the end state conditions set out in FM 

3-07, specifically a safe and secure environment, established rule of law, and stable 

governance.

The establishment of well-governed and legitimate security forces is perhaps the most 

urgent of governance functions required in stability operations. For in no other public 

service is society’s belief in the legitimacy and confidence in those entrusted with the 

function more critical than it is for those who can use force to arrest and kill in the name of 

the state. Citizens’ confidence in the provision of security is closely tied to issues of trust 
42

that may in turn be connected to ethnic identities, emotional memories of recent conflict, 

and perceived motivation to harm or protect. Security is also critical in that successful 

efforts to reestablish it can translate into massive savings for the international community’s 

peacekeeping interventions. While safety and an ostensibly secure environment may be 

maintained by an unaccountable and/or sectarian force, if it is not under civilian control 

and responsive to the rule of law, it is unlikely that other forms of governance will be 

stable. Similarly, if the executive and justice systems do not develop legitimacy in the 

eyes of the public, it is unlikely that citizens will see security forces as legitimate.

One of the most difficult aspects of building good governance is effectively supporting 

change of governance culture. As noted in previous discussion, certain “rules of the game” 

exist. However dysfunctional they may be for good governance, the patterns of how 

security forces have operated will have left a legacy of expectations and familiar working 

relationships that will not change overnight. Effective programming for both civilian 

control and structuring the security sector will depend on how well it incorporates an 

understanding of the host country’s institutions and the historical patterns. The strength 

of these patterns should not be underestimated because they not only have the impetus of 

producing income and power for security forces and their leaders, but they represent ways 

that the society has developed to “gets things done,” including corrupt relationships that 

people have come to accept and which they have learned to manage. Some of these patterns 

such as patronage relationships have a long legacy in most countries with authoritarian 

histories. Due to this legacy, good governance will ultimately be provided only as far as 

the societal actors revise their notions of what public security is and how it operates. The 

following are characteristic patterns found in many conflict-prone countries.

A culture of corruption—use of force monopoly for rent-seeking. Building wealth is 

among the most significant incentives for leaders of armed groups to maintain a culture 

of violence and resist programs that reduce their ability to use the force at their command, 

and it is likely that groups who have been party to the conflict have used monopoly 

of force to do so and to finance the operation of an organized armed force. Extortion, 

requiring payment for police services, maintaining control of trade adding to the prices of 

essential commodities, controlling of the sale of these commodities, maintaining control 

of currency exchange markets, and theft and resale are all common income producing 

mechanisms. Typically the profitability of these operations depends on the impunity 

allowed armed forces in an unstable society with little rule of law as well as the network 

of connections among the corrupt actors inside and outside of government.

Low levels of professionalism and inadequate training. It will be rare in post-conflict 

states that S&R personnel can take advantage of a well-trained police force with a high 

sense of professionalism and which operates within a well-established system that 

provides the motivation to be objective and fair in delivery of security. Even if welltrained in basic policing tasks, crime site protocols, and basic legal procedures, police in 

post-conflict societies are unlikely to be well trained or to have inculcated a professional 

culture of responsiveness to citizens and communities. In most cases habit and longexisting practice to the contrary will present major obstacles to building acceptance of 

civilian control of police and security forces. However, as Box 15 shows, professional 

policing has been found in some surprising circumstances.
43

Patterns of civilian attitudes toward police oversight. Equally important to changing 

attitudes about policing is the way that civilians respond to police. In most post-conflict 

societies, the police will have been a centralized force, responding to decisionmakers 

up the reporting chain, usually will have been a political tool used with impunity, and 

will have had little systemic incentive to respond to needs of the ordinary citizens they 

ostensibly serve. People will not expect police to be responsive, and in many cases will 

expect them to be predatory.55 If police assume that they do not have to be responsive, 

such expectations reinforce this dynamic. As a consequence, it may seem unnatural for 

local leadership to expect to have a responsive dialogue with police about local problems, 

and these local leaders may be reticent to approach police in a directive manner.

It is impossible to provide comprehensive direction for establishment of good security 

sector governance in this Guide. A large literature on strategies and tactics for creation 

of legitimate security forces in stabilization operations has only recently emerged.56 This 

section draws on that literature and on the lessons of experience. It outlines key issues, trade 

offs and options for establishment of governance of state security and focuses on the initial 

issues and problems that may be faced in stability operations. The discussion primarily 

addresses issues around development of governance for domestic police. However, the 

principles discussed here also apply to border and customs police, traffic police, other 

types of public security organizations that may exist or may be required, as well as in 

some cases, the military. A growing consensus has emerged among those reviewing 

the experience of stability operations that the strategic aspects of developing reformed 

and improved security have been underemphasized in favor of tactical interventions. 

In other words, there has been an emphasis on building operational capacity through 

equipment provision, management skills training, and other tactical requirements (which 

are typically much easier to count and thus “success” is easier to measure) with relatively 

little attention paid to how these fit into a strategic plan that addresses important changes 

in the culture of governance and a durable social contract that supports a resilient and 

stable state.

Because legitimacy of the security sector is critical to near-term and long-term stability, 

the discussion pays particular attention to those conditions, issues, possible solutions and 

tradeoffs that affect building legitimacy in a security force in the post-conflict context. The 

desired end state is to establish a form of democratic governance of security forces that 

is effective and responsive to the vast majority of the residents of the state—including 

minorities. This form of governance, while often contentious, initially inefficient, and 

requiring years to develop fully, is nevertheless the best foundation for longer-term 

stability.57

Box 15. Police Professionalism.

Lack of professionalism is not always the norm. There are examples of developing-country police 

forces that had and have developed perceptions of themselves as professionals and this perception has 

played a role in reducing corruption. When the Somali government collapsed in the late 1980s, many 

police continued to act in their roles as police for many weeks, went to their post in clean uniforms, and 

performed functions well even though they were not paid. While this seems to be the exception rather 

than the rule, it would be wrong to assume that most police have not inculcated some sense of professionalism and dedication in their roles as police and that they would not resist rent-seeking behavior.
44

Addressing fears of opposing groups is an important first step for S&R actors and 

interim governments. The process of restoring security governance and establishing a 

regularized, predictable security force acceptable to its constituency is critical to enabling 

post-conflict societies to fulfill the other two governance functions covered in this Guide: 

effective provision of public goods and services and management of political participation 

and accountability. Interim governments may be caught up in the political dynamics 

around the opposing groups under a power-sharing agreement, which can interfere with 

their ability to develop an independent security force with legitimacy for all groups. 

It is likely that S&R actors will be required to take the lead in establishing workable, 

accountable security.

The following sections discuss three key issues in the establishment of governance of 

the security sector in stability operations: short-term provision of security, civilian control, 

and structuring the security sector. Tradeoffs and options for addressing each issue focus 

on their impact on governance mechanisms and structures that build legitimacy. These 

discussions focus on actions that S&R actors can take in the first months and years of 

stability operations that will provide both near term stability and the basis for development 

of sound governance that provides a foundation for long-term stability.

SHORT-TERM PROVISION OF SECURITY

Personal security will probably be the most urgent issue for citizens in post-conflict 

society. It is one of the functions of governance that affects early perceptions of the 

legitimacy of the state and thus will almost always be one of the first and most important 

public tasks. Unlike other public services (e.g., water or power) that may be entirely 

absent, only in rare instances will there not be an armed and organized group using force 

to address public order and control, often establishing the parameters for security with 

little public accountability. Those providing security will often lay claim to leadership 

as well as have the support of citizens who see them as the only immediate option for 

protection of persons and property—however undemocratic and unaccountable they 

may be. Consequently, S&R actors will immediately be required to deal with patterns of 

expectations—particularly when a group has built some legitimacy through successfully 

providing security—that will affect the scope and success of initial programs and will 

immediately bring to the fore difficult tradeoffs and decisions pivoting on priorities 

around short-term and long-term goals.58 As in other sectors, they will have, at the same 

time, to begin to address practices and policies that have led to provision of security that 

is at best uneven and at worst predatory.

The introduction points out that this is the context in which restoring governance in all 

sectors must also proceed. It outlines the factors common to the post-conflict or instable 

environments, as well as the need to accommodate the pressures from various groups 

for autonomy, self-determination, and enfranchisement (political, cultural, linguistic, 

religious, and/or economic). In almost all cases, there is competition between groups 

for control of physical security and the distrust and animosity among groups is a key 

dynamic to be considered in the design of programs to build better governance in instable 

environments. Understanding motivations, incentives, and the history of the forces that 

may be engaged for near-term security is critical to making sound early decisions that 
45

can set precedents for security sector governance. Guidelines for establishing good 

security sector governance recommend an inventory or mapping of the dynamic context 

in which security must operate. This will include existing security and justice sector 

capital infrastructure, existing laws and policies (and whether they have actual impact on 

security), and an inventory of national and local security providers, including nonstate 

providers. In establishing governance for the security sector, S&R actors will be asked to 

deal with one or more of the following categories of state and nonstate armed forces to 

establish near-term security. Who they are, their ability to deliver security, and the threat 

they may pose to security will determine the range of near-term options available.

The presence of active organized armed groups is a given in stability operations. Levels 

of organization of the groups vary, and they can range from a disciplined, well equipped 

professional state force that was party to the conflict (e.g., the Serbian Army in Kosovo 

in 1999) to ad hoc bands of individuals seeking only daily opportunities for looting (e.g., 

Liberia in 2000). It is likely that the leaders of these groups seek to maintain control of 

the power afforded them by having armed men and women under their command, and 

some may seek to play a role in provision of security as a way to maintain a position from 

which to leverage power and resources, often with informal or nonstate forces competing 

with the state for legitimacy as a security force.

There are two common subsets of these armed groups. The first is tribal or ethnic 

militias. These militias may exist as an active and organized armed force that took part in 

the struggle, they may be constituted for protection of a tribal group as instability grew 

in the post-conflict environment and the leaders of the tribe feared aggression by other 

tribes or other armed groups, or it could be a group of ad hoc police organized by a tribal 

leader or neighborhood leader as a means to acquire resources through force.

The second subset is the security force of an organized political party. Examples are 

security forces organized within Hezbollah in Lebanon, within Hamas and Fatah in 

Palestine, the forces of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in Zimbabwe, 

the Mahdi army of Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) 

of Northern Ireland.59 In many of these cases, these armed groups were instrumental in 

forcing a political settlement that allowed them a greater role in political processes. In 

some cases, their leadership may be ready for a more democratic, civilian managed role. 

In other cases, the force leadership and rank-and-file lose position, prestige, and probably 

income as a consequence of peace settlements, and may find reasons to maintain their 

position through the perceived or manufactured perception of the need for their services 

in the reconstituted state in a “policing” role.

Often an armed group is organized around purely financial gain, and best categorized 

as criminal (often called “spoilers”). An organized criminal group may find it useful to 

hide behind an ideological, ethnic, or religious agenda, giving them ostensible credence 

as a political player with the reduced risk to their criminal activities as they pursue 

“security” of the community as their political role in helping to build the state.

Besides informal or quasi-formal armed groups, most countries have a variety of 

formal security forces, created according to historical patterns, from models from other 

countries (sometimes colonial-era rulers), according to public needs, and/or according to 

private needs of rulers. It is not uncommon for S&R actors to find that the multiple layers 

of police have served various political actors, are connected to rent-seeking or corruption 
46

associated with those political actors, and often also tied to certain civilian institutions 

such as the Treasury or the Ministry of the Interior. Typical security forces are:

• Police. This is usually a local force charged with keeping public order, investigating 

crimes, arresting and holding those charged with crime, and supporting a system 

of justice that adjudicates charges of criminal activity. Gendarmes or paramilitary 

forces may also play this role. While stationed locally, it is typical that the police 

report to a central authority, often the Minister of the Interior or a national police 

office. The police may also address a range of other threats to public order such as 

vigilante groups and group political violence and may also support resolution of 

civil disputes with force as required.

• Specialized Police. These include traffic police, tax police, border police, customs 

police, park police, special security police associated with ministries, armed forces 

police service, presidential guards, and intelligence services. The country public 

security system may have been set up with layers of police—for example a national 

security organization (analogous to the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]), and 

a different force that has local jurisdiction. Both of these may report to a different 

central national authority in the capital. In addition to different geographical 

jurisdictions, each force may have different levels of jurisdiction (e.g., working 

only on import tax issues at the border, addressing only petty crime), and different 

levels of funding. They may also have different political motivations. For example, 

a special presidential police may ostensibly be formed to protect the president but 

may expand its operations to serve political purposes of the president.

• Military. This is typically a national force, reporting centrally. It may include a 

standing army, navy, coast guard, air force, reserve or civil defense forces, and 

national guards. It is common that the military is better funded, trained, and 

equipped than the police forces and has been used to support autocratic rule. 

Military forces may or may not respond to civilian direction. Military are often 

used to keep public order in situations where smaller and less well-armed police 

forces are inadequate, or in situations where disorder may have a political 

motivation and government actors feel that the military will be more responsive 

to their command. The control of a large armed force provides enormous leverage 

for power-seeking in post-conflict societies, and it is rare that military leaders do 

not succumb to the temptation to use the forces they command to acquire power. 

Box 16 provides some examples.

Box 16. The Military and Politics.

In a variety of countries, the military has been an independent political actor in its own right, often seeing 

itself not simply as a supporter of autocrats but as the keeper of societal order and justified in stepping 

in when civilian governments prove themselves to be inept. Examples include Pakistan, Thailand, and 

Turkey. While elements of the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein were used to viciously repress both 

Kurd and Shia populations, it had nevertheless developed some reputation for professionalism. A 2006 

analysis of citizen perceptions of Iraqi institutions in 2006 indicated that the reconstituted army was 

among the more respected institutions and perceived to be professional and objective relative to most 

other government institutions except health and education.
47

With reference to different types of forces it will be important to keep in mind the 

patterns, models, expectations, sets of incentives and dynamics that are in play around 

these forces. Key issues are:

• Previous roles of forces and perceptions created. All of these forces may have been a 

tool to repress political dissent and to control populations perceived to be disloyal 

or potentially threatening to authority. There may be a built up public animosity 

against certain forces. This may exist against some forces and not others, and 

may exist within certain ethnic, religious, or other groups that were targeted, 

but not among others. Some security forces may have managed to build some 

professionalism and some respect within the population, even if they have been 

the tool of a dictator or repressive regime. (see Box 16).

• Relationships of security forces to certain individuals or governmental positions. Some 

forces may have reported directly to a minister or individual and been used for the 

political purposes of that individual. Executives in charge of a force—even though 

part of a reformed governance regime—may not have a full commitment to checks 

and balances, and may expect that these forces will continue to be available for 

political purposes.

The discussion above summarizes the armed groups, both informal and formal, 

typically encountered in post-conflict stability operations according to motivation and 

other incentives for their existence. The discussion seeks to inform S&R actors as they 

approach, negotiate, and create incentives for these groups to be part of a program that 

moves toward effective state governance of security. In reality, the lines between the 

different categories of armed groups are often blurred. Each group will have a unique 

mix of motivating factors that influence how they are organized and led, how they act, 

and how they will react to programs to move toward civilian oversight and management. 

Effective S&R lines of effort require willingness not to categorize, but to perceive and 

understand a group’s incentives, motivations, and strategies, and to build programs that 

creatively use those motivations to build security or to find ways to remove or replace the 

incentives that may make persistent obstacles of these groups and their leaders.

Trade-offs.

As FM 3-07 indicates, restoration of security is always an immediate concern and 

programs to address security are among the first to be launched. FM 3-07 also cites the 

requirement for establishing important principles of governance, but it does not relate 

this to the need for immediate security or to security sector governance. Because the 

need for security is critical, establishing adequate security by the best means possible is 

typically given priority. Security governance is often left for a later time, even though 

the patterns and expectations established in the initial provision of security often set 

precedents that affect the evolution of not only security sector governance but every 

type of governance that is developed over the succeeding months and years. Perhaps 

the most critical trade-off faced by S&R actors is choosing between the urgent need to 
48

address security—possibly lending legitimacy to less-than-democratic processes and 

actors, redundant layers of security provision, and organizations that have reputations 

for corruption and unprofessionalism—and establishing legitimacy for patterns of 

governance and actors that support accountability, transparency and other processes 

critical to good governance. Box 17 illustrates the impacts of early decisions on longerterm security prospects in stability operations in Kosovo and Timor Leste.60

Box 17. Short and long-Term Trade-Offs in Security and Justice.

Decisions made in the early planning and operation stages of a peace-keeping and stability operation 

[PSO] can have an impact on the long term development of security and justice system. “Both the 

Kosovo Police Service and the Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL) have experienced developmental 

problems due to expedient choices made in the first 12 months of their creations. In both cases, the 

decisions to create and engage with political mechanisms for the management and oversight of the 

police were postponed until well into the mission’s mandate”. Such decisions have hampered these 

and other missions, preventing them from creating the proper conditions for reform. The short time 

of many PSOs can increase the likelihood of an expedient, externally imposed solution rather than the 

development of a dialogue around nationally led and sustainable reform. 

Options.

For near-term provision of security, the following options can be considered. 

They include co-opting local nonstate security forces, supporting existing forces with 

centralized reporting, and establishing and supporting mechanisms to control the power 

of entrenched security actors while installing legitimate security forces.

Co-opt local nonstate security forces. S&R actors may choose to allow local militia 

leaders who can mobilize their forces to act as police to do so—ostensibly co-opting them 

into the system and taking their forces out of a mix that could present a danger to U.S. 

forces or contribute to violence in the community (see Box 19, page 57). This choice will 

support more local control and decentralization of security forces.61 It is to be expected 

that their co-optation into the emerging democratic governance system will usually occur 

only as far as it serves the purposes of the militia and its leaders. This does not necessarily 

imply a refusal to be accountable, as former combatants have often chosen to seek a 

legitimate role in an accountable democratic process.

Support existing forces with centralized reporting. Supporting existing centralized 

state security structures may have the advantage of an in-place and functioning security 

administrative structure, perceived administrative efficiencies, or be suggested because 

S&R actors are convinced that change (decentralization) would be disruptive or support 

further political fragmentation. But in the case where a sanctioned force is perceived 

as untrustworthy (e.g., when the police are dominated by one ethnic group perceived 

as oppressor to another) it could both spawn militias set up to oppose the police and 

undermine the credibility of stability operations and the foreign forces supporting 

those.
49

Establish and support mechanisms to control the power of security actors while 

developing more legitimate forces. Whenever the United States sanctions a force, that 

sanction can help establish the legitimacy of the force. Once in place, the force may resist 

erosion of their autonomy through civilian control and/or reform. This resistance may 

become an obstacle to introduction of civilian oversight and recruitment on basis of 

skills and abilities rather than loyalty (especially in the case of local militias converted to 

sanctioned security), or to breaking up networks of existing corruption.

S&R actors will find that both a short-term solution and the process of establishing 

reformed, legitimate forces for the long term must proceed simultaneously. Should 

existing militias be used to provide order, these should be seen as temporary. Where 

within the purview of S&R actors, any structures and agreements that are put in place 

outside of their sanction through legitimate host-state governance processes should have 

sunset agreements (typically between 3 months and 18 months). These should mandate 

a date for dissolution of the group and takeover by legitimate structures built around the 

precepts presented below. Agreements with the temporary force should include principles 

of civilian control and checks on the impunity of the force. Significant pressure is built 

for change as populations come to expect it. The use of public information mechanisms 

to disseminate the text of agreements and plans for oversight and other democratic 

mechanisms will build the perception that forces are temporary as well as expectations 

for change and reform. 

Citizen oversight mechanisms with broad representation can be put in place at the 

same time as the sanction and can push for transparency and responsiveness. This will be 

most likely resisted by security force leadership, and will require persistent attention by 

S&R actors to be effective. If set up early, these groups can also provide citizen soundingboards for S&R actors on the legitimacy and professionalism of organizations considered 

for near-term security services. Creating such groups early is critical to establishing the 

right for local leadership to ask police to be responsive and the legitimacy of civilian 

oversight, particularly if the formal reporting chain is to a national or central government 

office, not to local officials. Many analysts feel that some level of decentralized reporting 

and accountability is critical to accelerate this key relationship.

CIVILIAN CONTROL AND OVERSIGHT

Civilian oversight of security forces is a key principle of establishing good governance. 

Among the types of public services discussed here, security forces are least likely to have 

been under an effective and accountable civilian control, and thus may be the public 

service where attitudes and expectations about a directive role for civilians (or lack 

thereof) are most entrenched and difficult to change. In many cases, a local power broker 

will have been effectively playing this role with little input from citizens. These patronage 

forms of governance may provide stable and often effective restoration of security on the 

surface, and there will be an understandable temptation to accept an easy solution to the 

stability so important in the first month of stability operations. When clear accountability 

mechanisms are not put in place, such arrangements undermine opportunities to set 

precedents for legitimate civilian oversight. In the early decisions about establishing 

security, it is essential to keep the critical task of establishing legitimate civilian oversight 
50

in mind and find ways to begin to establish the structures that lay foundations for reform 

and stability.

Forms of civilian management and oversight can include an executive office to which 

security forces report, national security advisory bodies, legislative committees, ministries 

of defense, and office of internal affairs or security, customary and traditional authorities 

(community and tribal leaders), financial management bodies, local quasi-governmental 

advisory boards, public complaints commissions, and civil society organizations. 

Trade-offs.

The most significant trade-off is again that between short term effectiveness—providing 

physical security in the near term—and establishing sufficient systems, structures, and 

principles of civilian oversight, typically a process of months and years. In stability 

operations, the urgency of the need for physical security surpasses the need for security 

force oversight. In some cases, this may be justified, and the value of working through 

those power brokers mentioned above often seems especially useful when S&R actors are 

not in a position to negotiate the complex and nuanced relationships around the use of 

violence, fear, perceptions of trust, and expectations of the local population.

A closely related trade-off is the choice between allowing an effective security force 

leader to operate with autonomy—an arrangement that may be perceived to support 

effectiveness in the security force—and injection of civilian oversight into this process when 

that is expected to inhibit effectiveness in reducing violence. This choice is complicated by 

two conditions typical in these situations. The first is that populations may have come to 

accept autonomous authority in the direction of security and accept absence of oversight 

if the force is perceived as legitimate and physical security is enhanced—making it all the 

more difficult to negotiate some accountability with the leader(s) of the force. The second 

is poor communication between civilian managers and security force leadership. This 

second complication is all the more likely in societies where there are no models for how 

democratic leadership requires responsiveness from police, when training in this area is 

absent, and where there is a legacy of corrupt and predatory police and military behavior 

and civilians assume that is the case with the current force.

Another trade-off comes from the tension between civilian oversight and building a 

nonpolitical professional force. Mechanisms for civilian oversight are designed to require 

police responsiveness, but also then require reporting chains to political actors. When the 

checks on accountability for those political actors are not in place or are not functioning, 

there is the opportunity for police to become the tools of these political actors. In the 

urgency to develop police forces, pressures from political actors can act counter to the 

processes required to inculcate professionalism.

Options.

Options here relate to the application of the principles of good governance more 

broadly. These include building accountability mechanisms, establishing oversight, and 

integrating with other governance institutions (ROL and the justice system, parliaments), 

and building capacity on the civilian side to exercise control. All of these are interrelated, 
51

and are essential for effectiveness and legitimacy. Recent review and collection of best 

practices for establishing legitimate security forces mentions five key lessons learned:62

• Developing democratic accountability at multiple levels of oversight

• Ensuring the independence of oversight institutions

• Strengthening mechanisms of internal oversight within security and justice 

institutions

• Developing the capacity of parliaments to conduct oversight

• Strengthening the role of civil society and independent watchdogs in the democratic 

oversight of security and justice providers.

Build governance mechanisms that establish accountability. The experience with 

building legitimacy in the governance of security forces and their successful reform is 

closely tied to establishing principles of accountable civilian oversight mechanisms. Three 

principles and approaches stand out:

• Establish civilian oversight roles early. In the first months of assistance, establish 

formal dialogue between security sector officials and local civilian officials on 

responsiveness to security sector needs of the community. Evidence indicates 

that practices that undermine accountability are often established in interim 

arrangements and are difficult to reform.

• Create formal review roles for local officials. Security force policies and processes 

receive frequent review by civilian groups who are themselves accountable. This 

should include financial accountability. Oversight is given teeth by transparent 

audit of security sector spending, and by requiring regular approval of security 

sector budgets by civilian bodies.

• Involve civil society. Some countries (e.g., South Africa, Guatemala, Kosovo) have 

had success in security sector reform by involving civil society organizations—

often formed around this need—who are given formal opportunity for input into 

policies that guide security force behavior. This process is more likely to apply to 

police than to military forces.63

Create civilian control and oversight.64 Possibilities here are reporting to executive 

agencies or boards and committees. These will necessarily need to be adapted to conditions 

in post-conflict situations, and are unlikely to be institutionalized within the timeframe 

for stability operations.

Executive management. Most western police and military forces report to an elected 

civilian executive, or the appointee of an elected executive—for example a mayor, a 

governor, or the appointed head of the justice ministry, a chief prosecutor, or attorney 

general. This executive may be responsible to an elective board. In these countries, there 

will typically be a well-established conduit for citizen input into this reporting chain 

through mechanisms that force responsiveness from both the executive and the boards. 

In established democratic societies, this mechanism for responsiveness will not only be 

through elections per se but through a political culture that encourages elected officials 

to provide frequent forums for feedback. The culture of governance in post-conflict 

countries will be unlikely to have developed these traditions or these mechanisms for 
52

responsiveness. When establishing chains of reporting for civilian oversight through 

civilian executives, attention should also be given to structural and institutional incentives 

for police to develop relationships with the communities that they serve in order to avoid 

reducing responsiveness and ultimately possibly contributing to dissatisfaction and 

violence.

Intermediate Managers. This may be a city manager, manager of an office of security 

within the Justice Ministry, or other organization created to manage security forces. They 

will most probably report to an executive or elected board. Similarly to comments above, 

it is almost always necessary to give particular attention to creating structural incentives 

to force accountability to needs of citizens with whom they interact.

Oversight boards or committees. These are often found in western societies where there has 

been some breakdown in police or military responsiveness, and there is felt to be a need for 

a more direct link to citizen needs in the oversight process. They can be committees within 

a legislature, local boards created for this purpose that are formal parts of government, 

or a function of a civil society group. Most analysts of post-conflict security system 

development emphasize the requirement of mechanisms for responsiveness to citizens 

and the failure to build these as a critical problem in establishment and reform of police 

forces in developing and formerly-authoritarian societies. Early establishment of boards, 

committees, or other local oversight groups with broad and inclusive representation is 

now considered a critical step in developing legitimacy for security forces. These groups 

are formed to act in an advisory role to police, provide a conduit for relaying key security 

problems in the community, and to begin to help establish policies around use of force. 

They also provide a local or regional sounding board for national groups that may have 

been formed to oversee security policy reform or development.

Civil society often plays a role in this type of oversight, especially community legal aid 

groups, human rights groups, or groups organized around issues of special populations 

(e.g., women and ethnic minorities) and often have representatives on oversight boards 

mentioned above. Informal groups such as the Community Peace councils under the 

Locally Initiated Networks for Community Strengthening (LINCS) program in Liberia 

or the Forum for Civic Initiatives in Kosovo may have been formed to address security.65

Such groups can provide a basis for input on policy and initial interaction with formal 

police.

Integrate civilian control with formal connections to other branches of government.

Important here are links to the justice system and the legislature. Centralized oversight 

of police can occur through national boards, national legislatures, and the justice 

system. But insisting on a dialogue at the local level, and putting in place mechanisms 

that tie financing for police to responsiveness to local leaders appear to be important 

in establishing the concept of civilian oversight. Accountability to civilian leadership is 

almost always centralized for military forces, corresponding to the requirement for the 

military to respond to national needs. Local oversight boards will in most cases not seem 

appropriate for the military.66

Judicial Review. A complete security governance system will also put in place 

mechanisms that provide for judicial review of procedures, respect for rights, and other 

issues connected to the policies and procedures that have been set in place for the police 
53

and military. Courts are also used as remedy to police abuse of power through civil and 

criminal suits against security forces.

Parliamentary or Legislative Review. This is typically exercised through the budget 

approval process, enacting laws, guiding policies, and holding investigations of egregious 

abuses. While less common, some countries have used parliamentary committees 

effectively in promoting accountability.67

Build capacity for control and oversight on the civilian side. For civilian control to function, 

civilian actors need to change their perceptions of security forces and to have political 

space to provide input. In most post-conflict situations, it will seem odd, and perhaps even 

frightening, to civilian actors who are asked to play a role in overseeing police as that has 

often been the purview of authoritarian political actors. Recent literature and case studies 

provide a number of examples of processes that help local leaders develop confidence in 

interaction with police, typically built around a mechanism that opens and then persists 

with a dialogue between security forces and civilian leaders about needs and security 

policies.68 Experience also emphasizes the value of early focus on training for civilians 

in the concepts of civilian oversight and managed meetings between local leaders and 

police, and most analysts now believe that this is as important as the operational and 

tactical training of police and military forces that has been the main focus of assistance to 

security forces to date.

In many cases, especially where women traditionally have not taken or been allowed a 

role as leaders, it will be important to take steps to ensure that women can voice concerns 

about security. Statistics show that women are undermeasured victims of crime in many 

conflict countries, especially sexual crime. Separate advisory groups for women where 

they can speak freely and build consensus on needs have been used effectively in the 

Middle East, Africa, and other regions where women have had difficulty being heard. 

Although not used widely to affect police policies, these have allowed a greater voice for 

women in expressing needs and providing input on other forms of governance.69

STRUCTURING THE SECURITY SECTOR

The structures to support security sector governance are ideally identified through 

an inclusive, vetted policy development process by actors who understand how public 

security can be provided. This should occur within the context of a state strategic plan 

for security that integrates the justice systems, principles to support human rights, rule 

of law, and other related processes that contribute to security sector legitimacy. Many 

post-conflict governments have set up offices to run the state security planning process 

that develop the policies that guide a well-governed security sector.70 At whatever level 

the process, history indicates that the security sector has often suffered from a lack of 

legitimacy that is a consequence of poor responsiveness, and that the process that identifies 

and recommends structures will struggle to develop policies that support legitimacy if it 

does not integrate into the process mechanisms for local input and accountability at the 

local level.

Briefly, the steps to building good security sector governance are mapping existing 

security forces and mechanisms, assessing needs, finding or building groups that have 

legitimacy and can guide policy development for security, supporting and vetting this 
54

policy development, building professionalism and efficient management of security 

forces, and putting in place structures for legitimate civilian oversight of security forces.71

In stability operations, the steps must be accelerated, but even so can be expected to 

take several years and are unlikely to be complete at the end of stability operations. The 

challenge for S&R actors will be to begin them in a way that will lay the groundwork for 

a legitimate security system and the stability that will bring.

Recent analysis also emphasizes the requirement in most countries for significant 

change in structures, functions, and management of security organizations as well as 

attitudinal change. Attitudinal change is facilitated by attention to structural change that 

creates incentives for the attitudinal change. This will mean creation and acceptance of new 

capacities, roles, and expectations, especially as it concerns reporting and responsiveness 

to citizens, administrative and managerial efficiency, and adherence to democratic 

principles. As mentioned, this requires that societal actors revise their concept of public 

security, and change will not come easily. Programs that support this change will remove 

structures that supported old incentives (e.g.,various types of rent-seeking and elite control 

of forces without accountability) and build incentives that support good governance 

(e.g., rewards for professional behavior, efficiency and responsiveness to citizens’ needs 

and reporting structures that support this) into both formal and informal policy. One of 

the tools to create new relationships between citizens and police is community policing, 

described in Box 18.72

Box 18. Community Policing.

As some Western nations’ police forces in large urban jurisdictions struggled with deteriorating 

relationships in inner city neighborhoods, they developed approaches that created more direct 

communication with communities, built better relationships with communities, and found that 

this often improved the quantity and quality of information about crimes and potential for crime, 

reduced casualties, and improved legitimacy of the police force. This approach is typically referred 

to as “community policing” and is now an accepted and often-employed technique in most western 

police forces. It has been taught and used effectively in some developing countries, assists in building 

a culture of responsiveness to civilians with accompanying gains in professionalized behavior, and is 

increasingly seen as an important tool in police reform programs. 

Trade-offs.

Development of these structures ideally begins in the first weeks of stability operations. 

S&R actors must both support the provision of near-term security and also put in place 

structures that will support the development of the governance-building process, which 

can take years, and may seem to hinder early operations. Again, the initial trade-off 

that S&R actors must manage is installing near-term security to begin to develop the 

legitimacy of the state and the credibility of the stability operation and, at the same time, 

to begin implementing mechanisms that establish checks on abuse of security sector 

power, and avoid establishing the credibility of actors that will resist the process of good 

governance.
55

Other trade-offs involve reporting structures and use of existing forces. The first is 

between centralized or decentralized reporting structures. Centralized national police 

forces are more common in the countries likely to require stabilization operations. This 

will partly be a consequence of the requirement for stabilization in countries where 

centralized authoritarian regimes have broken down, leading to conflict, but may also be a 

function of the size of the country (centralization of functions makes more sense in smaller 

countries). Centralization has a number of logistical and administrative efficiencies, and it 

is this administrative efficiency argument that has often led S&R programmers to continue 

centralized systems. In most countries, police and military will have been set up to report 

to the center prior to the intervention of stability operations because it was important that 

reporting be to a central political figure—often authoritarian and unresponsive to the 

needs of citizens. In many cases, police will have been a political tool for repression. In 

this case, it may be difficult for centrally reporting police to establish trust and legitimacy 

in areas where they had been used to repress the population.

A related trade-off is between reforming the existing force or creating and recruiting 

for new structures. When there is an existing police force, a primary problem for S&R 

actors seeking to set precedents for good governance will be addressing patterns of 

behavior and attitudes developed over many years of previous practice that can be 

dismissive of civilian oversight. Yet use of existing forces is often required to maintain 

near-term security. Existing forces may be relatively legitimate but inefficient, or the 

existing force may be efficient and effective but not enjoy much legitimacy among citizens 

of the community. Forces with extensive corruption may also enjoy a certain amount of 

legitimacy as citizens accept and appreciate the role that police or the military may play 

in maintaining order, but have come to accept a certain level of corruption. This presents 

a number of trade-offs and options depending on the combination of factors present in 

the country.

Options.

The experiences of police assistance programs have pointed to the need for institutional 

development and restructuring. Even then, restructuring on its own will not automatically 

result in change to police behavior and culture; the focus needs to be placed on personnel 

as much as formal structure.73 Options for structuring the security sector are highly 

context specific; thus what is presented here is similar to the trade-offs noted above.

Assess whether a centralized, decentralized, or mixed reporting structure offers the best 

chances for effective checks on the behavior of security forces. Arguments for centralization 

of police forces typically line up around a perception that: (a) establishing direction outside 

of local leadership will keep the police force from becoming a tool of local politics; (b) 

professionalization is easier in a national force that does not have local allegiances; (c) 

centralization allows for consistency in levels and types of training—providing economies 

of scale, providing more consistent levels of performance throughout the country, and 

providing consistency in procedural processes; and (d) centralization enables police 

to develop nationwide professional relationships that support professionalism and to 

address issues that transcend provincial boundaries.

Choices for either centralization or decentralization of police must address not only
56

efficiency in providing training, the value of providing a common understanding of 

procedures, and professionalization of the forces(s), but also ensure that reporting 

structures provide accountability to and legitimacy within communities. Establishing or 

reestablishing a centralized police force must be weighed carefully against the predatory 

patterns and negative perceptions that a centralized force may have established and that 

could undermine attempts to build the legitimacy of security forces. In many countries 

where police have been a tool of repression by authoritarian rulers, establishing a force 

that responds to unknown and perhaps distrusted actors in the capital could result in the 

system fighting an uphill battle in establishing legitimacy at the local level. In the case 

where the national government is perceived to be led by one of the groups (ethnic, tribal, 

religious, political) among the many in conflict—with a subsequent distrust of forces 

of that government—decentralized reporting may also have short-term advantages in 

supporting stability.74

Experience to date suggests that if a centralized training and reporting structure is 

used, programmers must devote considerable resources to developing the incentives that 

encourage responsive relationships and legitimacy at the local level. This may require 

attention to the ethnicity or religion of police commanders. It may also call for creation 

of structures that require some level of local reporting and oversight that possibly is tied 

to promotion of police officers or to financing of the security program. Such a structure 

might allow centralized professional and management training and oversight, but dayto-day reporting at the local level.

It is expected that national military forces will report to a central national civilianled authority. To be successfully established as a national professional force, centralizing 

command of the military will go hand-in-glove with establishing trust across regional and 

ethnic lines, with the development of a solid national identity, the establishment of the 

legitimacy of the national government, and the inculcation of professional, nonpolitical 

values. While centralized reporting of the military makes sense, it runs the risk of being 

utilized for the political purposes of elites if not developed in tandem with immediate 

attention to strong, inclusive and legitimate civilian governance structures that support 

rule of law, the justice sector, governance structures that ensure the responsiveness 

of political elites to civilian constituencies, and the acceptance of civilian oversight 

by the senior leadership of the military. In some places, military structures may have 

become decentralized, reporting to regional officials. This can be the case even when 

there is a national military (e.g., the Kurdish Peshmerga-cum-Iraqi Army). Because most 

post-conflict situations involve conflict between groups within the country that have 

consolidated political control in a region, building a strong basis for national identity in 

these areas is likely to take years, if not decades.

Some specialized national police forces will address centrally managed issues. 

Protection of national borders, national taxes and customs, natural resources, and national 

parks may all require police to enforce laws on or in these areas of national jurisdiction. 

These forces must be constructed with the same civilian oversight mechanisms that are 

critical in other security forces.

Consider contention among ethnic groups to ensure that composition of security 

forces contributes to stabilization efforts. Levels of distrust may make it difficult for 

police or military from one group within the conflict to be effective in areas where other 
57

groups predominate—especially when ethnic or tribal militias continue to operate. Levels 

of distrust may suggest the choice to support a decentralized mechanism to provide a 

natural impetus for more local responsiveness and legitimacy. Recent experience in Iraq 

and Afghanistan has made use of tribal militias to either support or integrate into local 

security structures, as Box 19 illustrates.7

Box 19. Tribal Militias in Iraq.

Experience in Iraq from 2003-2008 attributed success in stabilizing parts of the country, and in particular 

reduction in the violence attributed to al Qaeda supported insurgents, to a program that allowed local 

tribal leaders to build and operate tribal police forces, or sometimes to bring former tribal insurgents 

loyal to tribal leaders into existing police forces led by a local leader who often had been part of an 

anti-US insurgency. The success of this program gave impetus to a decentralized approach to security 

sector governance and led to a reconsideration of the logic of the original US-supported program that 

attempted to create a national, centrally administered multi-ethnic police force.

Many analysts of the situation in Iraq believe that the early decisions on organization of police gave 

far too little attention to establishing legitimacy of the force at the local level – instead emphasizing the 

construction of a national force whose focus and training took a national view and was intended to 

support the drive toward a unified multi-ethnic Iraq. By 2007, this approach had not provided sufficient 

levels of confidence nor given police sufficient levels of legitimacy at the local level to allow them to be 

effective. This was especially true in Sunni areas and was a problem that was tied to distrust of local 

police, which were often led by officers from other areas who reported to a government perceived 

as controlled by Shi’a politicians. At this time, analysis of the Awakening Council programs is not 

complete, but there is initial evidence that the ad hoc security governance systems in place under this 

arrangement have little accountable civilian oversight (though they may operate within a tribal society 

that has the traditional systems for control of abuse of power). A keener understanding of both cultural 

and political issues may have allowed planners to design a program in the first months that achieved the 

current levels of stability, built structures that supported more multi-culturalism, and at the same time 

began to establish precedents for formal security administration accountable through the democratic 

process.

Combine the use of existing forces with new recruitment and reforms. If legitimacy 

is high and corruption relatively low, there is no real trade-off—the task for S&R 

programming is to begin to improve performance through training and professionalization. 

If existing forces do not enjoy legitimacy or the force works and enjoys some legitimacy 

but operates with relatively high levels of corruption, there is a more critical near-term 

tradeoff between establishing short-term security and keeping order on one hand, and 

establishing civilian oversight and starting a reform process that builds a professional 

security force on the other. If significant numbers of security personnel are left in place, 

the task becomes one of reform. Police must be vetted and sufficient oversight must be 

in place to identify and remove corrupt officials. At the same time, training programs on 

responsiveness, ethics, and interaction with communities must focus on those security 

personnel perceived to be willing and capable to become part of a professional force. 

In some cases, the existing force is neither efficient and effective in providing adequate 

security, nor seen as legitimate—suggesting a decision to dissolve and rebuild the force. 

In these cases, peacekeeping forces will be asked to provide sufficient security until hostcountry forces are in place.
58

Westerners often assume that the demand for reform in security forces will be strong 

and focused among ordinary citizens. Because there will almost always be an urgent and 

primary desire for security, citizens may support those actors, such as warlords or the 

heads of political parties, who can provide it effectively—however undemocratic and 

self-serving the system they use to do so. Thus citizen demand for reform will be blunted. 

Recent accounts repeatedly report how, even when there is a strong desire for reform, an 

increase in fair treatment, and for access in the political process, the attitudinal changes 

and ability to play the roles required to do this are not automatic and can fall prey to 

resumption of a familiar modus operandi, tolerance of corrupt practices, and acceptance of 

a poorly governed status quo.76

Successfully creating democratic governance in these situations requires a change in 

how security forces perceive themselves, as well as the governing culture. This change is 

ultimately the work of many years. The tasks of successful S&R operations in this area is 

to begin the process from the earliest days of interaction, to channel the desire for change, 

and—as in other sectors of governance—to support the creation of processes that set 

precedents and principles of effective governance and begin building the governance 

structures that provide effective civilian oversight.

Pay attention to cultural considerations. Discussion here has often focused on Western 

models for governance and how those may clash with the cultural norms that influence 

governance structures in the societies where stability operations will be conducted. S&R 

actors must be sensitive to taboos, gender roles, criteria for police, and other issues that 

will influence the operational success of security forces. Box 20 provides an example 

from Afghanistan.77 This is another place where local committees that provide advice 

on policies and procedures for policing will guide implementation so that it is culturally 

appropriate. Attention to providing a voice for women in this process will also build in 

cultural sensitivity.78

Box 20. Gender Issues in Police Reform in Afghanistan.

Data show that the security of Afghan women has not improved significantly since the fall of the Taliban. 

Because Islamic practices inhibit policemen from handling female complainants, victims, or suspects, it 

is necessary to recruit more women into the Afghan police force. However, women currently make up 

less than one percent of the police. 

Recruitment is challenging for a number of reasons. First, gender programs have received no substantial 

allocation of resources. Second, the Ministry of Interior lacks the political will and ability to bring about 

change. Recruitment is also hindered by mobility and security problems for women. Finally, because 

policing is seen as a low-status profession, it is not a respectable occupation for women.

Small gains have been made in Afghanistan. The Police Academy now has a secure female residence, the 

Minister of the Interior has funding for a gender adviser, and one police station in Kabul has established 

a family violence unit.

Provide training for civilian actors in interacting with security forces. This option 

regarding the creation of civilian oversight and control is repeated here because in terms of 

a sequence from short- to long-term restoration of stability, continuous attention to civilian 
59

capacity is essential. As governance is tied so closely to legitimacy and mechanisms for 

responsiveness and accountability, training is required not only for police and military, 

but also for civilian security force managers and for those involved in security sector 

oversight. While training in budget processes, managing public services, and managing 

civilian constituencies is common, training for civilians in managing relationships with 

police is not. In fact, leaders of populations that have been preyed upon by police will 

often find it difficult to begin dialogue with them, and typically there are animosities and 

historical perceptions on both sides that undermine communication. Early training for 

civilian leadership to engage with, demand responsiveness from, and—as appropriate—

direct police is a critical need in supporting security sector governance and has not 

typically been a common aspect of training programs. 

CONCLUSIONS

Rebuilding government and reestablishing or strengthening a viable social contract 

between the state and its citizens is a long-term endeavor. Apart from the first end-state 

condition in FM 3-07, a safe and secure environment, the others are highly unlikely to be 

in place by the time a given stability operation concludes. The unifying thread throughout 

all stability operations tasks, then, is to contribute as much as possible to establishing the 

foundation upon which the host country can build to achieve those end-state conditions 

over time. The guidance offered in this document is shaped by this consideration, and 

the options offered are geared toward actions that can create and reinforce host country 

actors’ capacity to fulfill the three sets of governance functions necessary for a functioning, 

viable society. 

This concluding section highlights this unifying thread with some suggestions for 

how S&R actors can increase the chances that actions will contribute to rebuilding 

government and enabling good governance. It offers thoughts on two topics: context 

and initial conditions, and prioritizing and sequencing.

Context. 

It is now commonplace to stress that context matters for post-conflict reconstruction. 

But how it matters is more difficult to specify. Stability operations confront situations 

where a complex confluence of societal patterns and fissures has led to the eruption of 

violent conflict and the breakdown of order. This conflict is deeply rooted in history, 

culture, and indigenous institutions. Thus the initial conditions for S&R actors—that 

is, the starting point for stability operations—are for the host country a product of past 

institutional dynamics, socio-cultural interactions, resource endowments, and trigger 

events. These various factors create what is called path dependence, which means that 

the possibilities for social and institutional change today are significantly constrained 

by previous institutional choices and societal evolution. For example, the machinery 

of government discussed above—the parts, and the rules of the game—are highly path 

dependent. This is not to say that the institutional architecture of the state, both formal 

and informal, cannot be changed. History is not destiny; nonetheless, whether rebuilt 
60

government and governance reforms “stick” or not has a lot to do with what has come 

before. 

The terminology of stability operations, with the emphasis on rebuilding and 

reconstruction, conjures images of architects, masons, carpenters, and electricians erecting 

a house. Yet societal reconstruction is a much more disorderly, uncertain, and long-term 

process. House builders have a high degree of control over the variables involved, but for 

peacekeepers reconstituting a government, S&R actors, the controllable variables are much 

more limited. The challenge for stability operations is to distinguish the uncontrollable 

factors in the country context from those variables S&R actors can control. 

This manual joins FM 3-07 in emphasizing the importance of gathering and applying 

contextual knowledge for the design and implementation of stability operations. The 

following provide some summary guidance for looking at country context.

Identify sources of political will and commitment. As noted, S&R actors need to connect 

and build consensus with those individuals and groups in the host country that have an 

interest in supporting the objectives of the stability operation. Among the lessons from 

experience is the importance of country actors who can set direction, engender legitimacy 

for change, and build constituencies (policy champions). Identifying and working with 

such leaders can be a critical step toward establishing ownership and political will. As 

remarked earlier, sorting the conflict entrepreneurs and spoilers from the “good guys” is 

rarely straightforward. “Good” may be relative: leaders in post-conflict societies may be 

former military combatants (government, militia, or insurgent) or civilian authoritarian 

actors whose commitments to a new order of democratic rule are likely to be less than 

whole-hearted. 

Reaching the ultimate aim of stability operations requires that what begins as a process 

originated by outsiders becomes owned by country actors with the political will to rebuild 

and reconstruct forward on their own initiative. Detecting and reinforcing political will 

and commitment can be enhanced by: (1) understanding how the peacekeeper-country 

relationship affects the interests and motivation of country actors (and not simply national 

decisionmakers), (2) creating space for those with a stake in creating stability and moving 

toward more democratic governance, and (3) identifying the pressures and incentives 

within the host country society that each of the host country actors face. The institutional 

rules of the game will be particularly key to this latter assessment.

Integrate conflict sensitivity into contextual assessment. Throughout the manual, 

the stress has been on targeting early interventions on those elements of government 

rebuilding that address the original causes of conflict—grievances, ethnic fissures, 

and unequal distribution of resources and services. For example, start with the public 

services that citizens see as most critical for restoration and pay attention to perceived 

fairness and equity in distribution. Or pay attention to whether the behavior of public 

officials (e.g., police or district department heads) is engendering positive support among 

the population for a new government or is undermining state legitimacy and support 

through abuse and corruption. Numerous tools exist to integrate sensitivity to conflict 

issues into analyses of country contexts. One or more of these should be employed in 

preparing for, and carrying out, the options for rebuilding government reviewed in this 

manual.79

Rebuilding government should be grounded in indigenous processes and “rules of 
61

the game.” The above analysis highlights the importance of connecting S&R activities 

to rebuild government to indigenous practices. This can help for two reasons: (1) it 

can increase the chances that reforms will be seen by country actors as relevant and 

appropriate for their circumstances, which can assist in institutionalizing change; and (2) 

in cases where the formal state is weak and incapable, reliance on traditional practices 

can be the quickest route to providing some level of services. The traditional mechanisms 

for adjudication of conflicts presented above are an example. Rebuilding government 

options should look for ways to anchor reforms in contextually relevant practices, while 

remaining sensitive to the possibilities that some of those practices may have had a role in 

reinforcing inequity, exclusion, and/or exploitation, and may therefore have instigated 

conflict. Thus the conduct of conflict-sensitive assessment will contribute in such cases. 

Reassess continually. As with any intervention in complex situations with a lot 

of unknowns, effective contextual analysis is not a one-shot activity. While perhaps 

not as dramatic and fast-moving as the shifting circumstances of kinetic operations, 

nevertheless, stability operations can confront rapidly changing conditions as well. The 

balance between controllable and uncontrollable variables that was present at entry—the 

initial conditions—will inevitably shift over time during the life of a stability operation, 

partly as a result of the interventions that S&R actors pursue. As political space opens, 

new leaders and citizens can become aware of different possibilities, debate new ideas 

and processes, and shed or modify old governance patterns. Constant and regular 

monitoring is essential for tracking progress and adjusting tactics and strategy. 

Prioritizing and Sequencing. While there are relatively clear priorities in specific 

settings that dictate “ideal” sequencing of stability operations activities intended to rebuild 

or restore governance, there is no single “best” sequence that fits all circumstances beyond 

the well-recognized observation that safety and security merit immediate attention. The 

biggest difference in the circumstances in which stability operations take place affecting 

sequencing is the degree to which the mandate (international or unilateral) is to (1) rebuild 

or restore government where it has virtually ceased to function in the entire country, 

or (2) support an existing government in a conflict, post-conflict, or large-scale natural 

disaster situation to address governance issues in a region within the country. In the 

former circumstance, the basic rules of the game are largely inoperable or failing badly 

across the entire country. The economy likely has almost ceased to function except at the 

very local, and mostly informal, level; institutions of government are widely regarded 

as having failed and as illegitimate representatives of society’s aspirations; and security 

conditions are likely to be dangerous in much of the country. In these circumstances, 

stability operations, usually under some international mandate, in many ways act in place 

of government for a period of time. Stability operations and their aftermath result in a 

new regime, substantial modifications in the system of governance, legal and economic 

reforms, and a new social contract that revises expectations regarding the relationship 

between citizens and government. Within the framework of peace accords or an imposed 

settlement, S&R actors have considerable leeway in what they do and in sequencing.

Where conflict or disaster has affected only a part of a country, and the existing 

governance system and regime remains in place, S&R personnel typically operate 

according to quite restricted mandates focused mainly on the affected locale(s) and not 

likely extending to fundamental governance or economic reforms. In these circumstances, 
62

existing government institutions, even though they may be regarded by many citizens as 

ineffective or even illegitimate, nonetheless continue to function in much of the country, 

and there is no international mandate for stability operations carried out within part 

of a country to fundamentally replace existing institutions, constitutional structures, or 

governance processes. It may well be that a serious breakdown of governance or major 

dysfunctions in the relationship between the state and citizens in the affected region has 

led to the violent conflict preceding stability operations. However, stability operations 

themselves are unlikely to include addressing the fundamental rules of the game in 

the existing system. Not only is the mandate for stability operations more limited, but 

sequencing of S&R activities is affected also.

Regime Replacement.

In the case of a UN or international mandate to replace the existing regime or to deal 

with complete state failure, stability operations are likely to involve international actors, 

particularly peacekeeping forces, in a temporary assumption of authority throughout the 

country. Interim governance includes fundamental governance tasks, including restoring 

order; disarming or otherwise neutralizing combatants; addressing urgent humanitarian 

needs for food, medical care, and shelter; initially providing basic services; repairing or 

rehabilitating damaged or destroyed infrastructure and other public facilities; maintaining 

civil order and dealing with criminal and civil justice issues; and taking on the roles and 

responsibilities of public officials. These are the more immediate S&R tasks to perform. 

As the immediate tasks are met, as rapidly as possible stability operations turn over 

to interim government officials many of the tasks that the military and civilian personnel 

(government, contractor, or NGOs) have been performing on a temporary basis. The 

authorities that these interim officials will exercise will be different from those of the 

previous regime.

In the case of prolonged violent conflict, the military may need to provide the support 

to rebuilding government during stability operations that in other nonkinetic situations 

would be considered by some as traditional development assistance. In Iraq, stability 

operations have continued to provide substantial support to rebuilding government, both 

through independent activities and in close coordination with traditional development 

Box 21. Transitional Administration in Iraq.

For example, in Iraq the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) written by the CPA, along with several 

CPA directives, created an entirely new authority structure between central and local government, establishing provincial, district, and sub-district levels of government for the first time in Iraq’s history. 

These laws and directives were in effect for the last several months of the CPA and, by agreement of the 

interim Iraqi government that succeeded the CPA in late June 2004, remained in effect until superseded 

by a new constitution and new legislation authored by a new permanent Iraqi government. Stability 

operations thus involved creating a new, albeit temporary, governance system that then was run by an 

interim Iraqi government, but assisted financially and technically by ongoing stability operations and a 

transition to more traditional development assistance and diplomacy activities.
63

assistance and diplomatic activities, primarily focusing on strengthening the capacity of, 

and bringing resources to bear at, the provincial and lower levels of government. In this 

kind of extreme circumstance, the distinction between stability operations and regular 

development and diplomacy activities is blurred. 

Stability Operations in Support of an Existing, Functioning Regime.

As discussed, stability operations are different in degree, sequencing, and concept 

when they take place within a country where conflict or a natural disaster surpasses the 

coping capacity of the existing regime, but is sufficiently localized that regime replacement 

is not one of the options. Immediate and urgent actions to address humanitarian 

assistance needs for food, water, shelter, and medical care are highest on the priority list. 

Military forces may, in fact, temporarily perform the functions of government officials in 

the affected locale(s) within the country when local authority has dissolved or is unable 

to function, and central government is temporarily unable to mobilize personnel and 

resources. Actions that are designed to reform an existing or previous, now deposed, 

government typically are not part of stability operations when they are undertaken in 

support of an existing, functioning regime. Even when an existing regime’s coping with 

the conflict or the natural disaster is ineffective, or where its policies and practices toward 

a particular geographic region or ethnic minority contributed to the outbreak of violence, 

the peacekeepers may have a limited mandate to deal with the root causes. 

That is not to say that there may not already be ongoing efforts by diplomatic means 

and development assistance to exert pressure for reform. But it is likely that these will 

have preceded the onset of stability operations that are precipitated by an escalation of 

violence and conflict, and that they will not be merged into the mandate and management 

of stability operations. An interesting exception is the post-tsunami reconstruction in 

Aceh Province in Indonesia. Prior to the tsunami the Indonesian government did not 

permit development assistance programs in the province and turned a deaf ear to 

diplomatic initiatives. However, the scale of the disaster and the need for substantial 

external assistance opened the door not only to emergency humanitarian relief, but also 

to a fresh look by the government as well as international actors at the issues that had 

heretofore affected that province. As a result, local governance reforms assisted by stability 

operations and development assistance programs have had an impact on the character of 

the regime. Similarly, governance issues are being addressed in areas of the Philippines 

where stability operations are taking place in coordination with central government.

But overall, these types of stability operations are more time-limited, have less far 

reaching effects on governance and the governance system, and are more focused on 

immediate and/or temporary support until the existing regime is once again able to 

resume control and perform the basic functions of government. Longer-term governance 

reform will most likely be the focus of diplomatic and development initiatives that follow 

stability operations.
64

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69

ENDNOTES

1. Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations: From Fragility to Resilience, Paris, France: 

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee (OECD/

DAC), 2008, p. 17.

2. See www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance/technical_areas/dg_office/gov.html.

3. See Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict. New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 2004. This point is one among many that have been part of the debate on the successes and failures 

of implanting Western democratic models in other countries. See Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy 

Abroad: The Learning Curve, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999; Thomas 

Carothers and Marina Ottaway, Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion, Washington, 

DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000; Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds., 

Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for 

International Peace, 2005.

4. Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “No Sign Until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the 

Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2008, pp. 41-77, provide an informative 

discussion of Pashtunwali and the insurgency along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

5. Samuel Taddesse and Derick W. Brinkerhoff, Postconflict Restoration of Essential Public Services: The 

Al Basrah Experience, LGP Lessons Learned Brief No. 1, Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI International, 

December 2004.

6. The discussion in this section draws on Derick W. Brinkerhoff, “Introduction—Governance 

Challenges in Fragile States: Re-establishing Security, Rebuilding Effectiveness, and Reconstituting 

Legitimacy,” in Derick W. Brinkerhoff, ed., Governance in Post-Conflict Societies: Rebuilding Fragile States, 

London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2007, pp. 1-22.

7. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World, 

Oxford, United Kingdom, and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 110.

8. See David Leonard, Where Are “Pockets” of Effective Agencies Likely in Weak Governance States and 

Why? A Propositional Inventory, Brighton, UK: University of Sussex, Institute of Development Studies and 

Centre for the Future State, Working Paper No. 306, 2008.

9. See the USAID Economic Growth Office’s guide to restarting growth in post-conflict countries. U.S. 

Agency for International Development, A Guide to Economic Growth in Post-Conflict Countries, Washington, 

DC: USAID, Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade, Economic Growth Office, December 

2008, draft.

10. A well-researched presentation of this evidence can be found in a book sponsored by the Council 

on Foreign Relations. See Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle, and Michael M. Weinstein, The Democracy 

Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace, New York and London, United Kingdom: 

Routledge, 2005.

11. This body of literature is enormous, much of it supported by the National Endowment for 

Democracy. See Larry Diamond and Mark Plattner, among others.

12. Source: Marcus Cox, State Building and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Lessons from Bosnia, Geneva, 

Switzerland: Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, January 2001.
70

13. Jonathan A. Rodden, Hamilton’s Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism, Cambridge, MA, 

and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

14. In the case of the United States, debate began with the Federalist Papers, a set of 85 articles written 

by three of the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and James Jay, in 1787-88, in support 

of ratification of the Constitution. They can be found on-line at the Library of Congress at thomas.loc.gov/

home/histdox/fedpapers.html.

15. Making Services Work for Poor People. World Development Report 2004, Washington, DC: World 

Bank, 2004.

16. The U.S. Institute of Peace maintains a library of the texts of all peace agreements, which can be 

accessed on-line. The URL for the Guatemala agreement is www.usip.org/library/pa/guatemala/guat_960919.

html.

17. There is a large literature on assessing the effectiveness of peace accords both in terms of their 

success in bringing about peace and of providing a roadmap for state building. One of the tensions 

recognized is that a strong emphasis on including specifics on reforms for state building may jeopardize the 

achievement of peace if the negotiating parties cannot agree on those reforms. Thus some argue that peace 

accords should focus primarily on peace building. See, for example, the review in Astri Suhrke, Torunn 

Wimpelmann, and Marcia Dawes, Peace Processes and Statebuilding: Economic and Institutional Provisions of 

Peace Agreements, Oslo, Norway: Chr. Michelson Institute, 2007. 

18. Sources for this box are Renata Dwan and Laura Bailey, Liberia’s Governance and Economic 

Management Assistance Program (GEMAP), New York and Washington, DC: United Nations, Department 

of Peacekeeping Operations, Peacekeeping Best Practices Section, and World Bank, Fragile States Group, 

May 2006; National Human Development Report Liberia, Monrovia and New York: UN Development Program 

(UNDP), 2006.

19. USAID has conducted legislative strengthening programs in many countries, including postconflict ones, and has helpful technical materials available on-line.

20. Constitutions and constitutional drafting are topics with extensive literatures and technical aspects 

that extend far beyond what can be included here. Suggested additional reading includes Vivien Hart, 

Democratic Constitution Making, Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, Special Report No. 107, July 2003; 

Jamal Benomar, “Constitution-Making after Conflict: Lessons for Iraq,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2, 

pp. 81-95; and Aliza Belman Inbal and Hanna Lerner, “Constitutional Design, Identity, and Legitimacy in 

Post-Conflict Reconstruction,” Brinkerhoff, ed., Governance in Post-Conflict Societies, pp. 45-64.

21. See the Rwandan government’s action plan at www.cjcr.gov.rw/eng/actionplancjc.PDF.

22. For example, law professor Noah Feldman’s role as a constitutional advisor in Iraq was controversial 

both in Iraq and in the United States.

23. South Africa’s constitution is available at: www.info.gov.za/documents/constitution/index.htm.

24. The discussion below draws on Eric Bjornlund, Glenn Cowan, and William Gallery, “Election 

Systems and Political Parties in Post-Conflict and Fragile States,” Brinkerhoff, ed., Governance in PostConflict Societies, 2007, pp. 64-85.; Michele Schimpp and Frances McKernan, Elections and Conflict: An Issue 

Paper, Washington, DC: U.S. Agency for International Development, Office of Democracy and Governance, 

December 5, 2001. A huge amount of material can be found on elections in developing countries and 

post-conflict situations. See the websites of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International 

Republican Institute (IRI), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). See also USAID’s 

“bullets to ballots” case studies of post-conflict elections.
71

25. A plurality is defined as the number of votes a candidate (or a party) receives that is higher than 

his/her rival when no single candidate has received more than 50 percent of total votes.

26. See the study of the 2005 elections by the founder of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation 

Unit; Andrew Wilder, A House Divided? Analysing the 2005 Afghan Elections, Kabul: Afghanistan Research 

and Evaluation Unit, 2005; an assessment of progress with democratization by Norway’s Chr. Michelsen 

Institute, Astri Suhrke, Democratization of a Dependent State: The Case of Afghanistan, Oslo, Norway: Chr. 

Michelson Institute, Working Paper, Vol. 10, 2007, p. 10; and Bjornlund et al., 2007.

27. Numbers from the Joint Electoral Management Board, www.elections-afghanistan.org.af/Election%20

Results%20Website/english/english.htm, cited in Larry P. Goodson, “Bullets, Ballots, and Poppies in 

Afghanistan,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2005, pp. 24-38.

28. As noted in the introduction, Paris is among the well-known proponents of this view. He argues 

for a go-slow approach to holding elections, arguing that without the effective functioning of the machinery 

of government discussed in this section, accompanied by security, elections carry a high risk of throwing 

stability operations off-track. See Benjamin Reilly and Per Nordlund, Political Parties in Conflict-Prone 

Societies: Regulation, Engineering, and Democratic Development. Tokyo, Japan: United Nations University 

Press, 2008, on the need for, and challenges of, institutional development for democratic political systems 

in conflict-prone countries.

29. See Bjornlund et al. Other reasons for selecting SNTV were politically motivated; for example, to 

impede the ability of emergent political parties to gain large numbers of seats in the National Assembly.

30. A large number of critical reviews of the Iraq reconstruction effort can be found. Among the popular 

treatments is Diamond’s journalistic account. Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation 

and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, New York: Henry Holt, Times Books, 2005.

31. These include NDI, IRI, IFES, USAID’s Office of Democracy and Governance, the International 

Crisis Group, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Carter Center, the International Institute for Democracy and 

Electoral Assistance, and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy.

32. See International Crisis Group (ICG), Spoiling Security in Haiti, Latin America/Caribbean Report 

No. 13, Brussels: ICG, May 31, 2005.

33. From Lotte ten Hoove and Alvaro Pinto Scholtbach, Democracy and Political Party Assistance in PostConflict Societies, The Hague: Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, August 2008, p. 17.

34. Source: Derick W. Brinkerhoff and Samuel Taddesse, Creating Representative Councils in Baghdad, 

Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI International, LGP Lessons Learned Brief No. 6, May 2005.

35. The writings of Max Weber, the German sociologist and political theorist, provide the core of 

much of modern thought on the role of the state, different sources of authority, and the functioning of 

bureaucracies.

36. Source: Ali Wardak, Jirga—A Traditional Mechanism of Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan, Pontypridd, 

UK: University of Glamorgan, Centre for Criminology, 2003, available at unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/

public/documents/apcity/unpan017434.pdf; and U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and 

School, Rule of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates, Charlottesville, VA: Center for Law 

and Military Operations, 2008.

37. Source: Paul Jackson, “Chiefs, Money and Politicians: Rebuilding Local Government in Post-War 

Sierra Leone,” Public Administration and Development, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2005, pp. 49-59; and Richard Hill, 
72

Jonathan Temin, and Lisa Pacholek, “Building Security Where There Is No Security,” Journal of Peacebuilding 

and Development, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007, pp. 38-52.

38. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Eisenstadt’s article on working with tribal leaders in Iraq demonstrates 

the benefits of in-depth understanding. See Michael Eisenstadt, “Iraq: Tribal Engagement Lessons Learned,”

Military Review, September-October 2007, pp. 16-31. 

39. A variety of Afghan societal groups considered these changes to be unwelcome foreign tampering 

with the jirga and rejected it as illegitimate, reflecting the trade-off noted above. 

40. Important governance dynamics around this program in Guatemala, Lebanon, Serbia, Azerbijan, 

and Bosnia are analyzed in Richard Hill, Catherine Barnes, Jon Temin, John Bray, Giselle Huamani Ober, 

and Mary Matthews, Stable Societies Study—Effects on Conflict Dynamics and Peacebuilding, Silver Spring, 

MD: CHF International, 2005.

41. ROL is subject to debate regarding how to define it and how to build it. Belton, for example, argues 

that ROL is not a single unified end condition, but is made up of five separate ends: (1) a government bound 

by law, (2) equality before the law, (3) law and order, (4) predictable and efficient rulings, and (5) human 

rights. The discussion here is necessarily brief and brushes the surface of issues that have large literatures. 

Rachel Kleinfeld Belton, Competing Definitions of the Rule of Law: Implications for Practitioners, Washington, 

DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Paper No. 55, Rule of Law Series, January 

2005, p. 3. Useful sources for post-conflict countries include the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal 

Center and School; Enhancing the Delivery of Justice and Security, Paris, France: OECD/DAC, 2007; and 

Samuels. 

42. See Bert Ingelaere, “The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda,” Luc Huyse and Mark Salter, eds., Traditional 

Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: Learning from African Experiences, Stockholm, Sweden: 

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2008, pp. 25-61; and Barbara Oomen, Justice 

Mechanisms and the Question of Legitimacy: The Example of Rwanda’s Multi-Layered Justice Mechanisms, Bonn, 

Germany, and Bern, Switzerland: Working Group on Development and Peace and Center for Peacebuilding, 

June 2007.

43. See Richard Hill and Laura Bowman, “Police Reform Programs: Links to Post-Conflict 

Reconstruction and Social Stability in Violent and Fragile States,” In Cornwallis XI: Analysis for Civil-Military 

Transitions, David Davis, Alexander Woodcock, and George Rose, eds., Clementsport, Nova Scotia: Pearson 

Peacekeeping Centre, 2007.

44. Sources: Volker Böge and Lorraine Garasu, “Papua New Guinea: A Success Story of Postconflict 

Peace-Building in Bougainville,” Annelies Heijmans, Nicola Simmonds, and Hans van de Veens, eds., 

Searching for Peace in Asia Pacific: An Overview of Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities, Boulder, 

CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004; and Patrick Francis Howley, Breaking Spears and Mending Hearts: 

Peacemakers and Restorative Justice in Bougainville, London, UK: Zed Books, 2002.

45. See Kirsti Samuels, “Rule of Law Reform in Post-Conflict Countries: Operational Initiatives and 

Lessons Learned,” Washington, DC: World Bank, Social Development Papers, Conflict Prevention and 

Reconstruction, Paper No. 37, October 2006, p. 20; and www.un.org/rights/micivih/rapports/3years.htm.

46. The UNHCHR toolkit includes papers on truth commissions, mapping the justice sector, monitoring 

legal systems, prosecution initiatives, vetting, reparations, and the legacy of hybrid courts. The papers can 

be found at www.ohchr.org/EN/PublicationsResources/Pages/SpecialIssues.aspx.

47. The U.S. Army’s ROL handbook has a useful section on assessments, drawing on USAID analyses. 

See the section, Practical Approaches for Conducting Assessments within Rule of Law Activities, pp. 158-

172, in U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School.
73

48. Such engagement is rarely easy. For example, one observer noted the resentments and lack 

of commitment among Solomons Islands officials to the reconstruction reform agenda of the Regional 

Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI): the “endless and time consuming struggle to push forward 

on [sic] with these reforms with little or no support from all but a few of the Solomons’ senior bureaucrats 

[which] was described by one RAMSI insider recently as ‘trench warfare’.” See Mary Louise O’Callaghan, 

“RAMSI: The Challenges Ahead,” Workshop Paper, Canberra: Australian National University, Research 

School of Pacific and Asian Studies and the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project Workshop 

on Solomon Islands: Where to Now? May 5, 2006, p. 2.

49. Civil society is subject to a variety of definitions. It can be taken as referring to an arena of voluntary 

social action that is independent of the state, and distinct from political parties and private firms. Civil 

society organizations are defined as nongovernmental entities, both membership and service-based, that 

pursue collective public activities. The category includes a wide variety of organizations: community groups, 

labor unions, professional associations, grassroots organizations, faith-based organizations, charities, and 

service-delivery NGOs. 

50. See Building Civil Society in Post-Conflict Environments: From the Micro to the Macro, Washington, 

DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Occasional Paper Series, “What Really Works 

in Preventing and Rebuilding Failed States,” Issue 1, November 2006, for additional details and useful 

discussion.

51. Source: Bill Sterland, Civil Society Capacity Building in Post-Conflict Societies: The Experience of Bosnia 

and Herzegovina and Kosovo, Oxford, UK: International NGO Training and Research Centre, Praxis Paper 

No. 9, June 2006, available at www.intrac.org/pages/PraxisPaper9.html.

52. See the useful discussion in Martina Fischer, Civil Society in Conflict Transformation: Ambivalence, 

Potentials and Challenges, Berlin, Germany: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, 

October 2006.

53. Eisenstadt, p. 29.

54. For additional details, see www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/cap.html. 

55. See Mathieu Deflem and Suzanne Sutphin, “Policing Post-War Iraq: Insurgency, Civilian Police, 

and the Reconstruction of Society,” Sociological Focus, Vol. 39, No. 4, 2006, pp. 265-283, on the legacy of the 

police under Saddam Hussein.

56. Three sources that consolidate lessons learned over the past several years of more focused activity 

in the security sector are Nicole Ball, Eric Scheye, and Luc van de Goor, From Project to Program: Effective 

Programming for Security And Justice, The Hague, Netherlands: Clingendael Institute of International 

Relationsm available at www.clingendael.nl/publications/2007/20071211_cru_occ_ball.pdf; OECD/DAC, 2007; 

and United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office, The Guidelines and Principles on the United Kingdom 

Contribution to Peace Support Operations, 2007, available at www.ukinternationalpolicing.com. 

57. The discussion also recognizes trade-offs between less participation and other democratic processes 

and more stability, especially in the short term.

58. For discussion of legitimacy of nonstate actors see Hill, 2007; and Mark Sedra, “Security Sector 

Reform in Afghanistan: The Slide Towards Expediency,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2006, pp. 

94-110. 

59. The IRA political wing and the IRA maintained that they were not formally connected, an assertion 

with which many analysts disagreed.
74

60. Source: OECD, 2007, pp. 102-103. Quote is from Rees Edward Rees, Security Sector Reform (SSR) and 

Peace Operations: “Improvisation and Confusion” from the Field, New York: United Nations, Department of 

Peacekeeping Operations, 2006, p. 10, available at www.peaceoperations.org/common/os/SSR%20UNDPKO%20

Rees_2006%20(2).pdf. 

61. The section on security sector structures provides more discussion of decentralized and centralized 

structures for security sector governance. 

62. OECD/DAC, 2007. Other comprehensive reviews have similar conclusions. See Ball et al., 2007.

63. OECD/DAC, 2007; Anneke Osse, Understanding Policing: A Resource for Human Rights Activists, 

Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amnesty International, 2007, available at www.amnesty.nl/policeandhumanrights; 

and David Bruce and Rachel Neild, The Police That We Want: A Handbook for Oversight of Police in South 

Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa: Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2005, available 

at www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=102519, provide discussions and case studies of civil society 

roles in increasing positive interaction with police and improving police responsiveness.

64. In addition to external civilian over sight, internal oversight mechanisms within security forces 

are put in place as programs to improve management and professionalism are built and effective internal 

oversight can be expected.

65. See Hill et al., 2007.

66. There is a rich literature on developing civilian control over militaries in developing and postconflict countries. Issues of space do not allow a complete discussion of this here. 

67. A discussion of increased accountability in the military through legislative oversight in Bangladesh 

is found in Ahmed Syed Imtiaz Ahmed, “Civilian Supremacy in Democracies with ‘Fault Lines’: The Role 

of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence in Bangladesh,” Democratization, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2006, 

pp. 283-302.

68. See Osse, 2007; Hill and Bowman, 2007; and Andreas Heinemann-Gruder and Igor Grebenschikov, 

“Security Governance by Internationals: The Case of Kosovo,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 13, No. 1, 

2006, pp. 43-59. 

69. See discussion of this issue in Afghanistan in Tonita Murray, “Police Building in Afghanistan: A 

Case Study of Civil Security Reform, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2007, pp. 108-126.

70. Examples of such offices are the Office of National Security (Sierra Leone), the National Security 

Council for Security Sector Reform (Afghanistan); and the Office for Pubic Safety (Kosovo). 

71. Summarized from OECD/DAC, 2007; Nicole Ball, Tsjeard Bouta, and Luc van de Goor, 

Enhancing Democratic Governance of the Security Sector: An Institutional Assessment Framework, The Hague, 

Netherlands: Clingendael Institute of International Relations, 2003, available at www.clingendael.nl/

publications/2003/20030800_cru_paper_ball.pdf. This paper takes a “mapping” approach to understanding 

needs, contexts and the steps required to build democratically governed security. They suggest planning 

for developing effective governance around five entry points: (1) The rule of law; (2) policy development, 

planning, and implementation; (3) professionalism; (4) oversight; and (5) managing security sector 

expenditures.

72. See Hugo Früling, “The Impact of International Models of Policing in Latin America: The Case of 

Community Policing,” Police Practice and Research, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2007, pp. 125-144; and OECD/DAC, 2007, 

for discussions of community policing in post-conflict contexts.
75

73. See the discussion in OECD/DAC, 2007.

 74. There is no clear guidance from models in the democratized world as to whether centralized or 

decentralized reporting provides more effective responsiveness and professionalism. Countries such as 

the United States and Great Britain have relatively decentralized policing and countries like France have 

centralized national policing structures, and both function well. Where reporting is centralized, levels of 

professionalism in the security force and effective checks on abuse of power increase responsiveness of 

police. 

75. Ineffectiveness of police is in part a consequence of its lack of legitimacy at the local level in the 

south and west due to Tajik Afghans holding a disproportionately high number of senior positions in 

the police. For a recent analysis of the development of policing in post-war Iraq, see Deflem and Sutphin, 

2006; and James L. Jones, Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, Washington, DC: 

Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007, available at www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/isf.pdf. See also 

Murray. 

76. See Alice Hills, “The Dialectic of Police Reform in Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 

46, No. 2, 2008, pp. 215-234; Johanna Mendelson-Forman, “Security Sector Reform in Haiti, International 

Peacekeeping, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2006, pp. 14-27; and Sedera, 2006. 

77. Murray, 2007.

78. OEDC/DAC,2007; and Ball et al., 2003, both provide discussions on cultural considerations in the 

governance development process. See also Sinclair Dinnen, Abby McLeod, and Gordon Peake, “PoliceBuilding in Weak States: Australian Approaches in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands,” Civil Wars, 

Vol. 8, No. 2, 2006, pp. 87-108; and Christopher Hood, and Martin Lodge, “Competency, Bureaucracy, and 

Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis,” Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Vol. 

17, No. 3, 2004, pp. 313-33. 

79. See the Interagency Conflict Assessment Framework, Washington, DC: International College of 

the Armed Forces (ICAF), summarized in Annex D of FM 3-07. Other useful analytic tools can be found 

on the website of USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at www.usaid.gov/our_work/crosscutting_programs/conflict/

77

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

DERICK W. BRINKERHOFF is Distinguished Fellow in International Public Management 

with Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International and is an associate faculty member 

at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public 

Administration. He is a specialist in policy implementation, strategic management, 

democracy and governance, decentralization, civil society and nongovernmental 

organizations, and post-conflict reconstruction. His most recent book is an edited volume, 

Governance in Post-Conflict Societies: Rebuilding Fragile States (Routledge, 2007).

RONALD W. JOHNSON is Senior Policy Advisor in International Development with RTI 

International. For 25 years he led RTI’s International Development Group, first as vice 

president, then executive vice president. He is an expert in local government, municipal 

service delivery, decentralization, urban infrastructure financing, and post-conflict 

governance, and has provided leadership and technical support to the Local Governance 

Program in Iraq. He is co-author of Public Budgeting Systems (Jones and Bartlett, 2007), 

now in its 8th edition.

RICHARD HILL is Senior Director for Transitional States, RTI International. He has 

extensive experience in post-conflict reconstruction, emergency relief, and disaster 

response, and has worked in 41 countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Kosovo, 

Liberia, and Iraq. He has designed, directed, and evaluated relief and reconstruction 

programs, as well as managed research projects on contributing factors to societal stability 

and on economic integration of ex-combatants. 

SUSAN MERRILL is a Senior Governance Advisor at the U.S. Peacekeeping and Stability 

Operations Institute (PKSOI), U.S Army War College (USAWC). As a senior official with 

the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), she has had extensive experience 

in conflict and post-conflict countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She has served 

in El Salvador, Liberia, Nicaragua, and Cambodia, as well as Bosnia, Croatia, and Iraq. 

Ms. Merrill was the first USAID representative to the USAWC and PKSOI in 2005. In 2002, 

she was selected to lead a USAID-wide Task Force on U.S. Foreign Aid in the National 

Interest, an examination of the successes and failures of foreign aid and the role of aid 

in U.S. foreign policy. In her overseas assignments, she was Acting Mission Director, 

Cambodia and held senior level positions in missions in El Salvador, Liberia, Nicaragua, 

and Cambodia. She is an expert in post-conflict reconstruction and governance, conflict 

prevention and mitigation, and economic stabilization and recovery.