Page 1. Security System Transformation in Sierra Leone, 1997-2007 ?? Peter Albrecht and Paul Jack... more Page 1. Security System Transformation in Sierra Leone, 1997-2007 ?? Peter Albrecht and Paul Jackson In collaboration with Desmond Buck, Emmanuel Osho Coker, Kellie Conteh, Kadi Fakondo, Aldo Gaeta, Garth Glentworth, Barry Le Grys, Rosalind Hanson-Alp, Anthony ...
This article adds to current debates on hybridity by shifting attention from interactions between... more This article adds to current debates on hybridity by shifting attention from interactions between entities to the enactment of authority. The notion of hybridity has helped move debates on peace and state-building beyond a normative focus on failure and fragility. However, it also remains a contested and evolving concept. This article aims to theorise further the process of hybridisation. By introducing the concept of simultaneity of discourse and practice it explores the process through which seemingly contradictory sources of authority are played out at the same time in order-making to constitute political order. The processes of enactment suggest a model for reading dialogically concepts such as bureaucracy, autochthony, kinship and legislation, exploring how they are co-constituted in spaces of discourse and practice. Inherent to these spaces is a perpetual tension of difference and affinity. It is the dynamism of this tension that defines the hybrid order’s quality of simultaneity.
The concept of friction is applied to challenge the assumption that
the main goal of peace suppor... more The concept of friction is applied to challenge the assumption that the main goal of peace support operations is to permanently stabilise a country. By exploring missions in Somalia and Mali, where neighbouring states are the main troop contributors, we suggest to focus on the interaction among troop-contributing countries within missions. They express how national interests play out in the framework of international organisations. Even when a mission deploys, rules that should define how cooperation is to occur during deployment are lacking, especially when they contradict national interests of individual troop contributors. The result is mission incoherence and fragmentation.
This book explains how security is organized from the local to the national level in post-war Sie... more This book explains how security is organized from the local to the national level in post-war Sierra Leone, and how external actors attempted to shape the field through security sector reform.
Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone. It critiques how the notion of hybridity has been applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions. The book is the first to take the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea.
This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, anthropology, African politics and IR in general.
On the basis of a historical and ethnographic analysis, this article shows how the concept of hyb... more On the basis of a historical and ethnographic analysis, this article shows how the concept of hybridity can be used analytically to explore the emergence of paramount and lesser chiefs in Sierra Leone and their role as figures of authority at the local level and in national politics. At the same time, it critiques the ahistorical applications of the concept that are prevalent in peace and conflict studies. The article offers insight into the processes of hybridization that chiefs constitute, and are constituted by, as they draw on multiple sources of authority, including what one scholar calls their "extremely localized" sense of belonging, as well as the legislation of a centrally governed bureaucracy. Résumé: Sur la base d'une analyse historique et ethnographique, cet article montre comment le concept de l' "hybridité" peut être utilisé analytiquement pour explorer l'émergence des chefs suprême et infé rieurs en Sierra Leone ainsi que leur rôle comme figures d'autorité localement et dans la politique nationale. En même temps, il critique les applications historiques du concept qui est répandue dans les études sur la paix et la polémologie. L'article offre un aperçu du processus d'hybridation dont ils sont principalement constitués, en s'appuyant sur des sources multiples et autoritaires, y compris ce qu'un spécialiste appelle leur sentiment "extrêmement localisée" d'appartenance, ainsi que la législation d'une bureaucratie centralisée gouvernée.
Hybridisation is often conceptualised as a 'liminal' occurrence, a 'contact point' or the product... more Hybridisation is often conceptualised as a 'liminal' occurrence, a 'contact point' or the product of an 'interface'. This tends to invoke the very binaries that the concept seeks to overcome, because it assumes that a meeting between separate entities must occur for hybrid orders to emerge. Instead, this article argues that processes of hybridisation and how they assemble disparate types of authority lie at the very core of how social processes evolve. The argument is substantiated empirically by exploring the internal and external dynamics that have shaped and partly fragmented the security sector of Puntland, the largest and most stable region in Somalia (beyond Somaliland). The analysis centres on attempts by the United Nations (UN) to support the Puntland government in reducing numbers of the region's constitutionally recognised security forces. In this analysis, the article shows how the Puntland government necessarily has to balance and negotiate conflicting demands of clan leaders, the global and regional security interests of individual governments, notably the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America, as well as continued pressure from the 'international community', formally represented by the UN, to act as a functioning regional centre within a federal Somalia.
Drawing on cultural studies, the concept of hybridity has emerged in peace and conflict studies a... more Drawing on cultural studies, the concept of hybridity has emerged in peace and conflict studies as an important critique of the fragile failed/state discourse, and the binaries whereby the modern state is often contrasted with traditional or non-state actors. The concept is also challenged for reproducing the very binaries that it seeks to overcome and lacking analytical vigour. The paper addresses these critiques by exploring a case of diamond theft in rural Sierra Leone. It suggests an analytical shift from interaction between state institutions (police) and non-state authorities (traditional leaders) to focusing on processes of hybridisation through the enactment and performativity of authority. This is an analytical move from preconceived cultural and political entities to the subject and the simultaneous quality of how he or she assembles and projects authority. It is in the subject’s strategies and practices at the micro level that we clearly see how hybridisation processes occur.
This paper explores the Poro, a male secret society in rural Sierra Leone, and how it conditions ... more This paper explores the Poro, a male secret society in rural Sierra Leone, and how it conditions access to security and justice. It critiques dichotomies between state and non-state and substantiates the networked quality of order-making as dispersed among a multitude of actors who intertwine disparate rationalities and registers of authority. The secret nature of the Poro, the ‘sons of the soil’, and the ‘stranger’ are explored as central figures. Poro membership is essential to the production of social and physical boundaries between insiders and outsiders of a community. By conditioning access to local positions of power and decision-making about how resources are to be distributed, the Poro also conditions access to security and justice. The networked quality of order-making becomes particularly noticeable when the police engages in Poro affairs, which accentuates the multitude of registers of authorities that are combined and assembled as the Poro and the police interact.
Nairobi’s urban settlements offer unique settings in which to examine the interplay between citiz... more Nairobi’s urban settlements offer unique settings in which to examine the interplay between citizens’ need for security, the state’s inability to fully meet that need, and the opportunities this creates for powerful private actors. In Kenya’s capital, this situation has led to a context of plural security provision, in which an array of actors assert claims on the use of force, operating simultaneously and with varying relationships to the state. Despite the proliferation of active security providers, who range from opportunistic enforcers to tireless local guardians, most people in Nairobi’s poor urban settlements are exposed to daily threats on their person and property.
Fieldwork in Mathare, Korogocho and Kangemi provided insights into how settlement residents must rely upon their social networks and personal attributes to ensure access to a combination of protective communities. Unable to call upon the state as the guarantor of public welfare, citizens must ‘hustle for security’, using their wits and their networks to assemble a tenuous patchwork of protection. The research identifed not only the risks this creates for individuals and communities, but also how the propensity to resort to individualised security strategies can undermine the notion and the actualisation of ‘the public good’.
The paper concludes with proposals for addressing the more malign aspects of plural security provision, specifcally, the need to curtail the providers’ power and to work towards consolidating various providers under uniform rubrics of oversight and performance standards. The paper contributes to a comparative research project on plural security in urban settings that draws upon empirical insights from case studies in Beirut, Nairobi, and Tunis.
This article looks at the inclusion of non-state actors in security sector reform (SSR) programmi... more This article looks at the inclusion of non-state actors in security sector reform (SSR) programming, specifically when efforts are made to strengthen local-level security through police reform. It explores how the role of non-state actors has been conceptualised vis-à-vis the role of states as providers of security and justice in fragile state settings. It is argued that even though the
This paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state s... more This paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state system after the country’s civil war ended in, it reproduced a hybrid order instead that is embodied by Sierra Leone’s primary local leaders: paramount and lesser chiefs. In this sense, policing has a distinctly political quality to it because those who enforce order also define what order is and determine access to resources. The hybrid authority of Sierra Leone’s chiefs emanates from multiple state-based and localised sources simultaneously and comes into play as policing takes place and police reform moves forward. This argument is substantiated by an ethnographic exploration of how and with what implications community policing has been introduced in Peyima, a small town in Kono District, and focuses on one of its primary institutional expressions, Local Policing Partnership Boards.
Page 1. Security System Transformation in Sierra Leone, 1997-2007 ?? Peter Albrecht and Paul Jack... more Page 1. Security System Transformation in Sierra Leone, 1997-2007 ?? Peter Albrecht and Paul Jackson In collaboration with Desmond Buck, Emmanuel Osho Coker, Kellie Conteh, Kadi Fakondo, Aldo Gaeta, Garth Glentworth, Barry Le Grys, Rosalind Hanson-Alp, Anthony ...
This article adds to current debates on hybridity by shifting attention from interactions between... more This article adds to current debates on hybridity by shifting attention from interactions between entities to the enactment of authority. The notion of hybridity has helped move debates on peace and state-building beyond a normative focus on failure and fragility. However, it also remains a contested and evolving concept. This article aims to theorise further the process of hybridisation. By introducing the concept of simultaneity of discourse and practice it explores the process through which seemingly contradictory sources of authority are played out at the same time in order-making to constitute political order. The processes of enactment suggest a model for reading dialogically concepts such as bureaucracy, autochthony, kinship and legislation, exploring how they are co-constituted in spaces of discourse and practice. Inherent to these spaces is a perpetual tension of difference and affinity. It is the dynamism of this tension that defines the hybrid order’s quality of simultaneity.
The concept of friction is applied to challenge the assumption that
the main goal of peace suppor... more The concept of friction is applied to challenge the assumption that the main goal of peace support operations is to permanently stabilise a country. By exploring missions in Somalia and Mali, where neighbouring states are the main troop contributors, we suggest to focus on the interaction among troop-contributing countries within missions. They express how national interests play out in the framework of international organisations. Even when a mission deploys, rules that should define how cooperation is to occur during deployment are lacking, especially when they contradict national interests of individual troop contributors. The result is mission incoherence and fragmentation.
This book explains how security is organized from the local to the national level in post-war Sie... more This book explains how security is organized from the local to the national level in post-war Sierra Leone, and how external actors attempted to shape the field through security sector reform.
Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone. It critiques how the notion of hybridity has been applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions. The book is the first to take the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea.
This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, anthropology, African politics and IR in general.
On the basis of a historical and ethnographic analysis, this article shows how the concept of hyb... more On the basis of a historical and ethnographic analysis, this article shows how the concept of hybridity can be used analytically to explore the emergence of paramount and lesser chiefs in Sierra Leone and their role as figures of authority at the local level and in national politics. At the same time, it critiques the ahistorical applications of the concept that are prevalent in peace and conflict studies. The article offers insight into the processes of hybridization that chiefs constitute, and are constituted by, as they draw on multiple sources of authority, including what one scholar calls their "extremely localized" sense of belonging, as well as the legislation of a centrally governed bureaucracy. Résumé: Sur la base d'une analyse historique et ethnographique, cet article montre comment le concept de l' "hybridité" peut être utilisé analytiquement pour explorer l'émergence des chefs suprême et infé rieurs en Sierra Leone ainsi que leur rôle comme figures d'autorité localement et dans la politique nationale. En même temps, il critique les applications historiques du concept qui est répandue dans les études sur la paix et la polémologie. L'article offre un aperçu du processus d'hybridation dont ils sont principalement constitués, en s'appuyant sur des sources multiples et autoritaires, y compris ce qu'un spécialiste appelle leur sentiment "extrêmement localisée" d'appartenance, ainsi que la législation d'une bureaucratie centralisée gouvernée.
Hybridisation is often conceptualised as a 'liminal' occurrence, a 'contact point' or the product... more Hybridisation is often conceptualised as a 'liminal' occurrence, a 'contact point' or the product of an 'interface'. This tends to invoke the very binaries that the concept seeks to overcome, because it assumes that a meeting between separate entities must occur for hybrid orders to emerge. Instead, this article argues that processes of hybridisation and how they assemble disparate types of authority lie at the very core of how social processes evolve. The argument is substantiated empirically by exploring the internal and external dynamics that have shaped and partly fragmented the security sector of Puntland, the largest and most stable region in Somalia (beyond Somaliland). The analysis centres on attempts by the United Nations (UN) to support the Puntland government in reducing numbers of the region's constitutionally recognised security forces. In this analysis, the article shows how the Puntland government necessarily has to balance and negotiate conflicting demands of clan leaders, the global and regional security interests of individual governments, notably the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America, as well as continued pressure from the 'international community', formally represented by the UN, to act as a functioning regional centre within a federal Somalia.
Drawing on cultural studies, the concept of hybridity has emerged in peace and conflict studies a... more Drawing on cultural studies, the concept of hybridity has emerged in peace and conflict studies as an important critique of the fragile failed/state discourse, and the binaries whereby the modern state is often contrasted with traditional or non-state actors. The concept is also challenged for reproducing the very binaries that it seeks to overcome and lacking analytical vigour. The paper addresses these critiques by exploring a case of diamond theft in rural Sierra Leone. It suggests an analytical shift from interaction between state institutions (police) and non-state authorities (traditional leaders) to focusing on processes of hybridisation through the enactment and performativity of authority. This is an analytical move from preconceived cultural and political entities to the subject and the simultaneous quality of how he or she assembles and projects authority. It is in the subject’s strategies and practices at the micro level that we clearly see how hybridisation processes occur.
This paper explores the Poro, a male secret society in rural Sierra Leone, and how it conditions ... more This paper explores the Poro, a male secret society in rural Sierra Leone, and how it conditions access to security and justice. It critiques dichotomies between state and non-state and substantiates the networked quality of order-making as dispersed among a multitude of actors who intertwine disparate rationalities and registers of authority. The secret nature of the Poro, the ‘sons of the soil’, and the ‘stranger’ are explored as central figures. Poro membership is essential to the production of social and physical boundaries between insiders and outsiders of a community. By conditioning access to local positions of power and decision-making about how resources are to be distributed, the Poro also conditions access to security and justice. The networked quality of order-making becomes particularly noticeable when the police engages in Poro affairs, which accentuates the multitude of registers of authorities that are combined and assembled as the Poro and the police interact.
Nairobi’s urban settlements offer unique settings in which to examine the interplay between citiz... more Nairobi’s urban settlements offer unique settings in which to examine the interplay between citizens’ need for security, the state’s inability to fully meet that need, and the opportunities this creates for powerful private actors. In Kenya’s capital, this situation has led to a context of plural security provision, in which an array of actors assert claims on the use of force, operating simultaneously and with varying relationships to the state. Despite the proliferation of active security providers, who range from opportunistic enforcers to tireless local guardians, most people in Nairobi’s poor urban settlements are exposed to daily threats on their person and property.
Fieldwork in Mathare, Korogocho and Kangemi provided insights into how settlement residents must rely upon their social networks and personal attributes to ensure access to a combination of protective communities. Unable to call upon the state as the guarantor of public welfare, citizens must ‘hustle for security’, using their wits and their networks to assemble a tenuous patchwork of protection. The research identifed not only the risks this creates for individuals and communities, but also how the propensity to resort to individualised security strategies can undermine the notion and the actualisation of ‘the public good’.
The paper concludes with proposals for addressing the more malign aspects of plural security provision, specifcally, the need to curtail the providers’ power and to work towards consolidating various providers under uniform rubrics of oversight and performance standards. The paper contributes to a comparative research project on plural security in urban settings that draws upon empirical insights from case studies in Beirut, Nairobi, and Tunis.
This article looks at the inclusion of non-state actors in security sector reform (SSR) programmi... more This article looks at the inclusion of non-state actors in security sector reform (SSR) programming, specifically when efforts are made to strengthen local-level security through police reform. It explores how the role of non-state actors has been conceptualised vis-à-vis the role of states as providers of security and justice in fragile state settings. It is argued that even though the
This paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state s... more This paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state system after the country’s civil war ended in, it reproduced a hybrid order instead that is embodied by Sierra Leone’s primary local leaders: paramount and lesser chiefs. In this sense, policing has a distinctly political quality to it because those who enforce order also define what order is and determine access to resources. The hybrid authority of Sierra Leone’s chiefs emanates from multiple state-based and localised sources simultaneously and comes into play as policing takes place and police reform moves forward. This argument is substantiated by an ethnographic exploration of how and with what implications community policing has been introduced in Peyima, a small town in Kono District, and focuses on one of its primary institutional expressions, Local Policing Partnership Boards.
This report explores how India and Ghana, two of the main countries contributing troops to UN mis... more This report explores how India and Ghana, two of the main countries contributing troops to UN missions, define, approach and experience in-mission protection of civilians. What do they consider its key components to be? What do they think is required to protect well? And what combat experiences do they draw on in implementing the protection of civilians when they deploy? The report concludes that how the protection of civilians is conceived and approached in the UN’s peacesupport operations reflects the combat experience of troop-contributing countries. Peace-support operations are constituted by a range of armies that differ in size, combat experience, levels of funding, etc. Different historical trajectories, technical capabilities and political motivations in respect of peace-support operations shape their views on the tasks allocated to them by the UN Security Council, as well as their ability and willingness to carry them out.
Despite efforts to increase the deployment of female soldiers, the United Nations peace keeping ... more Despite efforts to increase the deployment of female soldiers, the United Nations peace keeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA) remains dominated by men. A focus on the operational relevance of gender integration and on strengthening existing capacities in the mis sion will be small, yet realistic, steps forward.
This special issue introduces a conceptual framework for ethnographies of urban policing that for... more This special issue introduces a conceptual framework for ethnographies of urban policing that foregrounds how defining features of the city produce police work, and in turn, how police work produces the city. To address how the mutually productive relationship of policing and the city shape current transformations in the ordering of urban space, the notions of borders and bordering are invoked. In contemporary cities across the global North and South, borders and bordering practices are reconfigured to address mobilities and flows deemed to threaten social order and have thus become manifestations of fear and anxiety linked to these mobilities and flows. At the core of our framework is the argument that urban policing is principally a practice of bordering. By approaching urban policing as a practice of bordering that is informed by material and imaginary manifestations, tensions between (de)territorializing and (de)stabilization are highlighted as both the vehicle and outcome of bordering practices. These tensions, we propose, can be captured through the concept of trembling. Trembling implies both a physical and emotional response to anxiety, excitement and frailty that is paradoxically built into borders and bordering practices. Cities are spaces of hope and desire, yet also breeding grounds for fear and anxiety (Bannister and Fyfe, 2001; England and Simon, 2010). Increasingly, these affective manifestations are linked to and conditioned by perceptions of insider threats and instability; to violence, crime and disorder within and enabled by spatial configurations of the city.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) was establ... more The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) was established in 2013 to support Mali’s peace process. It represents an emerging practice of deploying UN peacekeeping missions in asymmetrical conflict environments where there is no peace to keep. While MINUSMA represents Europe’s return to peacekeeping, the largest troop contributors by a wide margin are African countries. Through exploring the task of securing mission convoys to the northern regions of the country, Signe Cold-Ravnkilde, Peter Albrecht and Rikke Haugegaard show how inequalities between European and African soldiers shape the distribution of death, danger and supplies in what has been named the world’s deadliest UN mission.
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Papers by Peter Albrecht
the main goal of peace support operations is to permanently
stabilise a country. By exploring missions in Somalia and Mali,
where neighbouring states are the main troop contributors, we
suggest to focus on the interaction among troop-contributing
countries within missions. They express how national interests
play out in the framework of international organisations. Even
when a mission deploys, rules that should define how cooperation
is to occur during deployment are lacking, especially when they
contradict national interests of individual troop contributors. The
result is mission incoherence and fragmentation.
Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone. It critiques how the notion of hybridity has been applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions. The book is the first to take the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea.
This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, anthropology, African politics and IR in general.
Fieldwork in Mathare, Korogocho and Kangemi provided insights into how settlement residents must rely upon their social networks and personal attributes to ensure access to a combination of
protective communities. Unable to call upon the state as the guarantor of public welfare, citizens must ‘hustle for security’, using their wits and their networks to assemble a tenuous patchwork of protection. The research identifed not only the risks this creates for individuals and communities, but also how the propensity to resort to individualised security strategies can undermine the notion and the actualisation of ‘the public good’.
The paper concludes with proposals for addressing the more malign aspects of plural security provision, specifcally, the need to curtail the providers’ power and to work towards consolidating various providers under uniform rubrics of oversight and performance standards. The paper contributes to a comparative research project on plural security in urban settings that draws upon empirical insights from case studies in Beirut, Nairobi, and Tunis.
the main goal of peace support operations is to permanently
stabilise a country. By exploring missions in Somalia and Mali,
where neighbouring states are the main troop contributors, we
suggest to focus on the interaction among troop-contributing
countries within missions. They express how national interests
play out in the framework of international organisations. Even
when a mission deploys, rules that should define how cooperation
is to occur during deployment are lacking, especially when they
contradict national interests of individual troop contributors. The
result is mission incoherence and fragmentation.
Security sector reform became an important and deeply political instrument to establish peace in Sierra Leone as war drew to an end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through historical and ethnographic perspectives, the book explores how practices of security sector reform have both shaped and been shaped by practices and discourses of security provision from the national to the local level in post-war Sierra Leone. It critiques how the notion of hybridity has been applied in peace and security studies and cultural studies, and thereby provides an innovative perspective on IR, and the study of interventions. The book is the first to take the debate on security in Sierra Leone beyond a focus on conflict and peacebuilding, to explore everyday policing and order-making in rural areas of the country. Based on fieldwork between 2005 and 2018, it includes 200+ interviews with key players in Sierra Leone from the National Security Coordinator and Inspector-General of Police in Freetown to traditional leaders and miners in Peyima, a small town on the border with Guinea.
This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, anthropology, African politics and IR in general.
Fieldwork in Mathare, Korogocho and Kangemi provided insights into how settlement residents must rely upon their social networks and personal attributes to ensure access to a combination of
protective communities. Unable to call upon the state as the guarantor of public welfare, citizens must ‘hustle for security’, using their wits and their networks to assemble a tenuous patchwork of protection. The research identifed not only the risks this creates for individuals and communities, but also how the propensity to resort to individualised security strategies can undermine the notion and the actualisation of ‘the public good’.
The paper concludes with proposals for addressing the more malign aspects of plural security provision, specifcally, the need to curtail the providers’ power and to work towards consolidating various providers under uniform rubrics of oversight and performance standards. The paper contributes to a comparative research project on plural security in urban settings that draws upon empirical insights from case studies in Beirut, Nairobi, and Tunis.