Violation of Principles? How Donors Undermine SSR Assistance
Lessons from South Sudan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13020302 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic (0000-0002-7831-9316, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Global Security Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2057-3189 • E-ISSN: 2057-3189 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jogss/ogag001 |
| OpenAlex | W7126057654 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 45 |
Security sector reform (SSR) has become a cornerstone of internationally supported peacebuilding in countries recovering from war. However, despite extensive support, its success has been limited. Scholarship on aid effectiveness attributes this to a lack of aid coordination, which arises from the politics of aid and donor proliferation. This paper argues that the coordination challenge in SSR also stems from operational practices within this field. Drawing on collective action theory and critiques of the development-security nexus, and using empirical evidence from South Sudan, the analysis demonstrates how coordination drivers in the new aid effectiveness framework under the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness: donor proliferation, shared understanding of coordination objectives, the demand for coordination, and credible commitment to coordination instruments, are undermined by operational practices and embedded incentive structures within the SSR assistance field. Delivering holistic SSR requires engaging an extended range of diverse actors, but on the ground dynamics: inter-agency competition, organizational mandates, and entrenched delivery networks, counter coordination efforts. By emphasizing donor-side operational practices, the paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of coordination failures in SSR assistance beyond the politics of aid and donor proliferation argument. It illustrates how operational-level practices create structural conditions in which coordination mechanisms break down and openings for aid misuse by aid recipients emerge
Action (physics · Aid effectiveness · Collective action · Declaration · Development aid · Empirical evidence · Incentive · Politics · International Development and Aid · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance
Governing Security After War
The Samaritan's Dilemma
Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?
United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order
“Securitized” UK aid projects in Africa
Proliferation and fragmentation
The rule of law, the local turn, and re-thinking accountability in security sector reform processes
Security Force Assistance to Fragile States
Co-operation, Contestation and Complexity in Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform
Introduction
Foreign aid and the fragile consensus on state fragility
Foreign Aid and Security Sector Reform in Tunisia
Different Paths of Reconstruction
New Perspectives on Security Sector Reform
Security sector reform in Africa
Modern post-conflict security sector reform in Africa
Development Cooperation in a Multilevel and Multistakeholder Setting
Police assistance as foreign policy
Why U.S. Efforts to Promote the Rule of Law in Afghanistan Failed
United They Fall
The failed promise of multi-donor trust funds
Aid and state-building, Part II
Security Sector Reform and State Building
Aid and state-building, Part I
Bureaucracy at the Border
Bypass or Engage? Explaining Donor Delivery Tactics in Foreign Aid Allocation
Compete or Coordinate? Aid Fragmentation and Lead Donorship
Donor Political Economies and the Pursuit of Aid Effectiveness
International Assistance and Security Sector Reform in Latin America
Development and security
Laudable, ahistorical and overambitious
The perils of outsourcing post-conflict reconstruction
The death of security sector reform? The South African exemplar revisited
The scope of military privatisation
Interventions since the Cold War
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |