Democratic police reform, security sector reform, anti-corruption and spoilers
Lessons from Georgia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5681027 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leopold O’shea (0000-0002-7503-0242, Organised Crime & Policing, Royal United Services Institute, London, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 387-409 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Conflict Security and Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1467-8802 • E-ISSN: 1478-1174 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14678802.2022.2121916 |
| OpenAlex | W4312318262 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 44 |
The Georgian police reforms of 2004–2006 provide a rare case of rapid, large-scale, successful security reform. Lessons from Georgia challenge mainstream approaches to democratic police reform, security-sector reform, and elements of prominent critiques. These often emphasise democratisation of police and security sectors to include multiple actors in policing and reform. By contrast, the Georgian process was top-down and state-led. Failure to democratise the police has meant the reforms have not curtailed political interference in policing and have only partially reduced police impunity but the reforms vastly reduced corruption, improved security and trust in the police and have been sustained. This was achieved by the government strengthening executive power, consolidating its control over the security sector, firing corrupt police, and cracking down on organised crime. The Georgian case indicates that successful democratic police reform and security-sector reform depend on a concentration of state power to tackle such domestic spoilers and institutionalising before democratising control of the police, factors that are largely absent from policy and academic debates on these topics
Democracy · Democratization · Georgian · Impunity · Language change · Organised crime · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Security Sector Reform · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Public Administration
The Politics of Police Reform
Statebuilding and Police Reform
State Building in Putin’s Russia
Crafting Transnational Policing
Fighting Corruption in Public Services
Violent Entrepreneurs
Organized Crime, Political Transitions and State Formation in Post-Soviet Eurasia
Authoritarian Police in Democracy
Organized Crime and Corruption in Georgia
Georgian civil-military relations
Technocratic Populism in Hybrid Regimes
Post‐conflict police reconstruction
Co-operation, Contestation and Complexity in Post-Conflict Security Sector Reform
Security Sector Reform, Statebuilding and Local Ownership
Adapting Security Sector Reform to Ground-Level Realities
Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered
Police reforms in the Republic of Georgia
Anti-corruption
Administrative Cohesion and Anti-Corruption Reforms in Georgia and Ukraine
Reducing bureaucratic corruption
Corruption and organized crime in Georgia before and after the ‘Rose Revolution’
Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes
Corruption and democratisation
Policing and Political Violence
Hitting the saturation point
Decision Making in Political Systems
Bayley’s six critical elements of democratic policing
Multi-layered justice and security delivery in post-conflict and fragile states
Context matters
Saving liberal peacebuilding
Apparatus of capture
Policing, good-enough governance and development
Iraq and the material basis of post-conflict police reconstruction
Public Experiences of Police Violence and Corruption in Contemporary Russia
The dynamics of prototypical police forces
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |