The politics of security sector reform in `fragile' or `post-conflict' settings: a critical review of the experience in Timor-Leste

Security sector reform (SSR) policy has, for the better part of a decade, been viewed as instrumental to the larger international project of improving and strengthening the `capacity' of post-conflict and `fragile' states. The current policy approach, which represents a merging of security and development agendas in the post-Cold War era, is based on the premise that fragmented, ineffective, poorly managed and politicised state security institutions threaten political stability and undermine poverty reduction and sustainable development goals. The objective of this article is to examine aspects of what has been described as the `SSR policy-practice gap' that arose in the course of implementing SSR policy in Timor-Leste by analysing the systemic basis of the gap.