Book Review: Security Sector Reform in Southeast Asia: From Policy to Practice

Security Sector Reform in Southeast Asia: From Policy to Practice edited by Felix Heiduk. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2014. 264 pp, £65 hardcover 9781137365484, e-book 9781137365491

As a good theoretical tool for security governance, security sector reform (SSR) means a dynamic process of civilians achieving supremacy over militaries, and consolidating democratic rule. According to the definition of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD’s) Development Assistance Committee, SSR has four fundamental objectives: that is, “effective oversight and accountability of the security sector; improved delivery of security and justice services; local ownership of the reform process; and sustainability of the delivery of security and justice services” (pp.6-7). However, much existing research on SSR has examined the outcomes of it, rather than the processes. At the same time, the literature shows little concern with Southeast Asian states, and existing research on SSR in Southeast Asia tends to focus on civil-military relations and military reform.

This begs several critical questions: to what extent has SSR been turned from a concept into policy practice? Is SSR a process dominated by international donors in Southeast Asia, where the militaries still play important roles in national politics? Which actors play an essential role in SSR? How will actors interpret the outcome of SSR? At this juncture, Security Sector Reform in Southeast Asia provides timely answers.

Based on the cases of Southeast Asia (e.g., Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste), the editor and contributors to this collection of essays examine the background to the security sectors, analyze varying patterns of emerging SSR in country-specific contexts, explore the challenges impeding any moves towards SSR, and predict SSR’s future prospects in this region. It is worth noting that the editor and contributors pay special attention to the security actors involved in SSR, especially private security/military companies (PSMCs), civil society organizations, and proponents of gender mainstreaming, which are always not discussed in the literature on SSR.

In the first of ten chapters, Felix Heiduk provides an introductory overview of the literature on SSR in Southeast Asia. In the following chapters (2-3), Carolina G. Hernandez stresses the challenges and opportunities that SSR faces, while Jörg Krempel re-examines the concept of SSR and its weak points.

In chapters 4 and 5, Deniz Kocak, Johannes Kode, and Paul Chambers address the SSR processes in Thailand and the Philippines, while highlighting the importance of executive branches, in which “civilians directly stand as superiors to the armed forces” (p.102). Next, chapters 6 to 7 pay close attention to the security actors in SSR processes, including civil society organizations community (Fabio Scarpello), and private security/military companies (Carolin Liss). Chapters 8 and 9 discuss gender mainstreaming in the SSR of Timor-Leste, emphasizing sexual and gender-based violence, and increasing the number of women in the security sector (Heri Myrttinen) and the United Nations (Nicolas Lemay-Hébert). Chapter 10 (Felix Heiduk) sums up the main findings, and discusses future scholarship on SSR.

The most significant chapter might be Chapter 7 by Carolin Liss, because it particularly focuses on the private security/military companies (PMSCs) in the maritime sector of Indonesia. On the one hand, PMSCs can either support or undermine SSR. On the other hand, PMSCs in Southeast Asia have been ignored by academia to a large degree. In practice, PMSCs can provide a set of security services, which are essential to SSR. But, as Liss demonstrates, in many cases, PMSCs are unregulated, and the activities of unregulated PMSCs can escalate security situations. Whether PMSCs are an integral part of SSR depends on the effective regulation of PMSCs. This is also Felix Heiduk’s argument: “an actor’s institutional embeddedness strongly affects his position towards SSR” (p.231).

What distinguishes this collection from many works on SSR, are the key lessons that we can draw from it. First, the editor and contributors to this collection believe that most SSR in Southeast Asian states is promoted by domestic actors. In other words, SSR is “mostly driven from within” (p.177). Actually, “it will only be successful if local change agents are the true driving forces behind the reform efforts” (p.77).

Second, in some cases, executive branches cannot supervise or monitor the militaries. This is evident in the case of the Philippines. Since independence in 1946, the civilian government has always been wary of a possible coup d'etat conducted by the army, while witnessing the emergence of private militias controlled by the local ruling families. As a result, government leaders felt the need to conduct “subjective control” through personal relations with the powerful senior or retired military officers, “as supported through patron-clientelistic linkages” (p.109).

Third, in most cases, the outcomes of SSR have been compromises, between different actors as a result of long bargaining processes (p.232). For example, in Thailand, there is “clear asymmetry” in civil-military relations in favor of the military (p.95). In such a case, any progress in SSR will be impossible without a bargaining process between the executive branch and the military.

Fourth, in some cases, the interests of international donors and domestic elites in Southeast Asian states are contradictory. Particularly, international donors have often prioritized “policies that suited their own interests rather than strengthened SSR in Southeast Asia” (p.233). Support from international donors, then, will decrease when their interests conflict with the SSR process. From the arguments of this volume, it is evident that SSR is not “a donor-driven process” in the context of Southeast Asia (p.34).

Security Sector Reform in Southeast Asia is probably the most solid and substantial collection of essays on SSR in Southeast Asia that has been written so far. The editor and contributors succeed in providing context-sensitive explanations for the emerging SSR in Southeast Asian states, and in showing the variety of ways in which different actors have produced impacts on the SSR processes. It should remain for some time a source of inspiration for contextualizing discourse on SSR in Southeast Asia.

Kai Chen, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Non-Traditional Security and Peaceful Development Studies, College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University, China. Previous positions include visiting scholar at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore (November 2013-May 2014), and postdoctoral fellow at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, China (2009-2011). His principal research contributions are in the areas of international security, geo-strategic relations, and security governance in East Asia, especially Southeast Asia and China. He is the author of Comparative Study of Child Soldiering on Myanmar-China Border: Evolutions, Challenges and Countermeasures (Springer, 2014).