Hybridization, Intervention and Authority

This sophisticated, perceptive and challenging account provides important insights into the hybrid nature of authority and order in Africa. Albrecht's first-hand research on local chiefs and police officers reminds us of what to expect when external resources are injected into state spaces. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the realities of security sector reform. --Alice Hills, Durham University, UK Peter Albrecht has over the past ten years or so developed hybridization into a highly important concept. In this book he connects urban and rural political landscapes, northern state making processes with local chiefs, and history with the contemporary in postwar Sierra Leone. Not only does he make sense of a complex case, but simultaneously he elegantly criticizes and develops theories and concepts of contemporary political science, IR and development studies. That is quite a feat. --Mats Utas, Uppsala University, Sweden Thanks to Peter Albrecht for sharing with us his profound insights from Sierra Leone and from his many years of fruitful, academic and practical engagement with security sector reform. Focusing on the role of chiefs as a key to understanding the outcomes of SSR, Albrecht's well-crafted analysis pushes forward the understanding of hybridization in peace and conflict studies. --Finn Stepputat, Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark This is a very innovative and important book based on more than a decade of detailed empirical research. It details how well-meaning international programmes and advisers failed to fully understand the nature of local politics in Sierra Leone and the nature of power. This book comprehensively analyses the nature of power at the level of the Chiefdom and how the politics of the local affected the implementation of security and policing reforms and access to justice for people in Sierra Leone. Incorporating extensive research at international, national and local levels with significant experience on the ground, this book is an excellent guide to the complexity of relationships between international security programming and local outcomes. --Paul Jackson, University of Birmingham, UK This book explores the interface between the local and security reformers. It demonstrates how external security packages shaped and were shaped by Sierra Leone's chiefs. As Albrecht emphatically shows, interventions into little understood complex social systems have unintended consequences. New resources produce another melding of customary and state authority in the perpetual process of hybridization. Let would-be reformers learn that the local cannot be ignored or fully captured. --Bruce Baker, Coventry University, UK Applying hybridization as an analytical lens, this book provides useful empirical insights into the provision of peace, security and justice in Sierra Leone. A welcome addition to understanding postwar Sierra Leone and a resource for policymakers and students alike. - Kwesi Aning, The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Accra, Ghana