Practices of Intervention: Assembling Security Force Assistance in Lebanon

Abstract

Thi s v e r sio n is b ei n g m a d e a v ail a bl e in a c c o r d a n c e wit h p u blis h e r p olici e s.S e e h t t p://o r c a . cf. a c. u k/ p olici e s. h t ml fo r u s a g e p olici e s. Co py ri g h t a n d m o r al ri g h t s fo r p u blic a tio n s m a d e a v ail a bl e in ORCA a r e r e t ai n e d by t h e c o py ri g h t h ol d e r s .

Applying Principal-Agent Theory to Security Force Assistance: The Atypical Case of Post-2015 Tunisia

“…Tunisia also shows that, despite intra-elite policy differences, there was a consensus that the country needed protection from armed extremism and the destabilising impact of developments in Libya, and to pursue the trajectory toward a more democratic political system. These features of Tunisia's politics of SFA are not repeated in this issue's other cases, such as in Gambia, Mali, and Lebanon (Dwyer 2021;Marsh and Rolandsen 2021;Tholens 2021). Tunisia is 'atypical' in that sense, but it is still useful for comparative purposes because it highlights conditions in which SFA more-or-less 'works', at least as principals and agents define success.…”

“…For example, many of the SFA providers to Tunisia operate in Mali as well but do not cooperate in that context, as Marsh and Rolandsen (2021) point out. Tensions between police and army were mitigated in Tunisia, while Tholens (2021) clearly illustrates how SFA exacerbated tensions in Lebanon with its divided political elite. Diverse relationships between SFA providers and a recipient government that the Tunisia case helps us to see in a comparative light, also conform to likely hidden assumptions in the design of successful SFA, i.e.…”

Waiting for IR Godot? In search of transformative encounters between Middle Eastern Studies and International Relations

“…Although the criticism over its analytical fuzziness, complex applicability, and significance, hybridity strikes for its empirical validity whether it is employed to explore armed groups in Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq as well as security dynamics beyond these conflict-affected contexts (Sayigh, 2018; Ahram, 2020; Ardemagni et al ., 2020; Badi, 2020). Similar to hybridity, assemblage thinking is mostly descriptive but is gaining attention in critical security studies, both in general and in those applied to the MENA region (Tholens, forthcoming). Assemblage thinking is premised on a relational ontology and focuses on the making and un-making of a complex global process where state, non-state, public and private actors interact and create new arrangements (Acuto and Curtis, 2014; Savage, 2019).…”

Security Force Assistance to Fragile States: A Framework of Analysis

“…This often means that SFA takes place amidst struggles between various factions that try to manipulate SFA to strengthen their own interests. Lebanon is one such example (Tholens 2021). Afghanistan is another where assistance to Afghan security forces relieved Afghan officials from having to make hard decisions and use their own scarce resources to protect their own government (Kühn 2019).…”

“…This approach reveals how SFA is actually implemented and what is needed for programmes to reach their objectives without adverse consequences. Tholens (2021) and Cimini and Hanau-Santini (2021) apply the (security) assemblage approach in their studies of assistance to border police in Lebanon and to the broader security sector in Tunisia (Abrahamsen and Williams 2010; Higate and Utas 2017). Tholens argues that the relationship between the principal and the agent is fluid and that there is a group of securocrats that transcends the provider/recipient divide.…”