Conclusion: Assessing Security Sector Reform in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Because of the multifaceted and diverse nature of the empirical phenomena subsumed under the label “security sector reform (SSR)” and the diverse debates by scholars and policymakers surrounding them, this book has, first and foremost, highlighted the diverse nature of SSR in different policy fields. This is even more the case as this volume did not follow a single overarching theoretical framework to study SSR in Southeast Asia. Instead, the volume is based on empirically rich, detailed case studies with a strong policy orientation, which are based on thick descriptions and in-depth process tracing of different aspects of SSR in Southeast Asia. This has made the drawing of systematic, theory-guided conclusions somewhat difficult. What this approach, however, made possible was to draw on these rich case studies to condense seemingly disparate findings into a number of matters shared by most, if not all, case studies presented in this volume.