The rhetoric and practice of the ‘ownership’ of security sector reform processes in fragile countries: the case of Kosovo

Successful outcomes in security sector reform (SSR) implementation are often conditioned on two key inter-related operational principles: international agencies’ understanding of the ‘local context’ where they intervene and their encouragement of the country ‘ownership’ of the institutional reforms they advocate. Outcomes, however, are determined by power, and different patterns of outcomes are likely to emerge from different types and degrees of power exercised by a multiplicity of actors operating in a dynamic political and social context. Drawing upon these inter-connections between outcomes and power, this article examines Kosovo’s security sector development experience since 1999. It argues that depending on types of, and changes in, power-based interplays between international and domestic forces, different patterns of ‘ownership’ have emerged in the context of SSR implementation in Kosovo. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group