Striving for security: State responses to violence under the FMLN government in El Salvador 2009-2014

This research focuses on the provision of intrastate security and on the question how states in the global South do or do not provide security for their citizens and do or do not protect them from physical violence. This thesis argues that while institutional conditions are an important aspect of security provision in the global South, more attention needs to be paid to policy processes. Institution building as set out in the literature about Security Sector Reform and statebuilding assumes that it is possible to provide security to all citizens of a state by building democratic state security institutions. However, this is only possible if the state is the predominant force of controlling violence. Research showed that this is rarely the case in countries of the global South. This thesis contends that statehood in the global South is contested due to power struggles between multiple state and non-state elites. It argues that the analysis of security policy processes allows for an analysis of security provision in societies where no centralised control over violence exists. It contributes to a better understanding of the shortcomings of security provision in the global South because it shows the impact of societal and state actors on security policy making. Using the case of security policy making under the first FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation) government in El Salvador (2009-2014), the thesis shows that, in a contested state policy making does not result from a pact between the state and society or from a social consensus as envisaged by parts of the FMLN and other forces of the New Left in Latin America. Instead, policy making results from elite pacts and elite struggles. This is illustrated in the domination of an ad hoc decision-making mode which describes short-term decisions which are insufficiently implemented and easily reversed or replaced. Thus, security provision as a policy field remains focused on elite interests and does not include the interests of the broader population