RESEARCH ARTICLE The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research

stability This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses, which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm of ideas.1 For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organised force to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and inter-nal threats. For others it is about how individuals and communities are protected (or pro-tect themselves) from violence, abuse of power and other existential risks. We integrate both approaches whilst placing our focus on the deep tensions between them. Combining them is especially apposite in the hybrid political orders of conflict-torn regions in the developing world – where the state and its monopoly of violence are contested and diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete. We ask what security in these hybrid contexts looks like from below, that is from the perspective of “end users”, be these citizens of states, members of local communities or those who are marginalised and insecure. What are their own vernacular understandings of security, and how do these understandings link to wider conceptions of citizen and o