Democracy and Peace-building: Re-thinking the Conventional Wisdom. By Howard Wolpe and Steve McDonald. The Round Table, 2008.
Drawing on their experiences promoting reconciliation in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia, the authors explain their training techniques based on “experiential learning” and “interest-based negotiation.” The authors contend that challenges to building peace and democracy “lies not in sector specific institutional ‘fixes’, but, rather in bringing key leaders together in a long-term process…” A welcome evidence-based contribution to the literature on conflict mitigation.
Regulating the Private Security Sector: An Imperative for Security Sector Governance in Africa. By Jeffrey Isima. Journal of Security Sector Management, 2007.
An academic article on both the constructive and injurious roles private sector engagement has played in Africa’s security. The piece goes into an informative amount of detail about the nature of past public-private security partnerships and the often mixed results.
