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Papers by Adam Sandor

Conflict, Security & Development

Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines

African Studies Review, 2016

Journal of Global Security Studies, 2018

A rapidly growing, self-identified scholarly subfield on "Security Governance" has recently emerg... more A rapidly growing, self-identified scholarly subfield on "Security Governance" has recently emerged. Its signal contribution has been to explicate the expansion of security governance beyond traditional defense multilateralism to include diverse actors, networked transnationally across multiple scales. However, this literature is predominantly descriptive and evaluative. Lacking an explanatory theory, it struggles to explain security governance outcomes convincingly. This article advances this body of literature by presenting an explanatory theoretical framework, which sees security governance as being produced through struggles over the appropriate scale of governance and the transformation of state apparatuses, shaped by specific state-society and political economy contexts. This framework is used to explain outcomes in the governance of money laundering and terrorist financing in the Asia-Pacific region and in Africa. Contrary to the expectations of Security Governance scholars that states in these regions generally fail to engage in security governance, the case studies illustrate that significant governance innovation has in fact occurred. This innovation is not the result of supranational multilateralization, but of the transformation and partial internationalization of domestic institutions-to an extent determined by local socio-political struggles over governance rescaling. Our framework thus accounts for real world outcomes; explains, rather than merely describes, the functional efficacy of security governance regimes; and enables normative assessment by identifying the winners and losers that emerge out of governance innovation.

This chapter shows how areas of the global South have moved from the periphery to the center of a... more This chapter shows how areas of the global South have moved from the periphery to the center of academic and policy debates about international security. It argues that speaking about the global South as a singular, uniform unit is fraught with difficulties, analytically and politically, and that areas of the global South are occupying an increasingly central, yet ambivalent and contradictory position, within contemporary international security. On the one hand, the global South appears in the figure of the " weak state " as a major threat. On the other, the global South performs as the " intervener state " by contributing the majority of personnel to peacekeeping missions in the world's trouble spots. The chapter seeks to capture this contradictory position of being part problem, part solution. It concludes that the global South is likely to continue to occupy a central place within international security and that the contradictions are likely to multiply.

Transnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through internation... more Transnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through international statebuilding interventions, are altering the sub-region's borders and border enforcement. The article employs a practice-oriented 'global security assemblages' approach to demonstrate how border security professionals compete over how, who, and where to secure the border from borderless threats like drug trafficking. The article demonstrates this theoretical position empirically through an analysis of struggles over a flagship drug control project implemented by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at Senegal's Leopold Sédar Senghor (LSS) airport-AIRCOP. Senegalese customs, police, and gendarmes simultaneously cooperate and compete with international actors, private actors based at the airport, and amongst themselves, over how to curb drug trafficking. Through these competitive struggles over who should be the border's guardian and how it should be guarded, it can be seen how new security practices and understandings are devised, as well as how borders become (re) constituted within the connected spaces of global security assemblages.

This article uses the lens of disciplinary power to analyze the North-South relationships in effo... more This article uses the lens of disciplinary power to analyze the North-South relationships in efforts to govern drug trafficking in Senegal. Disciplinary surveillance shapes the activities of anti-trafficking units through repetitive examination, correction, and persuasion. These practices produce forms of resistance to the ways in which interdiction occurs, which implicate elites in the country. The result of constant international correction, and subsidiary actor resistance, is a frustrated law enforcement team. The argument deepens the literature on police reform in Africa, acknowledging the effects of international discipline on policing agents, while maintaining that immediate political settings heavily constrain disciplinary techniques and their internalizing effects.

Thinking about security and the nature of the state in North and West Africa involves questioning... more Thinking about security and the nature of the state in North and West Africa involves questioning some fundamental distinctions that structure conventional understandings of modern politics. It is also an exercise in recognizing the intersectional nature of social and political life undergoing conditions of drastic change. There is nothing natural about distinctions like the state vs. the non-state, the public vs. the private, the global vs. the local, inside vs. the outside, or the licit vs. the illicit. i Each of these categories is inherently political and involves an evolving set of contests of relations of power and social interests that often result in striking levels of violence. The security politics surrounding these categories are being felt world wide, and in ways that connect the most unlikely of spaces, through objects and histories that have been previously inconceivable and unimaginable. One such object is the 4x4 all-terrain vehicle.

Tuesday :30-17:30; SCS E218 Student Office Hours: Friday 14:30-16:30, or by special appointment E... more Tuesday :30-17:30; SCS E218 Student Office Hours: Friday 14:30-16:30, or by special appointment Email: asandor@uottawa.ca; Subject Line: POL 3162 C

... Sandor, AJ , 2011-03-16 "On Colonial Mimicry: France, Security and the Governance of... more ... Sandor, AJ , 2011-03-16 "On Colonial Mimicry: France, Security and the Governance of Postcolonial Suspect Communities" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association Annual Conference "Global Governance: Political Authority in Transition ...

Non-Refereed papers by Adam Sandor

En juin 2015, le Groupe indépendant de haut niveau chargé d’étudier les opérations de paix remett... more En juin 2015, le Groupe indépendant de haut niveau chargé d’étudier les opérations de paix remettait son rapport au secrétaire général des Nations unies (ci-après, le rapport HIPPO). Il s’agissait du premier du genre depuis le rapport Brahimi publié en l’an 2000. Le Groupe a procédé à un examen approfondi des opérations onusiennes de maintien de la paix (OMP) dans un contexte où celles-ci continuent de se développer. Le nombre total de personnes affectées aux 16 opérations en cours, en date du 30 avril 2016, est de 121 780 sur le terrain, et 86 % sont déployées en Afrique. Ces opérations
évoluent dans un contexte d’opérations contre-terroristes au Mali, de déploiement d’une brigade d’intervention « robuste » en République démocratique du Congo, d’une résurgence de guerre civile au Sud-Soudan et d’effondrement de l’État en République centrafricaine.
Le rapport d’analyse qui suit ne se penche pas directement sur les
recommandations du rapport HIPPO ou sur les débats qu’il a soulevés autour de l’efficacité des opérations de maintien de la paix. Plutôt, les auteurs se concentreront sur des questions fondamentales qui relèvent trop souvent de prémisses non dites. Ces prémisses permettent, notamment, de légitimer les missions de paix, mais aussi, selon
notre analyse, de cacher la crise d’identité et la crise de légitimité des opérations du maintien de la paix.

Conflict, Security & Development

Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines

African Studies Review, 2016

Journal of Global Security Studies, 2018

A rapidly growing, self-identified scholarly subfield on "Security Governance" has recently emerg... more A rapidly growing, self-identified scholarly subfield on "Security Governance" has recently emerged. Its signal contribution has been to explicate the expansion of security governance beyond traditional defense multilateralism to include diverse actors, networked transnationally across multiple scales. However, this literature is predominantly descriptive and evaluative. Lacking an explanatory theory, it struggles to explain security governance outcomes convincingly. This article advances this body of literature by presenting an explanatory theoretical framework, which sees security governance as being produced through struggles over the appropriate scale of governance and the transformation of state apparatuses, shaped by specific state-society and political economy contexts. This framework is used to explain outcomes in the governance of money laundering and terrorist financing in the Asia-Pacific region and in Africa. Contrary to the expectations of Security Governance scholars that states in these regions generally fail to engage in security governance, the case studies illustrate that significant governance innovation has in fact occurred. This innovation is not the result of supranational multilateralization, but of the transformation and partial internationalization of domestic institutions-to an extent determined by local socio-political struggles over governance rescaling. Our framework thus accounts for real world outcomes; explains, rather than merely describes, the functional efficacy of security governance regimes; and enables normative assessment by identifying the winners and losers that emerge out of governance innovation.

This chapter shows how areas of the global South have moved from the periphery to the center of a... more This chapter shows how areas of the global South have moved from the periphery to the center of academic and policy debates about international security. It argues that speaking about the global South as a singular, uniform unit is fraught with difficulties, analytically and politically, and that areas of the global South are occupying an increasingly central, yet ambivalent and contradictory position, within contemporary international security. On the one hand, the global South appears in the figure of the " weak state " as a major threat. On the other, the global South performs as the " intervener state " by contributing the majority of personnel to peacekeeping missions in the world's trouble spots. The chapter seeks to capture this contradictory position of being part problem, part solution. It concludes that the global South is likely to continue to occupy a central place within international security and that the contradictions are likely to multiply.

Transnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through internation... more Transnational security governance initiatives in West Africa, operationalized through international statebuilding interventions, are altering the sub-region's borders and border enforcement. The article employs a practice-oriented 'global security assemblages' approach to demonstrate how border security professionals compete over how, who, and where to secure the border from borderless threats like drug trafficking. The article demonstrates this theoretical position empirically through an analysis of struggles over a flagship drug control project implemented by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at Senegal's Leopold Sédar Senghor (LSS) airport-AIRCOP. Senegalese customs, police, and gendarmes simultaneously cooperate and compete with international actors, private actors based at the airport, and amongst themselves, over how to curb drug trafficking. Through these competitive struggles over who should be the border's guardian and how it should be guarded, it can be seen how new security practices and understandings are devised, as well as how borders become (re) constituted within the connected spaces of global security assemblages.

This article uses the lens of disciplinary power to analyze the North-South relationships in effo... more This article uses the lens of disciplinary power to analyze the North-South relationships in efforts to govern drug trafficking in Senegal. Disciplinary surveillance shapes the activities of anti-trafficking units through repetitive examination, correction, and persuasion. These practices produce forms of resistance to the ways in which interdiction occurs, which implicate elites in the country. The result of constant international correction, and subsidiary actor resistance, is a frustrated law enforcement team. The argument deepens the literature on police reform in Africa, acknowledging the effects of international discipline on policing agents, while maintaining that immediate political settings heavily constrain disciplinary techniques and their internalizing effects.

Thinking about security and the nature of the state in North and West Africa involves questioning... more Thinking about security and the nature of the state in North and West Africa involves questioning some fundamental distinctions that structure conventional understandings of modern politics. It is also an exercise in recognizing the intersectional nature of social and political life undergoing conditions of drastic change. There is nothing natural about distinctions like the state vs. the non-state, the public vs. the private, the global vs. the local, inside vs. the outside, or the licit vs. the illicit. i Each of these categories is inherently political and involves an evolving set of contests of relations of power and social interests that often result in striking levels of violence. The security politics surrounding these categories are being felt world wide, and in ways that connect the most unlikely of spaces, through objects and histories that have been previously inconceivable and unimaginable. One such object is the 4x4 all-terrain vehicle.

Tuesday :30-17:30; SCS E218 Student Office Hours: Friday 14:30-16:30, or by special appointment E... more Tuesday :30-17:30; SCS E218 Student Office Hours: Friday 14:30-16:30, or by special appointment Email: asandor@uottawa.ca; Subject Line: POL 3162 C

... Sandor, AJ , 2011-03-16 "On Colonial Mimicry: France, Security and the Governance of... more ... Sandor, AJ , 2011-03-16 "On Colonial Mimicry: France, Security and the Governance of Postcolonial Suspect Communities" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association Annual Conference "Global Governance: Political Authority in Transition ...

En juin 2015, le Groupe indépendant de haut niveau chargé d’étudier les opérations de paix remett... more En juin 2015, le Groupe indépendant de haut niveau chargé d’étudier les opérations de paix remettait son rapport au secrétaire général des Nations unies (ci-après, le rapport HIPPO). Il s’agissait du premier du genre depuis le rapport Brahimi publié en l’an 2000. Le Groupe a procédé à un examen approfondi des opérations onusiennes de maintien de la paix (OMP) dans un contexte où celles-ci continuent de se développer. Le nombre total de personnes affectées aux 16 opérations en cours, en date du 30 avril 2016, est de 121 780 sur le terrain, et 86 % sont déployées en Afrique. Ces opérations
évoluent dans un contexte d’opérations contre-terroristes au Mali, de déploiement d’une brigade d’intervention « robuste » en République démocratique du Congo, d’une résurgence de guerre civile au Sud-Soudan et d’effondrement de l’État en République centrafricaine.
Le rapport d’analyse qui suit ne se penche pas directement sur les
recommandations du rapport HIPPO ou sur les débats qu’il a soulevés autour de l’efficacité des opérations de maintien de la paix. Plutôt, les auteurs se concentreront sur des questions fondamentales qui relèvent trop souvent de prémisses non dites. Ces prémisses permettent, notamment, de légitimer les missions de paix, mais aussi, selon
notre analyse, de cacher la crise d’identité et la crise de légitimité des opérations du maintien de la paix.