The Politics of Reform in Efforts to Reduce Security Sector Involvement in Organised Crime

Reforming security institutions implicated in organised crime is fundamentally a political process. While technical models of organisational change and governance reform are widespread, our research looks at evidence from Colombia, Georgia, and South Africa demonstrates that political dynamics, rather than institutional design alone, determine whether reforms succeed, stall, or reverse. This paper examines how political openings, elite configurations, leadership strategies, and patterns of institutional control shaped the trajectory and outcomes of security sector reforms in our case study countries. Through comparative historical analysis, it highlights the political conditions that enabled reformers to disrupt entrenched collusive networks, centralise authority, and mobilise public support, as well as those that constrained or ultimately undermined reform efforts. The research uses an abductive, comparative design across the three country cases, combining fieldwork, interviews, and documentary analysis to test and refine hypotheses focusing on the political conditions that enable or constrain reform, the role of political will, and the role (if any) of external actors. Using process tracing and a Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) framework, we identify organisational, governance, and political factors shaping reforms while managing the complexity of multi causal explanations. The cases have been chosen because each saw significant reform windows emerge during periods of political transition or fragmentation. In Colombia, the erosion of two party dominance and the rise of urban constituencies opened space for reformist coalitions to pursue constitutional and security sector transformations aimed at curbing police–criminal collusion. In Georgia, the Rose Revolution created a rapid and dramatic elite turnover that enabled a highly centralised reform agenda aimed at dismantling entrenched patronage systems and combating security sector corruption. By contrast, in South Africa, while the democratic transition created a window for police reform, negotiated compromises, institutional vulnerabilities, and competing political priorities meant that curbing police involvement in organised crime was not a central focus of the Mandela administration. The paper argues that the sustainability of reform depends less on the existence of formal oversight mechanisms than on continued political pressure and incentives to maintain integrity within the security sector. In Colombia, judicial activism, prosecutorial autonomy, and persistent public demand for security helped sustain progress over time. In Georgia, the absence of strong checks and balances left reforms vulnerable to reversal once political incentives shifted, contributing to emerging reports of renewed collusion between security actors and organised crime under the Georgian Dream government. South Africa’s later experience reinforces this: without political cohesion and consistent leadership, even well designed oversight bodies proved unable to restrain collusion and corruption. The research suggests that reducing police and military involvement in organised crime is inseparable from broader political struggles over power, patronage, and institutional control. Effective reform is most likely where political transitions open space for change, reformers can consolidate authority, and political incentives align with disrupting collusive networks. Without these conditions, we should expect that technical reform agendas risk limited impact or reversal.