Police reform after violent conflict is a complex but vital endeavor. More than ever, providing public security as a means of development following conflict has attracted the attention of policymakers who manage international aid and post-conflict reconstruction. The World Bank’s most recent World Development Report states “that strengthening legitimate institutions and governance to provide citizen security, justice, and jobs is crucial to break cycles of violence.” Yet, the success rate of security sector reform and peacebuilding operations is mixed at best. At the core of this problem is a fundamental lack of knowledge about the determinants for successfully transforming public institutions after conflict. One often overlooked determinant includes the institutional structure of interventions. Both policymakers driving reform activities at the United Nations peacekeeping bureaucracy and also some recent findings in the scattered literature on opening the “black box” of international organizations have acknowledged the impact of organizational settings on policy outcome. Nonetheless, in the post-conflict peace operation literature, this acknowledgement has not led to a coherent research agenda that takes into account the organizational perspective, including both international organizations and state bureaucracies as intervening agencies. This paper seeks to address this research gap. It focuses on the strategic management of police reform activities and provides a framework of analysis that addresses the questions: What factors facilitate or impede strategic policymaking and implementation in post-conflict police reform? What difference does it make for police reform whether it is conducted by international organizations or single states?
