The European Union and Security Sector Reform: current practices and challenges of implementation

This article presents an introduction to the special volume, titled The European Union (EU) and the Security Sector Reform Practices: Challenges of Implementation, by framing the debate on the EU's Security Sector Reform (SSR) activities in a variety of conflict and post-conflict settings. Drawing on the existing body of literature on SSR, the analytical model proposed here allows us to identify, categorize, and group a wide range of factors that are relevant for understanding the performance of the EU as an SSR actor. This article introduces the main themes of this special issue, summarizes each individual contribution briefly, extends the main research findings of this special issue, and concludes with broad commonalities across different cases. It is a conceptual article outlining a discussion of wider theoretical reflections based on the empirical contributions presented in this volume, and provides an explanatory framework for success or failure in the individual case studies that follow.