The breakdown of law and order in Timor-Leste in 2006 has two important dimensions: internal power struggles and regional differences. This article discusses how the competitive development of the armed forces and the police and the reemergence of regional differences affected the process of creating a democratic state.

Successful outcomes in security sector reform (SSR) implementation are often conditioned on two key inter-related operational principles: international agencies' understanding of the 'local context' where they intervene and their encouragement of the country 'ownership' of the institutional reforms they advocate. Outcomes, however, are determined by power, and different patterns of outcomes are likely to emerge from different types and degrees of power exercised by a multiplicity of actors operating in a dynamic political and social context. Drawing upon these inter-connections between outcomes and power, this article examines Kosovo's security sector development experience since 1999. It argues that depending on types of, and changes in, power-based interplays between international and domestic forces, different patterns of 'ownership' have emerged in the context of SSR implementation in Kosovo.Responding to domestic governance deficits in the developing world has been at the centre of the international peacebuilding agenda since it was first formulated in the Secretary-General's 'Agenda for Peace'. 1 In this landmark UN document released in 1992 and many other related international policy reports produced since then, 2 peace is conceptualized by reference to conflict and insecurity that are associated with the inability of the state to enforce law and order over its territory and meet the basic security needs of its citizens in an effective and democratic way. Poor or bad governance, from this perspective, causes violent conflict, and the UN and other international agencies should provide 'support for the transformation of deficient national structures and capabilities, and for the strengthening of new democratic institutions' in order to 'solidify' peace. 3 Security sector reform (SSR) represents this institutions-focused approach to peacebuilding: that is, enabling conditions of durable peace requires the creation of effective state security institutions

This paper examines some of the major ideational aspects of Timor-Leste's foreign policy orientation in the post-independence period. Drawing upon the constructivist accounts of state behaviour, the paper situates Timorese leaders’ foreign policy decisions in the broader context of their search to position the fledging nation in the global political order. It argues that Timor-Leste's insecure state identity has shaped its leaders’ foreign policy preferences in the post-independence period. This identity can be examined by separating it into two parts: the construction of spatial boundaries and the creation of a temporal “other”. The former is evidenced by the leadership's rhetorical emphasis on the country's Portuguese heritage and their prioritisation of ASEAN membership, both of which are closely related to the consolidation of the young nation's political and cultural identity. The creation of a temporal other, as illustrated by the rise of political discourse emphasising sovereignty, reflects a wider transitional process that is embedded in the country's transformation from colony to independent state under international supervision as well as the state's transformation from “fragile” or “failing” to “stable”. A detailed analysis of the basic aspects of Timor-Leste's insecurities as a constitutive element of its foreign policy becomes instrumental to understanding the country's nation-state-building experience since its separation from Indonesia in 1999, as it enters a new phase of socio-political structuring following the withdrawal of the international security presence in 2012.

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