Hybrid Security Governance Responses to Crises: The Case of the Ebola Response in Sierra Leone

Abstract

This paper examines how hybrid security structures, enabled by international support, responded to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. The main objective of this article is to critically discuss the manifestation of hybrid security governance in practice, to consider the constraints and analyze the sustainability of internationally supported security governance interventions in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Specifically, the diverse networks and processes of the formal and informal security, policing and justice institutions are analyzed to generate an understanding of how their interwoven nature affects operational responses to national crises. Using secondary resources, the argument presented here finds that despite international intervention efforts, the hybrid security structures response to the Ebola outbreak show-cased the challenges of operationalizing hybridity due in part to international post-conflict reconstruction efforts prioritizing formal structures with too little support given to informal structures in the years before the Ebola crisis.