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Security has become a part of the objectives assigned to developmentpolicies. This article aims at offering a genealogical approach of this evolutionin which security in development is dealt with as a normative discourse,with the historical conditions for its emergence, the underlying powerrelations, and the resulting effects of materiality. The analysis focuseson the introduction of the mechanism of the security sector reform indevelopment, relying on a comparative approach and on a case study inLebanon. This political genealogy shows the process by which the ideaof security has become pervasive, with new ways of interpreting thesocieties concerned, as well as structural ambivalence influencing localand national appropriation.