Recent scholarship has observed how private security actors often draw upon the cultural and symbolic capital of the police in their everyday operations. This practice can range from issuing frontline private security officers with police-like uniforms and patrol cars to recruiting former senior police officers into highly visible corporate positions. Geographical variations in this dynamic are little understood, however. In this article, we identify and shed light upon one emergent pattern. In those countries where the police enjoy high levels of public trust and confidence, private security actors can be found openly and directly borrowing from the cultural and symbolic capital of this key state institution to enhance their status. By contrast, in those countries where the police are plagued by a poor reputation, these actors commonly display a far more ambiguous relationship with these forms of capital, working both through and against them, often at the same time. Focusing on the UK and Mexican cases, and drawing upon a combination of Bourdieusian frameworks, we argue that the key to understanding this pattern is the distinction between the objectified (non-human) cultural capital of the police (uniforms, vehicles, etc) and the embodied (human) cultural capital of the police (police officers themselves). While the former enjoys a symbolic value in the market for security which transcends variations in public trust and confidence in the police, the latter is far more intimtately connected to localised police traditions and practices, good or bad. This in turn leads to novel patterns in the global plural policing landscape.

Legitimation is a fraught process for private security companies operating in Mexico and other countries in the Global South where the police have a poor reputation. Mexican private security companies have an ambivalent relationship with the police, which causes firms to engage in two seemingly contradictory practices. Companies attempt to gain legitimacy by aligning with the image of the police to earn a sense of "symbolic stateness" while simultaneously distancing themselves from Mexico's actual police forces so as to disassociate from the institution's poor reputation. Consequently, collaboration between public and private security is limited, despite official attempts by the Mexican state to foster positive contact between them. Overall, this study contributes to the growing literature on private security by providing novel insights into the strategies private security firms utilize to navigate within states possessing delegitimated security forces, and the resulting lucrative political economy landscape.

Scholars tend to agree that imposing comprehensive regulations is one of the most effective strategies states can use to control and direct private security companies. This study shows how attempts to strictly regulate private security firms have failed in Mexico. The Federal government of Mexico, as well as each state government, has created some form of regulation to control the activities of the private security industry. In certain states, these regulations are more stringent than those in many countries. Nonetheless, corruption, weak enforcement, and high entry barriers have created low incentives for private security firms to abide by government regulations, leading to a widespread evasion and an expansive market of unregulated and undisciplined private security companies, thus bringing into question the efficacy of imposing strict private security regulations in states with weak institutions.

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