To date, most discussion of security privatization in international politics has been focused on the role of private military companies and mercenaries. This article seeks to shift the focus away from the battlefields and toward the less spectacular privatization and globalization of commercial private security. Drawing on Saskia Sassen's notion of state ''disassembly,'' we situate the growth of private security within broader shifts in global governance. Pointing to the weakness of seeing the rise of private security as an erosion of state power and authority, we show instead a re-articulation of the public ⁄ private and global ⁄ local distinctions and relationships into what we term ''global security assemblages.'' Analyzing the role of private security in two such assemblages in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, we show how a range of different security agents and normativities interact, cooperate and compete, to produce new institutions, practices and forms of security governance. Global security assemblages thus mark important developments in the relationship between security and the sovereign state, structures of political power and authority, and the operations of global capital. 1 We are grateful to the UK ESRC (grant no. RES-223-25-0074) for supporting the research on which this article is based.

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Abrahamsen, R. (2005). Blair's Africa: The Politics of Securitization and Fear. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political. 30(1), pp.55-80 RAE2008Prime Minister Tony Blair has described Africa as a ?scar on the conscience of the world.? This article argues that New Labour's increasing attention to Africa is part of an ongoing securitization of the continent; interactions with Africa are gradually shifting from the category of ?development/humanitarianism? toward a category of ?risk/fear/threat? in the context of the ?war on terrorism.? The securitization of Africa has helped legitimize this ?war on terrorism,? but has very little to offer for Africa's development problems.Peer reviewe

The past decade has witnessed a remarkable expansion and globalisation of the private security sector. These developments mark the emergence of public-private, global-local security networks that play increasingly important roles in global governance. Rather than representing a simple retreat of the state, security privatisation is a part of broad processes in which the role of the state -and the nature and locus of authority -is being transformed and rearticulated. Often presented as apolitical, as the mere effect of market forces and moves towards greater effi ciency in service delivery, the authority conferred on private actors can alter the political landscape and in the case of private security has clear implications for who is secured and how. The operation and impact of public/private, global/local security networks is explored in the context of security provision in Cape Town, South Africa.