Commercial Military Actors and Civilian Victimization in Africa, Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, 1980–2011

Abstract

The current international normative order strongly condemns strategies of civilian victimization, and actors engaging in atrocities face material, criminal, and reputational sanctions. The growth of the market for force has raised concerns about clients outsourcing atrocities to commercial military actors (CMAs), such as private military and security companies or mercenaries, and thereby circumventing accountability under international norms. This investigation explores whether interactions on the market for force are associated with an increase in the likelihood of violence against civilians. We argue that there is a variance in market interactions. While some market actors will comply with international norms, others will take advantage and circumvent normative restrictions. The crucial factor determining compliance and noncompliance are costs of norm violation, which vary across market actors. Those clients and CMAs with a higher exposure to sanctions, or an interest in the status quo of the normative order, are less likely to be associated with norm violations, and vice versa. We test our claims using a negative binomial regression and by drawing on new data from the Commercial Military Actor Dataset, which records contracting for force and force-related services. Overall, we found that there is a market segment where actors use market relations to circumvent international norms, yet mostly market interactions appear to comply with international norms.

Violence as a Condition: From Russia to the CAR, the Global Impact of the Wagner Group

“…Similar to the PMC literature on market-oriented concerns about human rights abuses (Penel and Petersohn 2022), state and nonstate actors face external legitimacy concerns for human rights abuses (Jo 2015). Quasi-PMCs do not operate on the free market as traditional PMCs do, so they have no external legitimacy concerns.…”

“…We define the Wagner Group, and various other actors operating in this space, as quasi-PMCs (QPMCs). Quasi-PMCs serve as a client and semi-state actor but do not face the same market-oriented repercussions for human rights abuses that traditional PMCs do (Penel and Petersohn 2022).…”

“…Recall that PMCs are formal, legal entities with structures exogenous of the state (Petersohn 2014). As nonstate actors, PMCs and other actors that sell their capacity for violence act on the market for force (Penel and Petersohn 2022). Thus, they operate as nonstate actors that operate within a state and for a state, Draft but as actors external to the state.…”

“…Draft equation. In other words, quasi-PMCs are given contracts not based on the market that would otherwise deter them from human rights abuses (Penel and Petersohn 2022), but are rather privileged through their relationship to the state. Case in-point is the UAE's use of quasi-PMCs within Libya.…”

“…Other evidence shows that when there are more threats to an incumbent, the "Law of Coercive Responsiveness" means that governments will deal with dissent by using violence against civilians (Davenport 1995;Lyall 2009;Davenport 2007). Existing theory on nonstate actors and violence against civilians, on the other hand, shows that private military contractors (PMCs), which by definition operate on the international market for force, are reluctant to commit political violence since they are more subject to international sanctions for norms violations (Penel and Petersohn 2022).…”