From performance to performativity: The legitimization of US security contracting and its consequences

Abstract

Discussions about the legitimacy of private security companies (PSCs) in multilateral military interventions abound. This article looks at how the United States has sought to legitimize the outsourcing of security services to PSCs through performance-based contracting and performance assessments. Both mechanisms aim to demonstrate the effective provision of publicly desirable outcomes. However, the immaterial and socially constructed nature of security presents major problems for performance assessments in terms of observable and measurable outcomes. Performance has therefore given way to performativity – that is, the repetitive enactment of particular forms of behaviour and capabilities that are simply equated with security as an outcome. The implications of this development for the ways in which security has been conceptualized, implemented and experienced within US interventions have been profound. Ironically, the concern with performance has not encouraged PSCs to pay increased attention to their impacts on security environments and civilian populations, but has fostered a preoccupation with activities and measurable capabilities that can be easily assessed by government auditors.

Securing the platform: how Google appropriates security

“…Within critical security studies, researchers have extensively examined the role of private military and security companies (PMSCs) to understand the dynamic between commercialism and security (Avant and Sigelman 2010 ; Cutler 2009 ; Krahmann 2017 ; Leander 2005a , b , 2010 ). This literature has illustrated how PMSCs create ‘a market for force’ (Leander 2005a ) and simultaneously become integrated into ‘global security assemblages’ in which distinctions between public and private have become blurred (Abrahamsen and Williams 2009 , 1; Hoijtink 2014 ).…”

Contractors in Iraq: Exploited Class or Exclusive Club?

“…PMSCs are the current military iteration of the neoliberal value of costeffective management and employment (Levy, 2010;Ortiz, 2010). This costeffective approach dictates the outsourcing of periphery and core military functions (Levy, 2010;Swed et al, 2018) according to distinct performance measurements borrowed from the business world (Krahmann, 2017;Ortiz, 2010). It is a governing value that creates a post-Fordist military workforce (King, 2006), a workforce characterized by flexible specializations and flexible work conditions.…”