Security Beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics

Abstract

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.

Private security beyond private military and security companies: exploring diversity within private-public collaborations and its consequences for security governance

“…1 As a consequence, representatives of public security agencies in several Western countries have started to increasingly call upon private companies to participate in the management of various national security issues, with an overall political aim of considerably reducing security risk and making the entire society more resilient and resistant to all kinds of threats, natural disasters and man-made catastrophes [21,23,[33][34][35]. According to the former US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, for example, Bhomeland security … requires not just a 'whole of government', but a 'whole of nation' approach.…”

“…Building on Foucault's notion of space, 2 2). Similarly, Parker and Taylor suggested that we are witnessing the emergence of Ba new security paradigm in which financial borders and parameters are best understood as a 'complex assemblage' in which private financial institutions are in effect, authorized to make security decisions^( [7], 953, also see [1,2]). …”

“…Namely, how does the growing participation of companies whose primary line of business is not security provision impact on the development and running of security policies? Such question implies concerns about depoliticization and commodification of security: as it becomes a commodity capable of being globally exported as a set of technical capabilities and skills, it is increasingly transformed from a political problem requiring welfare social policy and state intervention to a technical problem amenable to private solutions through the logics of cost efficiency [1,2].…”

“…Introduction to the activities of the non-security related private companies Experts in several academic disciplines have already investigated the growing role of private companies in the provision of security [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Empirically, this topic can be found in the recent literature in International Relations, Security Studies, Criminology, and Sociology.…”

Intervention at Risk: The Vicious Cycle of Distance and Danger in Mali and Afghanistan

“…However, this development has not been reflected in a larger academic literature, except in one of its aspects: the growing global market in (in)security. Studies on this market have convincingly shown how security has increasingly been commoditized and privatized by security companies, mercenaries or 'corporate warriors' (Abrahamsen and Williams 2011;Avant 2005;Krahmann 2010;O'Reilly 2010;Singer 2003). O'Reilly (2010) is among the authors who trace this 'statecorporate symbiosis' around security provision back to the 1970s and the corporate sector, specifically the extractive industries.…”