Theorising the use of private military and security companies: a synthetic perspective

Abstract

This article seeks to systematise and advance the theoretical debate on the causes and conditions for the privatisation of security. Drawing on previous research on private military and security companies (PMSCs) and theories from International Relations and Comparative Politics, it reconstructs functionalist, political-instrumentalist and ideationist explanations for why and under what conditions even 'strong' and democratic Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states (extensively) use PMSCs. An analysis of inter-temporal and cross-national (United States, British, German and French) patterns of security privatisation indicates that all the three theoretical models point out causes and conditions that are relevant for a comprehensive explanation, but none is sufficient alone. Therefore, the article uses both the models and the empirical evidence to propose a synthetic perspective, which treats different explanatory conditions and logics as complementary, rather than rival. Going beyond the atheoretical conclusion that a multitude of disconnected factors are in some way relevant for a comprehensive explanation of security privatisation, I develop a thin and a thick synthesis that rely on a domain-of-application approach and sequencing, respectively. The thin synthesis spells out how different explanatory factors operate in specific domains, whereas the thick synthesis elaborates how different conditions and mechanisms apply to different phases of security privatisation and how they interrelate.

Security privatisation at sea: Piracy and the commercialisation of vessel protection

“…Consistent with other scholarship on private security, 85 our comparative study shows that a fine-grained explanation of vessel protection policies benefits from the use of each of the theoretical arguments identified by the existing literature as the causes of security commercialisation. Existing private security scholarship, however, has not fully specified how these explanations should be integrated and combined.…”

“…As already observed by previous scholars, while functionalist reasoning related to effectiveness and cost-efficiency play an important role in privatisation decisions, prior ideational contexts shape governmental actors' perceptions of appropriate providers of security solutions. 86 By contrast, organisational preferences and above all the growing awareness of the political risks of deploying military personnel on merchant ships have played an increasingly important role in the evaluation and revision of existing approaches, ultimately paving the way to a greater involvement of PSCs in their maritime security policies. Most notably, external shocks like the aftermath of the Italian Marines case may provide the momentum for altering courses of actions that may otherwise be subjected to path-dependency.…”

“…Hence, as already noted by the scholarship on military privatisation on land, functionalist considerations alone fail to account for variance in the use of PSCs across countries and over time, which can only be explained by taking into account country-specific ideational, political and organisational factors. 77 As noted by several scholars, ideational explanations provide important insights into explaining variance in the use of PSCs across countries. 78 Normative expectations regarding how security on the national territory should be provided and by whom are key to explaining why PSCs were immediately identified as an appropriate solution to the piracy problem in the United Kingdom, but not in Italy and the Netherlands.…”

“…Ideational explanations suggest that decision-makers' preferences -informed by longstanding normative beliefs -should change slowly over time. 80 By contrast, the rapid evolution of Italian vessel protection policies and the ongoing revision of the Dutch approach highlight the importance of other explanations in better accounting for the timing of PSCs involvement in certain nation security policies.…”

Mercenarism, norms and market exchange: Reassembling the private military labour market

“…In recent years, scholars of military and security governance have advanced a range of organising perspectives to describe, explain and evaluate the pluralisation of the contemporary military landscape, each of which has variable utility depending on the precise questions under examination (for an overview see: Kruck 2014). For present purposes the global security assemblages approach put forward by Williams (2009, 2011) Bourdieu (1990Bourdieu ( , 1999) that symbolic capital (legitimacy and authority) carries the most significance, especially the symbolic capital of the state (see also Diphoorn and Grassiani 2016).…”