ABSTRACT
The concept of the privatization of international security can refer to a wide range of phenomena, reflecting the growing role of non-state actors in international security. This Handbook’s entries on New Wars, Terrorism, State Failure, Migration, Organized Crime or Energy Security can be read as reflections on ‘the privatization of international security’. This chapter does not replicate their arguments or try to cover privatization in this broad sense. Rather, it explores privatization in the more specific sense of the word, namely as referring to the incidence or process of transferring ownership, control or competencies from the public sector (state) to the private sector (business); in this case, within the realm of international security. In other words, it discusses how the development of a market for force and the private military and security companies (PMSCs) operating in it have become part of the academic literature in Security Studies. PMSCs are companies that buy and sell military and security services internationally.
Their activities encompass logistics, intelligence, consultancy, training and protection services. What they have in common is that they take on tasks that armed forces can also or do take on and that this directly ties them to the use of force. Since many contemporary conflicts are not international, this use of force might not be strictly speaking ‘military’ but may fall within the ‘security’ realm, hence the importance of referring to PMSCs rather than just PMCs. In fact, companies (particularly those providing protection services, such as Blackwater, recently renamed ‘Xe’) insist on defining their activities as falling in the security realm to avoid association with mercenarism. Like many other markets, the market for force is highly segmented, with companies specializing in different activities, catering for specific demands and (hence) having varied relations to clients and following different formal (laws, regulations) and informal (codes of conduct, norms) rules.1
