ABSTRACT
Effective security forces are a crucial element of successful statebuilding. The security forces most conducive to statebuilding are those with basic capabilities that are also responsive to political leadership and operate in accordance with broad international professional norms. Creating security forces in which all three of these elements work together is particularly important in countries emerging from war. Incapable security institutions undermine immediate prospects for order. Capable security institutions without political control risk coups. Capable security institutions that operate outside international norms can breed resentment and the resumption of conflict. Though economic arguments often see state institutions as a product of
“market failure”—the reverse is also true. The turn toward markets for goods that should be (or have been) provided by the government is also often a product of “state failure.”1 Organized violence is often considered the quintessential governmental service-but even that can be found on the marketplace, particularly in the current era (Avant 2005; Singer 2003). The growth of a vast range of military and security services for purchase in the last 20 years provides a new tool for statebuilders and there has been an increasing tendency by both transitional states and the international community to contract with private security companies (PSCs) for training security forces, military and police, to both shore up forces during conflict and reshape them in its wake. PSCs pose dilemmas to would be statebuilders, though. While they are
hailed by some as an avenue to fix broken security institutions in the face of a shortage of western troops (or will) and thus a tool for peacebuilding, they are derided by others as an option that increases the chance for opportunism: generating spoilers or otherwise offering incentives for intervening states, non-state actors and domestic groups to evade institutional processes that foster effective security institutions (Reno 1999; Shearer 1998). In many cases the short term capabilities that PSCs offer have exacerbated the difficulties of creating effective and democratic institutions in the longer term. There have been instances, however, where the PSC capabilities have been incorporated into a long term statebuilding project.
