ABSTRACT
Can a state be completely privatized? Can a company become a state? More precisely, can actors that are external to a state’s government perform enough privatized functions on the state’s territory to actually become its governing authority, exercise its sovereignty and become integral to, even indistinguishable from, the state itself? Questions like these might seem purely theoretical were it not for the fact that the complete privatization of territorial authority has already occurred in some places, while private entities, in turn, have performed an entire range of activities associated with territorial governance. Circumstances approaching this scenario continue to be the subject of experimentation.
