This article suggests that the full significance of PMCs for international security is often missed because the concept of power framing these discussions is inadequate. The power to shape shared understandings of security is particularly neglected. The article argues that the emergence of PMCs has shifted the location of this power from the public/state to the private/market and, even more significantly, from the civil to the military sphere. The article reaches this conclusion in three steps. First, it suggests that PMCs have considerable power to shape the security agenda (Bacharach and Baratz). Second, it suggests that PMCs shape security understandings of key actors and hence their interests and preferences (Lukes's third dimension). These two facets highlight what I term the PMCs' epistemic power, located at the level of agency. Third, the article suggests that the action of PMCs have affected the field of security expertise, empowering a more military understanding of security which, in turn, empowers PMCs as particularly legitimate security experts. This third enlargement of the power concept highlights the `structural power' of PMCs related to their position in the field of security (Bourdieu). ————————————————————————
The promise of Bourdieu‐inspired analysts to provide a “different reading” of the international is receiving increasing attention in the academic discipline of international relations (IR). This attention also generates awareness and of problems inherent in the Bourdieuian approach and a desire to develop it further (or abandon it). These discussions have often focused on the difficulties that arise for IR as a consequence of the structuralism of Bourdieu’s approach, and as such they dovetail with the discussions between Bourdieu’s “critical sociology” and the “pragmatic school” in the French context. This article uses these discussions to clarify what it entails to paint a different picture—my picture—of the international using Bourdieu’s thinking tools. More specifically, it argues that Bourdieu’s thinking can be used as a basis for a non‐structuralist staging of the international taking on board the critique raised by pragmatists and integrating many of the insights developed by them. Bourdieu often referred to his own thinking as a “structuralist constructivism,” so this article takes Bourdieu’s thinking in a direction he may not have liked to go. However, it sticks closely to the spirit of his contention that one should never privilege scholastic theorizing for the sake of theorizing nor hesitate to “read a thinker against himself.”
This article explains how it is possible to arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that an increased reliance on private actors (in the guise of private military companies) could consolidate public peace and security in the weakest African states. It argues that this conclusion can only be reached if the dynamics of the market for force are neglected. The basic claim is that the market as a whole has effects that cannot be captured by focussing on single cases. The article analyses these effects, departing from the empirical functioning of supply, demand and externalities in the market for force in order to spell out the implications for public security. More specifically, the article shows that supply in the market for force tends to self-perpetuate, as PMCs turn out a new caste of security experts striving to fashion security understandings to defend and conquer market shares. The process leads to an expansion of the numbers and kinds of threats the firms provide protection against. Moreover, demand does not penalize firms that service ‘illegitimate’ clients in general. Consequently, the number of actors who can wield control over the use force is limited mainly by their ability to pay. Finally, an externality of the market is to weaken existing security institutions by draining resources and worsening the security coverage. This gives further reasons to contest the legitimacy of existing security orders. In other words, the development of a market for force increases the availability and perceived need for military services, the number of actors who have access to them and the reasons to contest existing security orders. This hardly augurs well for public security.
This article explores the loud presence of private security contractors in the evolving and buoyant discussion surrounding Darfur. Relying primarily on statements by security contractors and industry lobby organizations, this article suggests that neo-liberal governmentality has bolstered the expert status of security contractors in the discussions surrounding Darfur. Both in Darfur and more widely, neo-liberal governmentality tends to `depoliticize' security as public debate narrowly focuses on the technicalities and costs of military solutions, while alternative political options, local knowledge and diplomatic alternatives become marginalized. Consequently, public debate may be intense (as is certainly true for Darfur) but lopsidedly centred on security restrictively understood. The depoliticizing trend tied to neo-liberal governmentality is an important change in security governance in Darfur of course, but also in Africa more broadly and beyond. However, since it works through what the editors of this issue refer to as the `complex relations between public and private, state and civil society actors' it tends to eschew analyses assuming that privatization is significant only when and if it undermines public authority and control. The account here testifies to the importance of changes in governance that involve public and private actors alike.
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