This book sheds light on the complex and controversial realm of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) and their impact on international security. The rise of PMSCs as key participants in the security arena has sparked debates worldwide, challenging the traditional monopoly on violence held by nation-states. Structured meticulously, Chapter One introduces the rise of PMSCs, focusing on Australia as a case study for their effect on state control and accountability. Chapter Two examines historical PMSC development and case studies, revealing global implications for regulation and oversight. Chapter Three builds a theoretical framework for analyzing the Australian case, and Chapters Four and Five scrutinize Australia's government and PMSC industry, uncovering deficiencies in regulatory mechanisms and human rights abuses. In Chapter Six, implications on security outsourcing and regulation are explored, culminating in a thought-provoking conclusion in Chapter Seven. This book is a crucial resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by PMSCs in the realm of international security. Natalie McLean is a Research Fellow at the Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre for Defence at RMIT University and has extensive experience within Defence and Strategic Studies sectors. She has authored and co-authored a number of peer-reviewed academic journal articles spanning security studies and privatized military studies. Natalie researches at the nexus of issues concerning civil-military relations and international security.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

The book concludes with an assessment of the complexities surrounding responses to security privatization - and an exploration of when, and whether, it should be promoted rather than prevented."--BOOK JACKET.

Two decades ago, V. Spike Peterson's Gendered States asked what difference gender makes in international relations and the construction of the sovereign state system. This book connects the earlier debates of Peterson's book with the gendered state today, one that exists within a globalized and increasingly securitized world. Bringing together an international group of contributors from the Global South, United States, Europe, and Australia, this volume answers three overarching questions. First, it answers whether the concept of a "gendered state" is generic or if some states are particularly gendered in their identities and interests, and with what implications for the type of citizenship, society, and international security. Second, it looks at the continued theoretical significance of the gendered state for current IR scholarship. And, finally, it explains to what extent postcolonial states are distinctive from metropolitan states with regard to gender. Including scholars from International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and Development Studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender. With a preface by V. Spike Peterson, this book aims to connect the earlier debates of Peterson's book with the gendered state today, one that exists within a globalized and increasingly securitized world. Bringing together an international group of contributors from the Global South, United States, Europe, and Australia, this volume will answer three overarching questions. First, it will answer whether the concept of a "gendered state" is generic or if some states are particularly gendered in their identities and interests, and with what implications for the type of citizenship, society, and international security. Second, it will look at the continued theoretical significance of the gendered state for current IR scholarship. And, finally, it will explain to what extent postcolonial states are distinctive from metropolitan states with regard to gender. Including scholars from International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and Development Studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender.

This Handbook brings together leading interdisciplinary scholarship on the gendered nature of the international political economy. Spanning a wide range of theoretical traditions and empirical foci, it explores the multifaceted ways in which gender relations constitute and are shaped by global politico-economic processes. It further interrogates the gendered ideologies and discourses that underpin everyday practices from the local to the global. The chapters in this collection identify, analyse, critique and challenge gender-based inequalities, whilst also highlighting the intersectional nature of gendered oppressions in the contemporary world order.

Conveniently structured into five sections, The Routledge Research Companion to Outsourcing Security offers an overview of the different ways in which states have come to rely on private contractors to support interventions. Part One puts into context the evolution of outsourcing in Western states that are actively involved in expeditionary operations as well as the rise of the commercial security sector in Afghanistan. To explain the various theoretical frameworks that students can use to study security/military outsourcing, Part Two outlines the theories behind security outsourcing. Part Three examines the law and ethics surrounding the outsourcing of security by focusing on how states might monitor contractor behaviour, hold them to account and prosecute them where their behaviour warrants such action. The drivers, politics and consequences of outsourcing foreign policy are covered in Part Four, which is divided into two sections: section one is concerned with armed contractors (providing the provision of private security with the main driver being a capability gap on the part of the military/law enforcement agencies), and section two looks at military contractors (supporting military operations right back to antiquity, less controversial politically and often technologically driven). The final Part takes into consideration emerging perspectives, exploring areas such as gender, feminist methodology, maritime security and the impact of private security on the military profession. This book will be of much interest to students of military and security studies, foreign policy and International Relations.

The past two decades have witnessed the rapid proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in armed conflicts around the world, with PMSCs participating in, for example, offensive combat, prisoner interrogation and the provision of advice and training. The extensive outsourcing of military and security activities has challenged conventional conceptions of the state as the primary holder of coercive power and raised concerns about the reduction in state control over the use of violence. Hannah Tonkin critically analyses the international obligations on three key states - the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC - and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility. This analysis will facilitate the assessment of state responsibility in cases of PMSC misconduct and set standards to guide states in developing their domestic laws and policies on private security.

This volume offers a critical and creative analysis of the innovations of Deathscapes, a transnational digital humanities project that maps the sites and distributions of custodial deaths in locations such as police cells, prisons and immigration detention centres. An international team of authors take a multidisciplinary approach to questions of race, geographies of state violence and countermaps of resistance across North America, Australia and Europe. The book establishes rich lines of dialogic connection between digital and other media by incorporating both traditional scholarly resources and digital archives, databases and social media. Chapters offer a comprehensive mapping of the key attributes through which racial violence is addressed and contested through digital media and articulate, in the process, the distinctive dimensions of the Deathscapes site. This interdisciplinary volume will be an important resource for scholars, students and activists working in the areas of Cultural Studies, Media and Visual Studies, Indigenous Studies, Refugee Studies and Law.

The contributors consider how to reform and regulate private forces. This feminist analysis of private militaries, drawing on concerns regarding power, justice and equality, contains essays in four parts: Beyond the Public/Private Divide: Feminist Analyses of Military Privatization and the Gendered State; Rethinking the Private Military Contractor I: Third Country Nationals and the Making of Empire and II: Masculinities and Violence; Private In/Security: Gendered Problems of Accountability, Regulation, and Ethics.