Private actors are increasingly taking on roles traditionally arrogated to the state. Both in the industrialized North and the developing South, functions essential to external and internal security and to the satisfaction of basic human needs are routinely contracted out to non-state agents. In the area of privatization of security functions, attention by academics and policy makers tends to focus on the activities of private military and security companies, especially in the context of armed conflicts, and their impact on human rights and post-conflict stability and reconstruction. The first edited volume emerging from New York University School of Law's Institute for International Justice project on private military and security companies, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies broadened this debate to situate the private military phenomenon in the context of moves towards the regulation of activities through market and non-market mechanisms. Where that first volume looked at the emerging market for use of force, this second volume looks at the transformations in the nature of state authority. Drawing on insights from work on privatization, regulation, and accountability in the emerging field of global administrative law, the book examines private military and security companies through the wider lens of private actors performing public functions. In the past two decades, the responsibilities delegated to such actors - especially but not only in the United States - have grown exponentially. The central question of this volume is whether there should be any limits on government capacity to outsource traditionally "public" functions. Can and should a government put out to private tender the fulfilment of military, intelligence, and prison services? Can and should it transfer control of utilities essential to life, such as the supply of water? This discussion incorporates numerous perspectives on regulatory and governance issues in the private provision of public functions, but focuses primarily on private actors offering services that impact the fundamental rights of the affected population.

This book offers new insights and original empirical research on private military and security companies (PMSCs), including China’s negotiation approach to governance, an account of Nigeria’s first engagement with regulatory cooperation under the threat of Boko Haram, and a study of PMSCs in Ebola-hit Western Africa. The author engages with concepts and theories from IR, Political Economy, and African studies—like regime, forum shopping, and extraversion—to describe what shapes state choices in national and international fora. The volume clarifies and spells out the needed questions and definitions and proposes a synthesis of how regime formation is shaped by ideas, interests, and institutions, starting from the proposition that regulatory cooperation consists in facilitating the acceptance and use of a single identifier for private military and security companies.

Rapid growth and burgeoning diversification within the private security industries have extensively increased interaction between security operators and the public. This increased exposure, together with a number of highly publicised incidents, has brought about a heightened focus on levels of industry professionalism and accountability (including public concerns surrounding personal freedoms), and more burdensome licensing and regulatory controls upon both security companies and individuals. Importantly, it has also prompted security staff to be mindful of their own vulnerability in a vocation where personal legal immunities are rare. The only work of its kind in this country, The Law of Private Security in Australia, 2nd Edition is an indispensable guide to the rights and responsibilities of private security personnel and their employers.The authors utilise examples from the industry, underscored by case law, State and federal laws and regulations, industry codes of practice, and ethical protocols. They clearly identify the sources and scope of private security powers and the liabilities impinging upon them. In each scenario, a range of potential actions - desirable and undesirable - is given, as well as the legal consequences that spring from these actions for both employers and employees. The law covered is also of great relevance to police officers, as many of the legal principles that apply to private personnel emanate from the laws that empower and restrict public police. With its clear explanations of legal concepts by authors with years of experience in teaching lawyers and non-lawyers, The Law of Private Security in Australia, 2nd Edition is essential reading for every security company, security operator and private policing agency.

This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of current research on private security and military companies, comprising essays by leading scholars from around the world. The increasing privatization of security across the globe has been the subject of much debate and controversy, inciting fears of private warfare and even the collapse of the state. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the range of issues raised by contemporary security privatization, offering both a survey of the numerous roles performed by private actors and an analysis of their implications and effects. Ranging from the mundane to the spectacular, from secretive intelligence gathering and neighbourhood surveillance to piracy control and warfare, this Handbook shows how private actors are involved in both domestic and international security provision and governance. It places this involvement in historical perspective, and demonstrates how the impact of security privatization goes well beyond the security field to influence diverse social, economic and political relationships and institutions. Finally, this volume analyses the evolving regulation of the global private security sector. Seeking to overcome the disciplinary boundaries that have plagued the study of private security, the Handbook promotes an interdisciplinary approach and contains contributions from a range of disciplines, including international relations, politics, criminology, law, sociology, geography and anthropology. This book will be of much interest to students of private security companies, global governance, military studies, security studies and IR in general.

Across the globe, from mega-cities to isolated resource enclaves, the provision and governance of security takes place within assemblages that are de-territorialized in terms of actors, technologies, norms and discourses. They are embedded in a complex transnational architecture, defying conventional distinctions between public and private, global and local. Drawing on theories of globalization and late modernity, along with insights from criminology, political science and sociology, Security Beyond the State maps the emergence of the global private security sector and develops a novel analytical framework for understanding these global security assemblages. Through in-depth examinations of four African countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa – it demonstrates how global security assemblages affect the distribution of social power, the dynamics of state stability, and the operations of the international political economy, with significant implications for who gets secured and how in a global era.

This volume examines how and to what extent security officers make use of`legal tools. The work identifies these tools and draws on two case-study sites to illustrate how security officers make use of them as well as how they fit in broader security systems to secure compliance. The study also examines the occupational culture of security officers and links them into the broader systems of security that operate to police nodes of governance. The book provides insights for researchers and policy-makers seeking to develop policy for the expanding private security industry.

This book investigates governance practiced by non-state actors. It analyses how multinational mining companies protect their sites in fragile contexts and what that tells us about political ordering 'beyond' the state. Based on extensive primary research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Europe and North America, the book compares companies' political role in the 19th and 21st centuries. It demonstrates that despite a number of disturbing parallels, many contemporary practices are not a reversion to the past but unique to the present. The book discloses hybrid security practices with highly ambiguous effects around the sites of contemporary companies that have committed to norms of corporate social and security responsibility. Companies invest in local communities, and offer human rights training to security forces alongside coercive techniques of fortress protection, and stability-oriented clientele practice and arrangements of indirect rule. The book traces this hybridity back to contradictory collective meaning systems that cross borders and structure the perceptions and choices of company managers, private security officers, NGO collaborators and others practitioners. The book argues that hybrid security practices are not the result of an encounter between a supposed ‘local’ with the liberal ‘global’. Instead, this hybridity is inherent in the transnational and part and parcel of liberal transnational governance. Therefore, more critical reflection of global governance in practice is required. These issues are sharply pertinent to liberal peacebuilding as well as global governance more broadly. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in business, politics and human rights; critical security studies; peacebuilding and statebuilding; African politics; and ethnographic and sociological approaches to global governance and international relations more generally.

Private Security and the Law, Fourth Edition, is a unique resource that provides a comprehensive analysis of practices in the security industry as they relate to law, regulation, licensure, and constitutional questions of case and statutory authority. It is an authoritative, scholarly treatise that serves as a solid introduction for students regarding the legal and ethical standards that shape the industry. The book takes you step-by-step through the analysis of case law as it applies to situations commonly faced by security practitioners. It describes the legal requirements faced by security firms and emphasizes the liability problems common to security operations, including negligence and tortious liability, civil actions frequently litigated, and strategies to avoid legal actions that affect business efficiency. It also examines the constitutional and due-process dimensions of private security both domestically and internationally, including recent cases and trends that are likely to intensify in the future. New features of this edition include: a chapter on the legal implications of private contractors operating in war zones like Afghanistan; updated coverage of statutory authority, as well as state and federal processes of oversight and licensure; and special analysis of public-private cooperative relationships in law enforcement. A historical background helps readers understand the present by seeing the full context of recent developments. This book will appeal to: students in physical security, security management, and criminal justice programs in traditional and for-profit schools; security professionals; and those working in law enforcement. - Authoritative, scholarly treatise sheds light on this increasingly important area of the law - Historical background helps readers understand the present by seeing the full context of recent developments - National scope provides crucial parameters to security practitioners throughout the US - NEW TO THIS EDITION! A chapter on the legal implications of private contractors operating in war zones like Afghanistan, updated coverage of statutory authority, updated coverage of state and federal processes of oversight and licensure, special analysis of public-private cooperative relationships in law enforcement

The privatization of security understood as both the top-down decision to outsource military and security-related tasks to private firms and the bottom-up activities of armed non-state actors such as rebel opposition groups, insurgents, militias, and warlord factions has implications for the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Both top-down and bottom-up privatization have significant consequences for effective, democratically accountable security sector governance as well as on opportunities for security sector reform across a range of different reform contexts. This volume situates security privatization within a broader policy framework, considers several relevant national and regional contexts, and analyzes different modes of regulation and control relating to a phenomenon with deep historical roots but also strong links to more recent trends of globalization and transnationalization. Alan Bryden is deputy head of research at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF). Marina Caparini is senior research fellow at the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

At peak utilization, private security contractors (PSCs) constituted a larger occupying force in Iraq and Afghanistan than did U.S. troops. Yet, no book has so far assessed the impact of private security companies on military effectiveness. Filling that gap, Molly Dunigan reveals how the increasing tendency to outsource missions to PSCs has significant ramifications for both tactical and long-term strategic military effectiveness—and for the likelihood that the democracies that deploy PSCs will be victorious in warfare, both over the short- and long-term. She highlights some of the ongoing problems with deploying large numbers of private security contractors alongside the military, specifically identifying the deployment scenarios involving PSCs that are most likely to have either positive or negative implications for military effectiveness. She then provides detailed recommendations to alleviate these problems. Given the likelihood that the U.S. will continue to use PSCs in future contingencies, this book has real implications for the future of U.S. military and foreign policy.