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Winter 2003: Para-Private Coercion Companies: New Mercenaries?
Editorial. (PDF, 5 pages, 42 KB) -- by Didier Bigo
In this article, the author raises the question of how military companies “selling security” can be analyzed. Any analysis of these companies has to insist on the heterogeneity of the phenomenon. Although a common reference to “protection” seems to establish a discursive continuum between these firms, only a sociological analysis of the personnel of these firms can account for the complexity of the social relations of private security. Whereas Private Security Companies (PSCs) tend to hire employees coming from the private sector, military companies are more often linked to state-bureaucracies through professionals of (in)security straddling the boundaries between the public and the private. Therefore the term para-private, coming from criminology, is more pertinent to describe these companies. The latter cannot be analyzed through the sole analysis of a reified security market. As opposed to what is commonly assumed, para-private coercion is not confined to the Anglo-Saxon world. It is a phenomenon that is being transnationalized by globalized technologies of coercion.
Trials and False Debates: Critical Perspectives on the Legitimizing Discourses of Para-Private Military Companies (PDF, 37 pages, 257 KB) -- by Christian Olsson
Analyzing critically the arguments that PMCs use to legitimize themselves, the author insists on the ways in which these discourses hide the social practices they refer to. Through these companies, the field of the professionals of (in)security is not only becoming transversal to the inside/outside distinction but also re-articulating public / private relations through new technologies of coercion. Moreover, the security-market is not a site were a preexisting demand and supply meet, but a social institution in which social practices create complex power-relations redefining governmentality. The process of securitization being a political process, this article also raises the question of what happens when private actors, thinking in technical terms of themselves, try to control this process. Indeed, in many cases, it is a depoliticizing reading of political violence, seen as “irrational” and not as an outcome of political processes, which has legitimized the private option in the first place.
From Bob Denard to Private Military Companies "à la Française" (PDF, 18 pages, 124 KB) -- by Philippe Chapleau
Philippe Chapleau here tries to analyze whether there is a French model of PMCs. Indeed, it seems as if French military companies significantly differ from the American ones. They are usually much smaller, less competitive and less professional. Moreover, they tend to be linked to specific political movements (neo-fascist) or particular state-services. In some cases, the differences between modern-day PMCs and traditional mercenaries is difficult to define. This is not to say that the employees of French PMCs are less competent than in the US. Indeed, the interest of the big American PMCs for French “mercenaries” shows that French companies have much potential. In other words, the privatizing trend within the security sector is not a “cultural” phenomenon confined to the Anglo-Saxon world. It has many ramifications in other areas as shown here through the French case.
Defining the Mercenary and Fighting against Corporate Mercenarism: a Governmental Project -- (PDF, 24 pages, 182 KB) by Christian Lechervy
The contemporary attempts on the part of the French government to regulate and control private military security is generally explained by the fact that freelance mercenaries have made themselves guilty of horrendous crimes in the past. Another common explanation is that the privatization of security now is a so pervasive trend that the politicians cannot deny it any longer. However, in this article the author shows that these explanations are unsatisfactory. Indeed, the very same private soldiers that the French government is trying to regulate today, used to be considered as instrumental to its political objectives. Consequently, the author locates the explanation in the political field itself. He tries here to analyze the political games, as well as their internal logic, that have lead the French government to outlaw mercenarism. He also analyses the loopholes that the law of 2003 entails.
International Law and the Control of Mercenaries and Private Military Companies (PDF, 26 pages, 191 KB) -- by Christopher Kinsey
Kinsey here analyzes the legal tools that, on the international level, are thought to allow for an effective control of traditional mercenaries as well as of modern-day PMCs. He shows that from the beginning on, the main problem has been the one of the definition of a mercenary. The legal definitions that have been adopted are however so restrictive or vague that the existing legal tools have become more or less ineffective. This ineffectiveness is however not to be analyzed as an unintended consequence of these definitions. It is on the contrary, the intended consequence of political strategies on the part of governments forced to act against mercenarism, but also wanting to preserve it in order to instrumentalize “non-state” violence while beneficiating from the advantages of “plausible deniability”.
Oil and Private Security in Nigeria: a Multiform Complex and the “Monaco Syndrome” (PDF, 22 pages, 159 KB) -- by Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclos
The privatization of security in Nigeria is part of a political economy dominated by foreign and local oil-interests, and in which the privatization of state-coercion is a means for oil-companies to retain control over the areas they are exploiting. Indeed, the political violence prevailing in the country has lead oil-companies to deploy additional security-forces in the oil-rich areas that are also the most instable areas. The latter are thus being “enclavized” and isolated from the rest of Nigerian society. However, these security-forces are not only supplied by private companies, but also by the Nigerian state that is thus itself being privatized. Indeed, the widespread corruption of Nigerian state-forces leads them to serve private oil-interests thus becoming a de facto actor of the privatization of security in Africa.
Janice E. Thompson: Mercenarism as a Socio-Historical Form of Private Coercion (PDF, 16 pages, 120 KB) -- by Elodie Rigaud
The historical sociology of the state offers very interesting insights on private security as shown by the analysis of Janice Thompson, combining critical and historical sociology. She shows that state-power and private coercion are not incompatible. Indeed, private coercion has been encouraged and instrumentalised by the European state-system throughout the middle-ages until the 18th century. Non-state violence was the norm rather than the exception on the international arena until its adverse consequences led Western states to monopolize international violence and thus to consolidate state-sovereignty. However, the recent privatizing trend is rarely analyzed through Thompson’s approach. Such an analysis would however allow analyzing how the modern state is changing and transforming the very meaning of sovereignty, security and violence.