Private Military and Security Companies as Legitimate Governors
This book examines the legitimation of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), focusing on the controversy between PMSCs and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
While existing studies disproportionately emphasize the ability for companies and their clients to dominate and shape perceptions of the industry, this book offers an alternative explanation for the oft-cited normalization of PMSCs and the trend to privatize security by analyzing the changing relationship between PMSCs and NGOs. It uses the concept of norm entrepreneurship to elucidate the legitimation game between these two dissimilar actors. Starting from the 1990s, the book shows that the relationship between PMSCs and NGOs has undergone a transition by literally moving from the barricades to the board- rooms. After years of fierce advocacy and PR campaigns against PMSCs, today both actors increasingly collaborate in multi-stakeholder initiatives, elevating the status of PMSCs from a scorned actor to a trusted partner in the regulation of the industry. The work offers a comprehensive explanation of when and why this kind of collective norm entrepreneurship is likely to occur.
This book will be of interest to students of PMSCs, critical security studies, global governance, international norms, and International Relations.
Berenike Prem is a research fellow at the University of Kiel, Germany.
Routledge Private Security Studies
Series Editors: Anna Leander
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
and
Elke Krahmann
University of Kiel, Germany
Hybridization, Intervention and Authority
Security Beyond Conflict in Sierra Leone
Peter Albrecht
Private Security and Identity Politics
Ethical Hero Warrior, Professional Managers and New Humanitarians
Jutta Joachim and Andrea Schneiker
Private Military and Security Companies as Legitimate Governors
From Barricades to Boardrooms
Berenike Prem
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Private-Security-Studies/book-series/RPSS
Private Military and Security Companies as Legitimate Governors
From Barricades to Boardrooms
Berenike Prem
First published 2020
by Routledge
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2020 Berenike Prem
The right of Berenike Prem to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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ISBN: 978-1-138-33043-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-44787-7 (ebk)
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Contents
Book-writing is a solitary business. Fortunately, researching and writing this book was not (always). I have been very lucky to receive intellectual, emotional, and financial support from many individuals and institutions too numerous to name individually. I will try anyway.
This books journey began as a doctoral thesis completed under the supervision of Peter Mayer and Elke Krahmann at the University of Bremen. I am grateful to both of them: to Peter who commented on many drafts and taught me conceptual and analytical rigor; to Elke for introducing me to her first-rate contacts in the field of private security studies. My research also greatly benefited from the input of my colleagues at the Collaborative Research Center 597 Transformations of the State, many of whom turned out real friends. They have been generous in sharing their knowledge and experience and seeing how they successfully completed their dissertations was an incentive to finish mine. I want to thank Katharina Emschermann and Jennifer Gronau for devoting valuable time to our Coding Coffee sessions where we would discuss methodological challenges of qualitative content analysis and actually drink tea. There are many others, of course, who gave advice and support on the long way to completing the doctoral thesis. My special thanks go to Natascha Zaun, Christof Roos, Ralf Gtze, Achim Schmidt, Tristan Hofmann, and Tonia Bieber. I am also indebted to Aletta Moindr who was a true mentor in teaching me the 101 of the academic business.
When the Collaborative Research Center drew to an end, the Institut fr Interkulturelle und Internationale Studien (InIIS) at the University of Bremen became my second intellectual home base, providing me both a shelter and an inspiring environment for writing up my doctoral thesis. I have been fortunate to participate in the many spirited discussions in the InIIS-colloquium with Klaus Schlichte, Ulrich Franke, Klaus Dingwerth and his team, to name but a few. I am also grateful to the plan m network which endured long after the mentoring program had finished. My warmest thanks go to Lorraine Frisina Doetter and Anna Hokema for encouraging me to set high targets and for giving advice on how to achieve them.
The dissertation developed into a book when I joined Elke Krahmann as a research fellow at the Witten/Herdecke University and, subsequently, at the University of Kiel. Without Elkes unwavering support and encouragement this book would still await publication. The Institute of Social Science at the University of Kiel provided me with a remarkably supportive professional environment to discuss the lengthy rewriting and synthesizing process. Thanks are also due to the many colleagues who commented on preliminary papers at various conferences and on other occasions which have been the foundations of this manuscript. I am particularly grateful to Andrea Schneiker, Andreas Kruck, Nicole Deitelhoff, Christopher Daase, Rebecca DeWinter-Schmidt, and Ina Lehmann who, at different stages of this book project, provided numerous new ideas for improving the text. Any errors that remain in the book are of course mine. I would also like to thank Cyril Magnon-pujo for putting me in touch with potential interview partners for my field research. Thanks go also to the Routledge team, the editors of the Routledge Private Security Studies Series, and two anonymous reviewers for their extensive advice on the manuscript.
I would also like to acknowledge the funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); the research conducted for this book would not have been possible without its financial support. I was also fortunate to have been granted a scholarship from the FAZIT foundation which allowed me to focus full time on my dissertation during the final write-up. Moreover, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the experts and practitioners who were willing to be interviewed about their work in the NGO and PMSC world. As in the academic world, time is a scarce resource for these individuals and organizations and I greatly appreciate them taking the time to talk to me and providing comments on drafts of the text.
