A Theoretical Perspective on Privatized Security

Abstract

States, Citizens and the Privatization of Security. By Elke Krahmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 305 pp., $US 32.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-12519-2). Elke Krahmann's most recent book is concerned with the rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs) over the last two decades. Since the late 1990s, this development in both inter-state and intra-state security has been subject to mounting academic criticism (Shearer 1997; Mills and Stremlau 1999; Mandel 2002; Singer 2003; Avant 2005; Patterson 2009). The author has set her work apart from more recent publications (Cockayne, Spears, Chernova, Gurin, Oviedo, and Yaeger 2009; Sheehy, Maogoto, and Newell 2009; Stanger 2009; Ortiz 2010) through the adoption of a twofold approach. First, she has discriminated amongst subject states by limiting her analysis to the conduct of three Western democracies: the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. Second, and more distinctively, she has observed the proliferation of PMSCs from a particular theoretical preference: the theory of the social contract and republican and liberal models of civil-military relations (p. 3). Mindful that her conclusions are of a theoretical rather than practical nature, this work exhibits considerable strengths and establishes a substantive contribution to the subject literature. Krahmann acknowledges that the rise of privatized military support rests on both functional and ideological planks. She interprets this balance …