The scope of military privatisation: Military role conceptions and contractor support in the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Although the privatisation of military support is increasingly widespread, advanced military organisations have not relied on Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) to the same degree. The existing scholarship on PMSCs cannot explain why countries sharing similar material incentives and similar market and political ideologies like the United States and the United Kingdom have not outsourced the same operational tasks. This article contends that introducing military role conceptions as a factor enabling or inhibiting the outsourcing of certain functions provides important insights into the scope of military privatisation, explaining why the US military has systematically privatised armed security and foreign military training, while the UK military has not