Advancing private security studies: introduction to the special issue

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Detsch, “Departure of Private Contractors Was a Turning Point in Afghan Military’s Collapse.”

2. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World.

3. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.

4. Mallett and Hale, The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State.

5. Mockler, The Mercenaries; Mockler, The New Mercenaries.

6. Himmelstrand et al., African Perspectives on Development.

7. Elias, The Civilizing Process.

8. Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe; Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990–1992.

9. Giddens, Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism.

10. Dibble et al., Army Contractors and Civilian Maintenance, Supply, and Transportation Support During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm; Kinsey, Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq: Transforming military logistics.

11. Shearer, Private Armies and Military Interventions.

12. Mandel, Armies Without States: The Privatization of Security.

13. Singer, Corporate Warriors.

14. Avant, The Market for Force.

15. Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers and International Security. The Rise of Private Military Companies.

16. See for instance Mancini et al., Old Concepts and New Challenges: Are Private Contractors the Mercenaries of the 21st Century?; Doswald-Beck, Private military companies under International Humanitarian Law.

17. Bakker and Sossai, Multilevel Regulation Multilevel Regulation of Private Military and Security Contractors; and Cameron and Chetail, Privatizing War.

18. Prem, “The False Promise of Multi-stakeholder Governance: Depoliticising Private Military and Security Companies”; Krahmann, Choice, voice, and exit: Consumer power and the self-regulation of the private security industry; Leander, “What do Codes of Conduct Do? Hybrid Constitutionalization and Militarization in Military Markets”; Cusumano, “Policy Prospects on the Regulation of PMSCs.”

19. Avant and Sigelman, “Private Security and Democracy: Lessons from the US in Iraq, 265.”

20. Cusumano, “Bridging the Gap.”

21. Cusumano and Ruzza, “The Political Cost-Effectiveness of Private Vessel Protection”; and Schooner and Swan, Contractors and the Ultimate Sacrifice.

22. Avant, “The Implications of Marketized Security for IR Theory.”

23. Petersoh, “Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), Military Effectiveness, and Conflict Severity in Weak States, 1990–2007”; and Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski, “Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in Africa.”

24. Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations.

25. Brewis and ìGodfrey, ‘Never Call Me a Mercenary’: Identity Work, Stigma Management and the Private Security Contractor; White, Mercenarism, Norms and Market Exchange: Reassembling the Private Military Labour Market.

26. Bures and Meyer, The anti-mercenary norm and United Nations’ use of private military and security companies.

27. Petersohn, “Reframing the Anti-mercenary Norm”; and Krahmann, “The United States, PMSCs and the State Monopoly on Violence.”

28. Casiraghi, Weak, Politicized, Absent: The Anti-Mercenary Norm in Italy and the United Kingdom, 1805–2017; Panke and Petersohn, “Why International Norms Disappear Sometimes.”

29. Liu and Kinsey, “Challenging the Strength of the Antimercenary Norm.”

30. Cusumano and Bures, “Varieties of Organized Hypocrisy.”

31. Cusumano, Bridging the Gap.

32. Leander and van Munster, “Private Security Contractors in the Debate about Darfur.”

33. Krahmann, States, Citizens and the Privatization of Security.

34. Cusumano and Kinsey, “Bureaucratic Interests and the Outsourcing of Security.”

35. Cusumano, The Scope of Military Privatisation: Military Role Conceptions and Contractor Support in the United States and the United Kingdom.

36. Cusumano and Ruzza, Piracy and the Privatization of Maritime Security. Vessel Protection Policies Compared; Kruck, Theorising the Use of Private Military and Security Companies: A synthetic perspective.

37. Dunigan, Victory for Hire: Private Security Companies’ Impact on Military Effectiveness.

38. Fitzimmons, Mercenaries in Asymmetric Conflicts.

39. Cameron, The Privatization of Peacekeeping; Patterson, Privatizing Peace; Østensen, In the Business of Peace;

40. Cusumano and Bures, “Varieties of Organized Hypocrisy”; Krahmann, “NATO Contracting in Afghanistan”; Giumelli and Cusumano, Normative Power Under Contract?

41. Spearin, Private, Armed and Humanitarian.

42. Krahmann, Security: Collective Good or Commodity?

43. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics; Berndtsson and Stern, “Private security and the public–private divide: Contested lines of distinction and modes of governance in the Stockholm-Arlanda security assemblage.”

44. Cusumano and Ruzza, Piracy and the privatization of maritime security.

45. Berube and Cullen, Maritime Private Security.

46. Swed and Burland, Contractors in Iraq: Exploited Class or Exclusive Club?; Schaub and Kelty, Private Military and Security Contractors: Controlling the Corporate Warrior.

47. Schaub, Civilian Combatants, Military Professionals? American Officer Judgments.

48. Brewis and Godfrey, Never Call me a Mercenary; Higate, The Private Militarized and Security Contractor as Geocorporeal.

49. Grassiani, “Between security and Military Identities.”

50. Strand and Berndtsson, “Recruiting the ‘enterprising soldier’.”

51. Joachim and Schneiker, “All for one and one in all.”

52. Chisholm, Marketing the Gurkha security package: Colonial histories and neoliberal economies of private security.

53. Eichler, Gender and Private Security in Global Politics; Joachim and Schneiker. Of ‘true professionals’ and ‘ethical hero warriors’: A gender-discourse analysis of private military and security companies.

54. Grygiel, The Primacy of Premodern History.

55. Friedrichs, The meaning of new medievalism.

56. See Singer, Corporate Warriors.

57. Machiavelli, Il Principe, 41–2.

58. Percy, Mercenaries; Avant, “From Mercenary to Citizen Armies.”

59. van Meegdenburg, “What the Research on PMSCs Discovered and Neglected.”

60. Dunigan and Petersohn. The Markets for Force. Privatization of Security Across World Regions.

61. Bukkvoll and Østensen, “The Emergence of Russian Private Military Companies”; and Marten, “Russia’s use of Semi-State Security Forces.”

62. Arduino, China’s Private Army Protecting the New Silk Road.

63. Krieg, Socio-Political Order and Security in the Arab World.

64. Leander, Commercialising Security in Europe.

65. See note 14 above.

66. Ettinger, The Mercenary Moniker: Condemnations, Contradictions and the Politics of Definition.

67. Krahmann, “From ‘Mercenaries’ to ‘Private Security Contractors’.”

68. See note 13 above.

69. Avant, The Market for Force; Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers.

70. Francioni and Ronzitti, War by Contract; Avant and Sigelman, “Private Security and Democracy.”

71. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 47.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eugenio Cusumano

Dr Eugenio Cusumano is assistant professor of international relations at Leiden University and Marie Curie Global Fellow at the university of Venice. His research, focusing on non-state actors involvement in crisis management on land and at sea, has appeared in 24 impact factor articles in journals including Security Dialogue and The Journal of Strategic Studies, as well as books by Oxford and Stanford University Press. Together with Stefano Ruzza, he wrote the monograph Piracy and the Privatization of Maritime Security, published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. He has collaborated with the International Organization of Migration, the NATO Centre of Excellence on Civil-Military Cooperation, and the EU Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats. His research been funded through fellowships and grants obtained from the European Commission, the Fulbright program, the European University Institute, and the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Christopher Kinsey

Dr Christopher Kinsey is a Reader in Business and International Security with Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. His research examines the role of the market in war. Dr Kinsey has published widely on the subject from books, book chapters and articles in leading academic journals. He has also presented papers to the UN, NATO and the EU. Dr Kinsey’s present work looks at the impact of contracted logistical support to military expeditionary operations, and mercenary operations in Africa.