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ABSTRACT
The aim of this investigation is to answer the crucial question of whether private military and security companies (PMSCs) affect conflict onset. It draws on the recently released Private Security Events Database, containing data on PMSC-related events across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Employing a Cox Proportional Hazard model, the article explores whether the presence of PMSCs, the duration of PMSC presence, the type of service provided, and the number and type of clients affect conflict onset. Overall, the presence of PMSCs increases the likelihood of conflict onset, although its substantial effect was slight.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the Gerda-Henkel Foundation for its generous support for this research.
Notes
1. {Cerny, 1998 #2456, 45}{McFate, 2014 #1944}Pattison, The morality of private war: the challenge of private military and security companies, 168–169; Singer, Corporate Warriors, 175; and Mandel, Armies without States, 81.
2. {Leander, 2006 #80}.
3. Kinsey, “Problematising the Role of Private Security Companies in Small Wars.”
4. It is important to note that the privatization of force is only one among several elements which need to be present for a neomedieval order. {Berzins, 2003 #2455, 11}.
5. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War”; and Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”
6. Cunningham et al., “It Takes Two,” 570; Cederman and Gleditsch, “Introduction to Special Issue on ‘Disaggregating Civil War’,” 488; Marten, Warlords: strong-arm brokers in weak states; Kalyvas and Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion”; Branovic and Chojnacki, “The Logic of Security Markets”; Lacina, “Periphery versus Periphery: The Stakes of Separatist War”; and Seymour et al., “E pluribus unum, ex uno Plures: Competition, Violence, and Fragmentation in Ethnopolitical Movements.”
7. Shearer, Private armies and military intervention; Vines, “Gurkhas and the Private Security Business in Africa”; Sherman and DiDomenico, The Public Costs of Private Security in Afghanistan; Percy, “Private Security Companies and Civil Wars”; and Faulkner, “Buying Peace? Civil War Peace Duration and Private Military & Security Companies.”
8. Chojnacki et al., Mercenaries in Civil Wars, 1950–2000; Musah and Fayemi, “Mercenaries: Africa’s Experience 1950–1990”; and Branovic, The Privatisation of Security in Failing States.
9. Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski, “Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in Africa”; and Petersohn, “Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), Military Effectiveness, and Conflict Severity in Weak States, 1990–2007”; “The Impact of Mercenaries and Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) on Civil War Severity between 1946 and 2002.”
10. Avant and Neu, “The Private Security Events Database.”
11. {Thomson, 1994 #22}.
12. Avant and Sigelman, “Private Security and Democracy”; Schooner, “Why Contractor Fatalities Matter”; and McFate, The Modern Mercenary, 55.
13. Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, “Intervention and Democracy”; Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes”; and Richards et al., “Good Times, Bad Times, and the Diversionary Use of Force.”
14. Pattison, The Morality of Private War, 148.
15. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, & Sovereigns; and Carmola, Private Security Contractors and New Wars, 90–98.
16. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, & Sovereigns, 43; and Leander, Eroding State Authority?
17. Anna, Eroding State Authority?; and Abrahamsen and Williams, Security beyond the State.
18. Mandel, Armies without States, 81.
19. Avant, “The Implications of Marketized Security for IR Theory.”
20. Mahoney, “Buyer Beware: How Market Structure Affects Contracting and Company Performance in the Private Military Industry”; and Spearin, “Privatized Peace? Assessing the Interplay between States, humanitraians and Private Security Companies,” 211.
21. Phelps, “Doppelgangers of the State.”
22. Branovic, The Privatisation of Security in Failing States, 12.
23. See note 3 above.
24. Singer, Can’t Win With ‘Em, Can’t Go to War Without ‘Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency, 4.
25. Stoddard et al., The Use of Private Security Providers and Services in humanitarian Operations.
26. Ostensen, UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies; and Percy, “The Security Council and the Use of Private Force.”
27. See note18 above.
28. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security beyond the State.
29. McFate, The Modern Mercenary, xv.
30. O’Brian, “Private Military Companies and African Security 1990–1998,” 69.
31. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State, 155; and Pech, “Executive Outcomes – A corporate conquest.”
32. Musah and Fayemi, “Mercenaries: Africa’s Experience 1950–1990”; and Leander, “The Market for Force and Public Security,” 613–615.
33. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War”; and Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski, “Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in Africa.”
34. Mandel, Armies Without States, 82.
35. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 91.
36. Branovic, The Privatisation of Security in Failing States.
37. Petersohn, “Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs).”
38. Fitzsimmons, Mercenaries in Asymmetric Conflicts, 23–4.
39. Singer, Corporate Warriors, 95; and Stoker, Military Advising and Assistance.
40. Palmer, “More Tooth, Less Tail.”
41. Cotton et al., Hired Guns, 45.
42. Chojnacki et al., Mercenaries in Civil Wars, 1950–2000, 6; and Petersohn, “Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs).”
43. Leander, “The Market for Force and Public Security.”
44. Ibid., 606 & 618.
45. Ibid., 618.
46. http://psed.siecenter.du.edu/; Avant and Neu, “The Private Security Events Database.” It is noteworthy, that the dataset does not contain much information on the companies themselves which may influence their behaviour. For instance, it does not contain information about origin of the company, the background of their employees, corporate structure or culture, or the size of the contract.
47. Uppsala Conflict Data Program, UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset Handbook.
48. It is noteworthy that there is a debate about the conceptualization of civil war. Criticism has been raised about data collection, coding rules or the appropriateness of different rather arbitrary numerical thresholds to identify civil war.
49. Hegre and Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset,” 523; and Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” 82.
50. Singer, Corporate Warriors.
51. Ray, “Explaining Interstate Conflict and War”; and Achen, “Let’s Put Garbage-Can Regressions and Garbage-Can Probits Where They Belong.”
52. Oneal and Russett, “Rule of Three, Let It Be?”
53. Ray, “Explaining Interstate Conflict and War.”
54. Chojnacki et al., Mercenaries in Civil Wars, 1950–2000.
55. Ross, “How do Natural Resources Influence Civil War? Evidence from Thirteen Cases,” 59.
56. Lujala, “Valuable natural resources.”
57. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” 80.
58. Pickering and Kisangani, “The International Military Intervention Dataset: An Updated Resource for Conflict Scholars”; and Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski, “Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in Africa.”
59. Bennett and Stam, “The Declining Advantages of Democracy.”
60. Thiel, “COIN Manpower Ratios.”
61. Friedman, “Manpower and Counterinsurgency,” 572.
63. Hegre, “Democracy and armed conflict,” and Lacina, “Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars.”
64. Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace?, 1816–1992.”
65. Vreeland, “The Effect of Political Regime on Civil War”; and Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy.
66. Belkin and Schofer, “Coup Risk, Counterbalancing, and International Conflict.”
67. Dunigan and Petersohn, “Markets for Force.”
68. Hegre and Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset,” 515.
69. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; and Mueller, “The Banality of ‘Ethnic War’.”
70. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; and Duffy Toft, “Population Shifts and Civil War.”
71. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”
72. See note53 above.
73. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War”; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; and Hegre and Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset.”
74. By comparison, the CPH model produces less biased, more reliable results; see Green and Symons, “A Comparison of the Logistic Risk Function.”
75. Box-Steffensmeier et al., “Nonproportional Hazards and Event History Analysis in International Relations,” 34.
76. Ibid.; and Balch-Lindsay et al., “Third-Party Intervention and the Civil War Process.”
77. The logit model was run on uncensored data controlling for ongoing conflict with similar results.
78. Please see the Appendix for robustness checks. A model lagging the independent variable ‘PMSC presence’ was calculated in order to deal with potential endogeneity. In the lagged model PMSC presence is still significant and still indicates an increase in the risk of conflict onset. Likewise, additional models including inequality has a control have been calculated. The coefficients indicate that PMSC increase the risk of conflict onset.
79. See note 43 above.
80. Leander (2005) applies her argument to Africa only, whereas the investigation presented here focused on Southeast Asia and Latin America as well. However, if with data representing Africa only (results not included here), the effect becomes even stronger.
81. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Esty et al., Working Papers State Failure Task Force Report; and Hegre and Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset.”
82. I would like to thank xxx for bringing that point to my attention.
83. Zarate, “The Emergence of a New Dog of War,” 147.
84. See note 43 above,” 612.
85. Gibbons-Neff, How a 4-Hour Battle Between Russian Mercenaries and U.S. Commandos Unfolded in Syria; and Telesur, Mexican, Columbian ‘Blackwater’ Mercenaries Killed in Yemen.
86. See note 79 above.
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Ulrich Petersohn
Ulrich Petersohn is an Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of Liverpool. He has co-edited the book ‘Markets for Force’ and is work has appeared in Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Interaction, European Journal of International Relations, Armed Forces and Society, and Cooperation & Conflict.