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"Petersohn, Ulrich"
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The Markets for Force
The Markets for Forceexamines and compares the markets for private military and security contractors in twelve nations: Argentina, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, Afghanistan, China, Canada, and the United States. Editors Molly Dunigan and Ulrich Petersohn argue that the global market for force is actually a conglomeration of many types of markets that vary according to local politics and geostrategic context. Each case study investigates the particular characteristics of the region's market, how each market evolved into its current form, and what consequence the privatized market may have for state military force and the provision of public safety. The comparative standpoint sheds light on better-known markets but also those less frequently studied, such as the state-owned and -managed security companies in China, militaries working for private sector extractive industries in Ecuador and Peru, and the ways warlord forces overlap with private security companies in Afghanistan.
An invaluable resource for scholars and policymakers alike,The Markets for Forceoffers both an empirical analysis of variations in private military and security companies across the globe and deeper theoretical knowledge of how such markets develop.
Contributors:Olivia Allison, Oldrich Bures, Jennifer Catallo, Molly Dunigan, Scott Fitzsimmons, Maiah Jaskoski, Kristina Mani, Carlos Ortiz, Ulrich Petersohn, Jake Sherman, Christopher Spearin.
eBook
Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), Military Effectiveness, and Conflict Severity in Weak States, 1990–2007
For more than two decades, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have become increasingly involved in armed conflicts. A common view is that PMSCs are menaces who simply take economic advantage of—and thereby aggravate—already bad situations. Yet, empirical research has rarely investigated these claims or the impact of commercial actors' selling force-related services. This article investigates how PMSCs impact the severity of armed conflict in weak states and advances the argument that PMSC services increase the client's military effectiveness. In turn, increased military effectiveness translates into increased conflict severity, the extent of which depends on type of service provided by the PMSC, the level of competition on the market, and oversight.
Journal Article
The anti-mercenary norm and the market for combat force
Since 2013, combat services have been increasingly exchanged on the market. This development is puzzling since the practice emerged despite an anti-mercenary norm banning such services, and without any revision of the norm. The article argues that the combat market is not a deliberate design, but the result of strategic interaction. For some, compliance with the anti-mercenary norm is the best strategy, while for others, violating the norm is best. However, once the norm violation occurs, it is in the interest of all actors to maintain a façade of compliance. Non-compliant actors benefit from the combat services, and compliant actors do not have to engage in costly sanctioning of the norm violation, and avoid the reputational costs associated with non-enforcement. The article employs game theory to investigate the strategic interactions of actors across eleven combat contracts from 2013 to 2019.
Journal Article
Norm challenges and norm death
The subject of a formerly strong norm’s death is not often in the limelight of political science research. This paper investigates successful norm challenges and analyses the conditions that lead to the abolition of norms rather than to limitations of the norms. It presents a theoretical account of norm challenges and develops hypotheses on mechanisms, success and outcomes. Six illustrative case studies show that norm contestations take place through non-compliance when norms are not embedded in international negotiation systems, while norm contestations through negotiation are frequently the case if norms are embedded in international regimes or organizations. Irrespective of the institutional context, the strength of norm challengers relative to norm proponents impacts the prospects for successful normative change. If norm challengers are stronger than the actors defending the status quo, the outcome of norm challenges is influenced by the combination of norm precision and the stability of the normative environment. If the broader context undergoes change while the contested norm is precise, norms cannot be reinterpreted to accommodate norm change. As a result, in such instances, norms die. By contrast, vague norms in combination with stable environments are not abolished after being subject to strong challenges, but are merely reinterpreted in a manner delimiting their applicatory scope.
Journal Article
Reframing the anti-mercenary norm: Private military and security companies and mercenarism
Since the nineteenth century, the anti-mercenary norm has prohibited violent market actors from participating in combat. Today, however, private military and security companies (PMSCs) are widely perceived as legitimate. How did they achieve that legitimacy? This article argues that PMSCs initially resembled mercenaries. Previously, mercenaries were defined as fighters participating in combat for pay, be it offensive or defensive. PMSC advocates aimed to alter the combat component of the anti-mercenary norm. By arguing that PMSCs' use of force was not combat, but rather individual self-defence, they created an alternative interpretation that established the practice as appropriate. As critical actors like the US, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations adopted their interpretation, the regulatory scope of the norm changed. In short, PMSCs are perceived to be legitimate because they are no longer implicated in the anti-mercenary norm.
Journal Article
The Effectiveness of Contracted Coalitions
The debate on the effectiveness of Private Security Contractors (PSCs) in Iraq has been waged ever since their first appearance. Statists have argued that they are much less effective than regular troops, while neoliberals consider them an effective supplement to regular troops. However, so far, both schools alike have drawn on anecdotal evidence only; yet, such evidence is prone to a high margin of error and does not allow a comparison of different actors. This article addresses these shortfalls by providing hard data, drawn from the Wikileaks “Iraq War logs” data set, on the conduct of PSCs in Iraq and comparing their performance to that of regular troops, that is, the US and Iraqi armed forces. In general, if PSCs are co-deployed alongside regular troops and oversight is institutionalized, their performance supersedes that of poorly trained military personnel, such as the Iraqi military, and in many cases even that of the highly capable US military.
Journal Article
President Donald J. Trump
Since his inauguration, US President Donald Trump has made news by violating international and domestic norms, such as norms of diplomatic communication or the non-discrimination norm. This paper uses theoretical approaches to norm eradication in order to examine whether President Trump has turned into an effective agent of norm death leading to the abolition of domestic and international standards of appropriateness. It discusses how the precision of the respective norms, the stability of their contexts, and the actions of norm proponents have played out. This reveals that President Trump’s actions have so far lacked effectiveness, and have not led to norm death. The longevity of challenged norms cannot be taken for granted, however—especially if the challenger is a powerful actor. In order to avoid norm death under this circumstance, it is essential that norm proponents possess capacities and competencies to act, and employ them to defend challenged norms.
Journal Article
The social structure of the market for force
Over the past two decades, governments have increasingly contracted private military and security companies (PMSCs) to support military operations in conflicts. However, many observers have argued that such companies are 'greedy market actors' or 'reckless mercenaries' and their level of performance very poor. A minority has defended them as security professionals. If market competition is present, the level of performance is high and positive contributions to the client's military operation can be expected. However, neither PMSC opponents nor proponents can account for the variance in the level of performance in three crucial cases - Sierra Leone, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This article argues that different market structures explain this variance. At least three ideal configurations exist: collaborative, competitive, and rival structures. These structures influence the level of performance. PMSC performance levels are expected to decrease from the first configuration, being positive, to the last, being negative.
Journal Article
Military Privatisation: Changing the Military-Civil Force Mix
The article sets out to answer two closely related questions of
why western states do outsource and why they display a variance.
Hypotheses will be drawn from historical and sociological institutionalism and probed in two cases: Germany and the US. Historical institutionalism argues that the current contractor support is in keeping with the historical trend. Sociological institutionalism instead argues that states organise their militaries according to a globally shared template. However, the extent to which it is implemented is strongly influenced by the ideational foundations the states are built upon. Comparing these explanations, this study argues that patterns of military privatisation result from globally shared standards and the ideational foundations of the state rather than from historical trajectory and material benefits.
Journal Article