States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security

by Elke Krahmann

Overview

Recent years have seen a growing role for private military contractors in national and international security. To understand the reasons for this, Elke Krahmann examines changing models of the state, the citizen and the soldier in the UK, the US and Germany. She focuses on both the national differences with regard to the outsourcing of military services to private companies and their specific consequences for the democratic control over the legitimate use of armed force. Tracing developments and debates from the late eighteenth century to the present, she explains the transition from the centralized warfare state of the Cold War era to the privatized and fragmented security governance, and the different national attitudes to the privatization of force.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521125192
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/04/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Elke Krahmann is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol. Her previous publications include New Threats and New Actors in International Security (2005) and Multilevel Networks in European Foreign Policy (2003).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Acronyms; Lists of figures and tables; 1. Introduction; 2. The state monopoly on violence and the democratic control over military force; 3. The transformation of the state and the soldier; 4. United Kingdom: private financing and the management of security; 5. United States: shrinking the state, outsourcing the soldier; 6. Germany: between public-private partnerships and conscription; 7. Iraq and beyond: contractors in deployed operations; 8. The future of democratic security: contractorization or cosmopolitanism?; 9. Conclusion; Selected bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

A valuable addition to the study of private military contractors…Krahmann investigate how two contrasting domestic ideologies underlying democratic systems of government, republicanism and neoliberalism, have shaped state choices regarding the relationship between the soldier and the state…Scholars interested in understanding the implications of privatizing security will find much to engage with here.”
– Renée de Nevers, Syracuse University, Governance

From the Publisher