Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics

Across the globe, from mega-cities to isolated resource enclaves, the provision and governance of security takes place within assemblages that are de-territorialized in terms of actors, technologies, norms and discourses. They are embedded in a complex transnational architecture, defying conventional distinctions between public and private, global and local. Drawing on theories of globalization and late modernity, along with insights from criminology, political science and sociology, Security Beyond the State maps the emergence of the global private security sector and develops a novel analytical framework for understanding these global security assemblages. Through in-depth examinations of four African countries Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa it demonstrates how global security assemblages affect the distribution of social power, the dynamics of state stability, and the operations of the international political economy, with significant implications for who gets secured and how in a global era.

Review :
A major contribution to current understandings of the formation and operation of security assemblages in a global world. The authors draw from and build upon the latest conceptual and explanatory advances in criminological thinking, security studies and elsewhere in the social sciences. Their analysis of different kinds and levels of security auspices and providers, and their relations, is the most exciting I ve seen to date. This book opens up new and extended lines of inquiry at both explanatory and normative levels. Jennifer Wood, Temple University Every now and then, a book comes along which changes the way in which we think about important subjects. This is such a book. The authors provide an important and compelling argument that the privatization of on-the-ground everyday security in states on the periphery of the global economic and diplomatic centers of power strengthens states at the same time that it refashions the bases of their authority. This is a book which goes beyond the facile generalizations and intellectual and cultural prejudices which surround some of the study of globalization and particularly the study of private security in Africa. The theoretical framework and the empirical detail are both quite remarkable. William Reno, Northwestern University Security Beyond the State succeeds on several counts. For those interested in emerging security patterns, it provides a tour of the horizon on critical but neglected issues. For those interested in globalization, it demonstrates how globalization is shaping the production of security on a global scale and shifting its management to the private realm. For those interested in international relations theory, it pushes on some of the most taken-for-granted categories, including the basic function of the state and the location of modern sovereignty. And, it is one of those rare books that will be profitably read by both scholars and practitioners alike. Michael Barnett, University of Minnesota