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Portraits in Practice : The Private Security Business and the Reconfiguration of International Politics

Departing from the self-portrayal of the private security business as a normal, non-political sector at the service of states and other legitimate clients, this article argues that the rise of the private security business reinforces general trends towards techno-managerial, de-politicized, and militarized security practices. That is, even when firms behave by their own books, security privatization reconfigures international politics. Paradoxically this straightforward implication of privatization tends to be obscured both in mainstream international relations analysis and in the critical literature on security privatization. IR scholars tend to focus on the extent to which privatization undermines or alters states and the state regulatory systems at the expense of changes that leave these intact. The critical literature concentrates on denying the self-portrayal of private security firms showing the degree to which they are inefficient, politicized and corrupt neglecting the unspectacular, normal, situations where the portraits private security firms reflect their practices. As this article shows, the lack of attention to situations where the private security business does not undermine states or public regulation and acts as it preaches leads to a misunderstanding of some essential implications of security privatization.