Introduction: The privatisation and globalisation of security in Africa

International Relations

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 131-141

  Abrahamsen, Rita ^a   Williams, Michael C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34249036359     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117807076998     Document Type: Editorial

References (37)

1. This special issue results from the workshop 'The Privatisation and Globalisation of Security in Africa' held at Gregynog Hall, University of Wales, in April 2006. The workshop was financed by the ESRC, grant no. RES-223-25-0074, and we gratefully acknowledge their support. We also thank all the participants at Gregynog for their contributions to the discussion and the special issue.
2. Steven Evans, 'Private Wars Need New Laws', BBC News, 10 May 2004, available at www.news.bbc.co.uk (accessed 12 May 2004); Deborah D. Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 8.
3. Les Johnston, The Rebirth of Private Policing (London: Routledge, 1992).
4. Securitas, Annual Report 2005 (Stockholm), p. 16.
5. Francesco Mancini, In Good Company: The Role of Business in Security Sector Reform (London: Demos, 2006).
6. Peter W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 11.
7. Jakkie Cilliers and Peggy Mason (eds), Peace, Profit, or Plunder: The Privatization of Security in War-torn African Societies (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 1999); Abdel-Fatau Musah, 'Africa: Private Military Intervention and Arms Proliferation in the Process of State Decay', in Jennifer Milliken (ed.), State Failure, State Collapse, and State Reconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003); Damien Lilly, The Privatisation of Security and Peacekeeping: A Framework for Action (London: International Alert, 2000); Bernadette Methuen and Ian Taylor, 'Return of the Dogs of War? The Privatisation of Security in Africa', in Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas Bierstecker (eds), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 183-99.
8. Needless to say, the categories of the 'North', 'Africa' and 'the international' themselves inevitably risk obscuring historical and geographic variations, as well as the connections between processes in different parts of the world. Nonetheless, they are also helpful in drawing out the connections between different dynamics.
9. Janice Thompson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereign: State Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
10. David Phillips, 'Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire: Association for the Prosecution of Felons in England 1760-1860', in Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder (eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 113-70, at p. 118.
11. Richard M. Brown, 'The History of Vigilantism in America', in H. Jon Rosenbaum and Peter C. Sedeberg (eds), Vigilante Politics (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), pp. 79-109.
12. Johnston, The Rebirth of Private Policing.
13. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns; Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975).
14. Avant, The Market for Force; Peter Mandel, Armies without States: The Privatization of Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2002); Singer, Corporate Warriors; Greg Mills and John Stremlau (eds), The Privatisation of Security in Africa (Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs, 1999).
15. Peter Lock, 'Africa, Military Downsizing and the Growth of the Security Industry', in Cilliers and Mason, Peace, Profit, or Plunder?, pp. 11-36.
16. Mark Malan and Jakkie Cilliers, 'Mercenaries and Mischief: The Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Bill', Occasional Paper no. 25 (Pretoria: Institute of Security Studies, 1997); Avant, The Market for Force.
17. Les Johnston, Policing Britain: Risk, Security and Governance (Harlow: Longman, 2000); Clifford Shearing and Phillip C. Stenning, Private Policing (Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage, 1987); David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
18. The essays in Frank Leishman, Barry Loveday and Stephen P. Savage (eds), Core Issues in Policing (Harlow: Longman, 2000), provide a comprehensive overview of this in the case of British policing.
19. See Leishman et al., Core Issues in Policing, especially 'Introduction: Core Issues Revisited', pp. 1-6.
20. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992).
21. Mary Douglas, Risk and Blame (London: Routledge, 1992).
22. Les Johnston and Clifford Shearing, Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice (London: Routledge, 2003).
23. Garland, The Culture of Control; see also Nikolas Rose, 'Governing "Advanced" Liberal Democracies', in Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (eds), Foucault and Political Reason (London: UCL Press, 1996), pp. 37-64.
24. Johnston, The Rebirth of Private Policing; David Bayley and Clifford Shearing, The New Structure of Policing: Description, Conceptualization, and Research Agenda (Washington DC: National Institute of Justice, 2001).
25. Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999).
26. Garland, The Culture of Control; see also Rose, 'Governing "Advanced" Liberal Democracies'.
27. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government (New York: Plume, 1993).
28. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 1: The Rise of Network Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996); Johnston and Shearing, Governing Security; Jennifer Wood and Benoit Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Benoit Dupont, 'Security in the Age of Networks', Policing and Society, 14, 2004, pp. 76-91.
29. Johnston and Shearing, Governing Security. We are leaving aside here the considerable normative debate about the 'appropriate' role of the state in security provision. See Ian Loader and Neil Walker, 'Necessary Virtues: The Legitimate Place of the State in the Production of Security', in Wood and Dupont, Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security, pp. 165-95; Ian Loader and Neil Walker, 'State of Denial? Rethinking the Governance of Security', Punishment and Society, 6, 2004, pp. 221-8.
30. An important exception is the literature on transnational policing. See Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelman, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
31. F. Wairagu, J. Kamenju and M. Singo, Private Security in Kenya (Nairobi: Security Research and Information Centre [SRIC], 2004), p. 45.
32. Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams, 'The Globalisation of Private Security: Country Report: Nigeria' (Aberystwyth: University of Wales, 2005), available at: http://users.aber.ac.uk/rbh/privatesecurity/ index.html.
33. Bruce Baker, 'Multi-choice Policing in Africa: Is the Continent Following the South African Pattern?', Society in Transition, 35(2), 2004, pp. 204-23; Lars Buur and Steffen Jensen, 'Special Issue: Everyday Policing in South Africa', African Studies, 63(2), 2004.
34. See Suzette Heald, this issue pp. 183-99; and Alice Hills, Policing Africa: Internal Security and the Limits of Liberalisation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2000).
35. David Anderson, 'Vigilantes, Violence and the Politics of Public Order in Kenya', African Affairs, 101(405), 2002, pp. 531-55.
36. On state capacity as a crucial variable in the control of private military activity, see Avant, The Market for Force.
37. Lars Buur and Steffen Jensen, 'Introduction: Vigilantism and the Policing of Everyday Life in South Africa', African Studies, 63(2), 2004, pp. 139-52.