States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security

Examines the changing roles of the state, the citizen and the soldier, and the consequences for national and international security.

Elke Krahmann (Author)

9780521125192, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 February 2010

318 pages, 19 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.52 kg

'In probing the paradoxes surrounding the democratic control of armed forces with specific regard to the proliferating use of private military forces in Europe and North America, this important work manages to shed new light on the transforming relationships among states, soldiers, and citizens and to induce readers to rethink their most fundamental assumptions about the nature of security on the contemporary world.' Robert Mandel, Professor of International Affairs, Lewis & Clark College

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.

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.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], Military tactics [JWKT], International relations [JPS]