The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security.

• Author: Benson, Bruce L.
• Position: Book review

The title of Deborah D. Avant's book The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security (2005) may be somewhat misleading. A more accurate description of the book's content would require something like "The International Market for Force: Some Consequences of Private Provision of Military Services As Well As Security for International Corporations and Nongovernment Organizations." This observation is not a criticism--after all, this alternative title is long and awkward--but simply information for potential readers. Avant directly examines only some consequences of privatization that relate to various dimensions of the control of force. The term private security generally is used to describe domestic markets for services and equipment used to prevent crime against residents (such as burglar alarms, guards, and patrols in private communities), businesses (such as guards and alarms in banks, shopping malls, casinos, and railroads), and even government establishments (such as security for court houses, colleges, public housing, and airports). In contrast, Avant focuses much more on private provision of military services to governments and on the international market for security services paid for by international nongovernment organizations (NGOs) (both for-profit firms and not-for-profit organizations).

Privatization has multiple meanings. It often denotes the transfer of ownership from the public sector to the private sector, as exemplified by the privatizations of various industries in recent years in various countries, such as Great Britain during the Thatcher era, New Zealand, and the formerly Communist countries of eastern Europe. Avant explains that this meaning is not the one she is employing (p. 24). Alternatively, privatization is often used as a synonym for a government's "contracting out" with a private firm for the production of some good or service previously produced exclusively by a public-sector agency or bureaucracy. In this case, the control of the activity is not being turned over to market forces because the determination of what is demanded from and produced by the contracting firms remains in the political arena under the influence of interest groups and public officials rather than being established directly by private citizens and organizations acting as individual buyers. Avant's use of the term includes contracting out, but its meaning is broader, describing all contracts for the supply of some aspect of security services by private firms, whether the buyer (or, in her terminology, the source of financing) is a government, an international corporation, or an international NGO; she apparently assumes that such services used to be (or perhaps should be) produced by government. She recognizes, however, that contracting out by government and contracts between two private entities are likely to differ significantly.

Avant provides a substantial amount of information about the private sector's role in the provision of a wide range of security services. She explains that the international market for such services has increased dramatically during the past twenty years, and she discusses the wide variety of military and security services now being provided. Today, for example, private firms are providing integral components to many governments' military activities, including logistics (transport, telecommunications, food, laundry, and administrative services); operational support of weapons, transportation, and communications/control systems; military advice and training; site security; crime control (both private policing personnel and police training); intelligence; counterinsurgency, antiterrorism, and other special operations; as well as command and armed battlefield operations. Although governments finance much of this activity, private firms pay for some of it (for example, a private firm with a large investment in a small or financially strapped country may finance military services for the country in order to stabilize a government and thereby protect its own investments), and other NGOs pay for some of it (for example, an international environmental organization may pay for park rangers in order to limit poaching).

Avant notes that Weber's widely cited definition of the state as a monopolist in the legitimate production and use of violence is now clearly inapplicable, as demonstrated by the large and growing international market for such security services. Other reasons also warrant rejection of the concept of the state as an organization that has (or claims) a monopoly in violence. For one thing, "the government" never "produces" anything, including force, without contracting with "private entities" (Avant does not recognize this fact). Even if a bureaucratic organization, such as a police force or an army, produces a good or service, the individuals who work in that bureaucracy are private parties under contracts negotiated either individually or through a collective-bargaining organization, such as a union. The individuals are not "owned" by the state. They contract to provide their labor...