The Private Security Events Database

• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002718824394
• Author: Kara Kingma Neu,Deborah Avant
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Subject Matter: Data Set Feature

Data Set Feature

The Private Security

Events Database

Deborah Avant

1

,

and Kara Kingma Neu

1

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the private provision of military and security services has become a

common feature of local, national, and transnational politics. The prevalence of

private security has generated important questions about its consequences, but data

to answer these questions are sparse. In this article, we introduce the Private

Security Events Database (PSED) that traces the involvement of private military and

security companies (PMSCs) in events in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia

from 1990 to 2012. We describe the PSED project, highlight its descriptive findings,

conduct a replication and reanalysis of Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski’s contract data

in Africa, and compare the two databases’ coverage of Sierra Leone from 1991 to

1997. Our analysis demonstrates new insights into the relationship between PMSCs

and civil war duration, confirming a correlation between PMSC presence and

shorter conflicts, but questioning the logic Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski propose. It

also points to a number of productive paths for future research.

Keywords

civil wars, private military and security companies, Africa, event data

The private provision of military and security services began to grow in the 1990s,

surged through the 2000s, and has since become an increasingly common feature

of local, national, and transnational politics. Over this time, studies have examined

1

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, Sie International Relations Complex, University of Denver,

Denver, CO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kara Kingma Neu, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, Sie International Relations Complex,

University of Denver, 2201 S. Gaylord St., Denver, CO 80208, USA.

Email: kara.kingma@du.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2019, Vol. 63(8) 1986-2006

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002718824394

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

why this industry grew and how private provision of these services matters for a

variety of outcomes from human rights abuses to conflict to governance. As privat e

security becomes common, it becomes ever more important to understand its

consequences, in general as well as in particular circumstances. Does the private

provision of security services exacerbate (or perhaps ameliorate) conflict? Do

private military and security companies (PMSCs) enhance or undermine military

effectiveness? Do they enhance or undermine governance? Does using PMSCs

affect qualities of governance (making it more or less democratic, for instance)?

Are PMSCs associated with more abuse of international humanitarian law or

human rights? Do the effects of PMSCs depend on the quality of the government

in a territory or who the PMSC is workingfor?CanPMSCsbegovernedto

enhance their positive or avoid their negative effects? How? Do governance initia-

tives actually have their intended effect?

Data that can answer these questions, however, are sparse. In this article, we

introduce a new database, the Private Security Events Database (PSED), that begins

to fill this gap. The PSED traces the involvement of PMSCs in events over three

world regions: Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, from 1990 to 2012. The

database contains information on reported PMSC involvement in 1,288 events in

these regions. The project’s aim is to generate data useful for analyzing private

security behavior in different parts of the world and how this behavior is related

to particular companies, types of clients, types of services, allegations of abuse, and

governance responses. The PSED is an ongoing effort that aims to eventually pro-

vide up-to-date information on private security involvement in events worldwide.

1

In what follows, we provide a brief overview of existing PMSC research and data.

Then, we describe the PSED event structure, data collection process, and coding

definitions. Next, we present a summary of the data and highlight some of its

descriptive findings. We demonstrate the value of the PSED by conducting a repli-

cation and reanalysis of Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski (2013), a database that

overlaps geographically and temporally wi th ours, and comparing what the two

databases collected for Sierra Leone from 1991 to 1997. The analysis using our

events data provides new insights into the relationship between PMSCs and civil war

duration, confirming the correlation between PMSC presence and shorter conflicts

but questioning the logic Akcinaroglu and Radziszewski propose. It also points to a

number of productive paths for future research.

Existing Research and Data

As the market for private security services grew after the Cold War, studies docu-

mented the various services within the industry (Singer 2003), the workings of the

global market (Avant 2005), and how the market varies across different countries

and regions (Dunigan and Petersohn 2015). Relying on case study research, analysts

also examined private security’s effects on the control of force (Avant 2004, 2005),

international law and regulation (Chesterman and Lehn hart 2007; Francioni and

Avant and Neu 1987