The Political Economy of Private Security. Explaining the Differences in Domestic Private Security Policy

Globalization and neoliberalism are commonly held responsible for the significant growth in private security provision around the world. Yet, such global factors rather poorly explain the fact that the scope of domestic non-military private security varies considerably between Western industrialized nations. This shortcoming in the existing state of the art therefore calls for the detection and explanation of country differences concerning the public policies toward the private security industry. A detailed look at and comparison of the national political economies of private security is needed integrating conceptually the relevant policy outputs which have been treated separately so far. Based in comparative policy analysis this study asks: What accounts for the differences in the policies toward private security between EU member states? Drawing on criminological theories the study develops three dimensions in which national political systems can affect the scope of national private security industries: privatization, regulation, and production. These policy dimensions are analyzed on an aggregate level for 25 EU countries with regard to factors within the political systems and on the basis of a new dataset comprising data on each dimension including an innovative index of European private security regulation. Thus, the study does not only contribute to the overall issue of a new conceptual understanding of security politics including private and for-profit actors but aims to greatly improve the current under-developed research about institutional and party-ideological factors in private security regulation and growth.