The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies: From Norm Entrepreneurship to Organized Hypocrisy

A prominent anti-mercenary norm entrepreneur in the second half of the 20th century, the United Nations (UN) has become an equally prominent user of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) services in the 21st century. In this article, we explain the gap between UN talk and action on private providers of security as a form of organized hypocrisy. To map the mismatch between UN rhetoric and behaviour in a measurable fashion, we combined official data on the use of PMSCs with an in-depth content analysis of the reports written by the UN Working Group on Mercenaries and an examination of the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) contracting policy. The Working Group’s very negative portrayal of PMSCs and the UNDSS caveat that armed contractors should only be used as a last resort and stands in stark contrast with UN agencies’ widespread use of private security providers. Although a decoupling between talk and action is often inevitable for complex organizations simultaneously pursuing contradictory objectives like the UN, our findings have important implications for peacekeeping. Most notably, organized hypocrisy is in danger of challenging the UN’s credibility as a norm entrepreneur, hindering the effectiveness of its agencies’ outsourcing practices and delaying the reform of UN peacekeeping and crisis management at large.