From an analysis of recent controls developed around private military and security companies (PMSCs), the proposed paper offers a new perspective on the idea of state privatization. The increasing use of PMSCs reveals, indeed, both the extension and normalization of commercial logics as a way of governing. Yet, the limits of such a market for force and the consequent implementation of controls around this commercial activity incline to reevaluate, in fine, the extent of this commodification and supposed state retreat.
De facto, regulation is primarily envisioned as a self-regulation of the private security industry along market lines (e.g. ISOA, BAPSC). Because of its pitfalls, governance mechanisms are nevertheless implemented (e.g. Swiss Initiative). And the conduct of such a regulatory governance on security is informative in three ways. First, it may be seen as a proof of the increasing perception of security as a commodity, available on a market but now also controlled according to market procedures. Secondly, this is telling about the perceived legitimacy of governance mechanisms, used here as a way to legitimate a polemical actor and control. Finally, the circulation and diffusion of private and public controls of PMSCs reveal the social construction of a new norm around private violence, legitimate as long as regulated and non-offensive.
Yet, over these findings, and because of an action on a function constructed as “inherently governmental”, state appears to be progressively reintroduced as a legitimate component, if not the legitimatory component, of these new regulatory arrangements. The process of PMSCs’ control, analyzed here in three sequences, therefore leads to the recognition of state’s respecification and redefinition, its core perimeter being paradoxically renegotiated and reasserted by public and private actors during this contracting process.
