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Ausgabe 4-2007

Themenschwerpunkt: »Privatisierung« von Sicherheit / The Privatisation of Security

INHALT

Editorial | download full article as pdf
Seite III

Themenschwerpunkt: »Privatisierung« von Sicherheit

Forum

Dokumentation

  • Security sector reform: The role of the UN Security Council.
    Seite 214

Neuerscheinung
Seite 218

Annotationen
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Besprechungen | download full article as pdf
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ENGLISH ABSTRACTS

Formen von Sicherheits-Governance in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit
Sven Chojnacki* und Željko Branovi´c
In order to systematically trace the private production of security and violence in areas of limited statehood, this article discusses three hybrid forms of security:
(1) institutionalised security-governance in emerging non-state dynamics of violence;
(2) self-governance as the local response to strategic or indiscriminate forms of violence;
(3) commercialised security as the growing tendency to delegate protection from various threats to specialists from the private sector. The different dynamics relate to the logic of markets of security in areas where the state’s monopoly of the use of force has collapsed and different private actors compete over territorial control, natural resources and the recruitment of members. download full article as pdf

Vom Umgang mit Störenfrieden: Staatliche und nichtstaatliche
Gewaltakteure als Spoiler in Friedenspozessen am Beispiel Sri Lankas
Kristina Eichhorst
Discovering the spoiler potential of state and non-state armed groups engaged in conflict is a key element in any eventual resolution. This article tests the usefulness of the spoiler concept in conflict resolution by showing how the collapse of the internationally supervised ceasefire in Sri Lanka was related to a flawed appreciation of the spoiler-potential of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The strategy of engagement that flowed from this flawed assessment left the international monitors with insufficient fl exibility to adjust to changing circumstances, which ultimately contributed to the resurgence of violent conflict. The analysis demonstrates the need to accurately assess the motivations of potential spoilers; to accommodate eventual changes in those motivations; and, for external actors to preserve enough flexibility to respond to such modifications.

The role of the private business sector in peace
negotiations. Lessons from Guatemala
Ulrike Joras
Private companies are increasingly considered a partner in the prevention, settlement and transformation of violent conflicts. While the question of how companies can avoid contributing to violent confl icts dominated the debate on the role of corporate actors in war-torn countries for some time, there is now growing interest also in how companies can contribute to the promotion of peace. However, so far there is still little knowledge on how companies perceive peace processes. This article seeks to add to a better understanding of private companies in peace processes in order to be able to better assess the potentials and limits of corporate engagement in peace support. For the case of Guatemala, the role of the local private sector during the peace process is discussed, with a particular focus on the time of the peace negotiations (1986-1996).

Sicherheitswirtschaft: Auch eine Public Management-Herausforderung
James W. Davis
The intersection between Security, Economics, and Technology has been under-researched and under-theorised leaving important questions unanswered in a world of growing, rapid change. This article begins to articulate the complex interrelationships between globalisation, the political economy of security, research and technology in order to better highlight how these changes in the global sphere are transforming national security policy into a commercially supplied product. As the private security industry increasingly infl uences public security provision, innovative forms of cooperation will be required to create a strategy for the globalisation of security that will benefit all.

Sicherheit als Geschäft: Der Aufstieg privater
Sicherheits- und Militärunternehmen und die Folgen
Gerhard Kümmel
For quite some time already, violent international confl ict has been infl uenced by a phenomenon that has come to be termed the privatization of security. The production and maintenance of security has increasingly been delegated to private enterprises by both state and non-state actors. Obviously, the business of security servicing is one that pays, as the war in Iraq impressively illustrates. The present paper looks at the root causes of the rise of a business whose growth potential is huge. At the same time this paper deals with the actual or potential consequences of this development. Ultimately, this paper concludes that private military and security companies are ambivalent in character. For governments as well as for other principals to employ these agents implies both advantage and risk, and thus strategies for a more discerning use of this instrument are in high demand.

New Dogs of War oder Peacekeeper von morgen?
Annina Bürgin
Scholars, NGOs, business, parliaments and governments are discussing whether private military companies (PMCs), which are numerous and offer quite diversifi ed services, could contribute to peacekeeping missions, which face an immense lack of personnel. The article debates some of the triggers which have advanced the discussion and identifi es several pros and cons regarding the contribution of PMCs to peacekeeping missions. In addition, discussions that took place in selected countries are outlined. It is conceivable that future debates will not revolve around whether peacekeeping tasks should be outsourced, but which duties, with whom and what monitoring and control tools should be applied.

Security and the costs and benefits of manipulating
analytical boundaries:
Anne Hinz
In Germany, debates within European critical security studies are taken up belatedly. Yet the debates on identity and security, the interrelation of these two concepts, and the dilemma of writing security, raise fundamental issues with the theory of IR in general, as well as with security scholars’ self-perception. Shaped by the return of ideas, culture, and identity to IR and by the linguistic turn in the social sciences, the new European security theory challenges the tendencies to simply incorporate the new concerns as additional variables into positivist frameworks in order to explain changes in world politics. In developing a conceptual alternative, critical security studies point to innovative avenues of research.

Die liberale Theorie des Demokratischen Friedens
Constanze Scheel
This article provides an overview of the liberal democratic peace theory which holds that democracies never or almost never go to war with one another. Although this philosophical idea has circulated since Immanuel Kant, it was not scientifi cally evaluated until the 1960s. Nowadays it has come to be widely accepted. The US administration has expressed support for the theory above all. However, political changes in the last decade indicate that democracy will not be a universal remedy, as the example of Irak shows. The contrariness of the democratic peace remains a phenomenon: whereas members of mere democratic state groups seem to interact peacefully, they often pursue a highly aggressive foreign policy towards non-democracy nations.