INSECURITY, INC.: the Politics, the Polities, and the Policies of the Private Military and Security Industry

The new crises emerging from international struggles have resulted in numerous conflicts and a considerable increase in insecurity. At the same time, the power of decision and intervention in security is being outsourced more often than before. In consideration of these changes in the institutional means that safeguard societies, this study attempts to examine and to understand how the outsourcing of the use of force, leading to private military and security companies, has given rise to various reactions both on the domestic and international levels. Due to the nature of the investigation into how mercenary-like businesses have acted in armed conflict and their parallel involvement in statal affairs, both primary and secondary sources are employed to obtain qualitative results in the fields of history, political science, international relations, and judicial and legal interpretations.