Browsing Research documents by Author "Leander, Anna"
Now showing items 1-17 of 17
-
Hybrid States and the Public-Private DistinctionLeander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The chimerical state is not only a hybrid state. It is also a state of obscure powers. As the classical chimera, much of its strength comes precisely from the fact that it hard to see and hence to investigate and critique. The paper traces the origins of this difficulty to the role the public-private divide plays in hiding chimerical power. It does so with reference specifically to the security area. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7969 Files in this item: 1
The_Obscure_Powers_working_paper.pdf (147.1Kb) -
Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This entry gives an overview of the debate about private security. It can not pretend to cover everything in equal detail. It is geared to highlight the parts of the discussion about commercial security practices that are of most immediate interest to New Security Studies. Very succinctly put, the entry shows the pertinence of the emerging research agenda where commercial security practices are part of a broader analysis of evolving insecurities, of (in)security spaces and of everyday practices, insisting on the scope for further developments with regard to these issues (section 2). The entry also suggests that the although the more conventional literature on the subject—mostly framed in terms of privatization—has made valuable contributions to the debates about commercial security, it has limited analytical clout for analyzing the politics of commercial security. Worse it sometimes obscures it (section 1). It is therefore not surprising that commercialization is currently tending to replace privatization as the vantage point from which analysis is taking place. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7963 Files in this item: 1
-
The Market for Force and the Right to have Protection RightsLeander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Departing from an elaboration of the idea of a citizenship protection nexus (1), the argument developed below is that the introduction of a neo-liberal governance forms security is leading to far reaching (but largely unacknowledged). It is transforming the understanding of the rights to protection that come with citizenship, de facto transforming it from a general right tied to political citizenship to contracted right to be negotiated (2). At the same time, far from working to weakening the role of the state in security provision, the market is reinforcing it (3) and accentuating the military aspect of protection (4). The overall consequence is that the nexus tying citizenship to protection is increasingly shaped by the commercialized national and military concerns (promoted by public and private security professionals). As this paper concludes, attempts to frame and shape the citizenship-protection nexus in alternative ways—for example attempts to de-link citizenship from states and/or to de-militarize citizenship—are the main causalities of this re-ordering. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7962 Files in this item: 1
-
Leander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: As the scale and scope private military and security companies (PMSCs) are rapidly expanding internationally, the question of their regulation is evermore pressing. Although credible exact figures on the activities of the companies are not available, there is ample indication that the companies play a central role around the world. In Iraq, a Department of Defense survey estimates that there are some 180.000 contractors compared to 160.000 U.S. troops (Singer, 2007: 2). In Nigeria some 1000 registered security companies constitute the second economic sector in the economy after oil (Abrahamsen and Williams, 2006a). Moreover, the scope of PMSC activity is steadily expanding. The trend to privatize and outsource a growing range of activities places PMSCs in charge of an ever growing range of formerly military or policing tasks. The predictable consequence is that PMSCs are increasingly visible and controversial. Incidences such as that in the Nisour square Baghdad where Blackwater contractors were involved in an incident leaving 17 dead civilians on 16th of September 2007 focus attention around the regulatory context of PMSC work. This presentation discusses one aspect of that regulatory context, namely the existing international regulation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6992 Files in this item: 1
wp 2007-4.pdf (130.3Kb) -
Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This article begins by clarifying and defining field and habitus (1) anchoring these concepts in a tradition drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, but also underlining the extent to which the concepts have been used beyond this tradition (2). The article then proceeds to discuss the use of field and habitus in international studies (3). It points out that field and habitus can be (and has long been) used for empirical studies linking the national, the international and the transnational. However, the concepts were imported into scholarly IR/IPE disciplines proper as part of the theoretical discussions surrounding the reflectivist turn. At present, field and habitus are often used to transcend the key divides (inside/outside and public/private) rather than to study relations across them. Finally, the article concludes on the avenues for further research using field and habitus in international studies, insisting on the scope for enhancing and clarifying the heuristic value of the concepts (4). URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7966 Files in this item: 1
Habitus_and_Field_Working_Paper.pdf (178.5Kb) -
[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In security, as in other areas, the emergence of transnational private organizations with a central role in governance poses profound challenges to established conceptions of international politics and democracy. This paper discusses one side of this challenge by looking at accountability of private security companies (PSCs). PSCs have become authorities in their own right in the security sphere. This has raised the question of their accountability and also resulted in considerable efforts to improve the accountability of the firms. This paper looks at why these efforts bear so little fruit. It begins by pointing to the tension involved in any effort to hold an authority (private or public) accountable, namely the tension between the centrality of acceptance for authority and accountability measures that necessarily involve contestation. It then proceeds to analyse this tension in the case of PSCs. The paper argues that PSCs’ status as experts on risk and entrepreneurs of security mobilizes a favourable bias, making contestation less likely. The difficulty of seeing and/or admitting that PSCs are independent actors in turn makes contestation of their activities seem ill-directed and unnecessary. The point made in this paper that this, rather than sheer complexity or hidden political agendas, is key for understanding the present rather puzzling lack of (democratic) accountability of PSCs and its likely continuation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6985 Files in this item: 1
leander_isa07_woc-wp89.pdf (174.0Kb) -
Leander, Anna (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper explains, or perhaps better rationalizes, why I have ended up thinking that so called "practice” theory provides the most adequate entry point for theorizing about business in/and global governance.1 But more than this the key ambition is to spell out what it means to work with practice theory and what kind of leverage it gives for understanding the role of business in global governance. The paper therefore begins by an account of two major difficulties thinking in terms of practices are useful for circumventing. The general thrust of that section is to underline why it may be useful to think in terms of practices in the first place rather than sticking with some of its admittedly more parsimonious and less labor intense alternatives. The rest of the paper then tries to outline what it means (in my view) to work with practices. The second section focuses on how we know whose/what practices matter. It emphasizes the importance of allowing for contextual differentiation when mapping activities and their hierarchies. It also underscores the significance of remaining open about who and what is important. It points to the centrality of different forms of capital (economic, social, cultural and symbolic) in defining whose activities matter. But even more strongly it links up with actor-network-theory’s insight that also objects and technologies "act” in social relations. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7024 Files in this item: 1
wp 2007-6.pdf (235.8Kb) -
Reflecting and Reinforcing Neo-Liberal GovernmentalityLeander, Anna (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This article argues that the role of Private Security Contractors in Darfur reflects and reinforces neo-liberal governmentality in contemporary security governance. It is an argument (in line with other articles in this special issue) which is more interested in discussing how the privatization of security alters security practices (including those involving states) than in thinking about their impact on an idealised public monopoly on the use of force. To make its point, the article begins by drawing on Foucauldian work to clarify the meaning of neo-liberal governmentality in security. It underlines that governance is increasingly taking place through a set of (quasi-) markets, it is marked by entrepreneurial values, and a hands off approach to governance. We then discuss the way this overall change is reflected in and reinforced by the role of private security contractors in Darfur. Drawing on a framework of analysis inspired by Bourdieu, we show that neo-liberal governmentality is reflected in the dispositions of security actors as well as in their relative positions. The resulting security practices reinforce dispositions and positions that reproduce neo-liberal governmentality. Looking at these processes is necessary to understand the role of private security contractors in Darfur. But more than this, practices in Darfur entrench neo-liberal governmentality in security more generally. The managerial and ‘de-politicizing’ approach to security in Darfur displaces alternative views not only in the Darfuri context. It is taken into other contexts where it bolsters neo-liberal governmentality. This spiralling neo-liberal governmentality rather than diminished state control and authority is, we argue, the most significant consequence of the presence of private security contractors in Darfur. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6989 Files in this item: 1
darfur_working_paper.pdf (140.3Kb) -
Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The integration of private international security into Security Studies reflects the relatively recent nature of the market. The literature on the topic revolves around the basics of placing private international security on the agenda (1a); explaining and understanding the market (1b) and problematizing its relationship to central questions in international security (1c). The current trend in the field is to face the—still largely open—challenge of taking research further, both by completing, refining and updating current research efforts (2a) and by expanding and enriching the research agenda to more fully explore the politics of market development (2b). Paradoxically, as this entry concludes, this is leading scholars to abandon the focus on “privatization” and instead pushing them to formulate research agenda in new terms such as commercialization, commodification, governance or governmentality. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7967 Files in this item: 1
-
Thinking International Relations through Fields, Habitus and PracticeLeander, Anna (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
-
The Power of the Private Security BusinessLeander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6948 Files in this item: 1
reconfiguring security praxis-wp88.pdf (113.1Kb) -
Leander, Anna (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper focuses on the way PMCs shape security policies and more generally political priorities. Linking up with classical thinking about "civil-military relations", it suggests that preoccupation with security professionals’ role in shaping politics is as important when these professionals are privately organised in PMCs as it is when they are enrolled in public armed forces. The paper shows that existing regulation has not been adjusted to account for this fact and that the significance of regulating PMCs’ role in shaping politics is profoundly underestimated. It therefore argues that putting the issue of regulating "civil-PMCs relations" on the agenda is essential. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7019 Files in this item: 1
pmc_regulation_working_paper-2.pdf (238.0Kb) -
The Case of the CIA “Killing Program”Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: “Risk” has become a major theme in the social sciences over the past two decades. It has been argued to reshape social and political life not only by placing new issues on the agenda but also by generating new “governmental rationalities”. These debates have in various forms also began to influence international studies. It has already been shown that the introduction of risk has altered strategic rationality. An uncertain imagined future of Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns” has become integral to military strategic thinking. In the process technologies used to wage war and the actors involved have also evolved. Continuing the discussion, this article moves on to look at the implications of these changes for legal and political boundaries in one specific area of international politics; it traces the link between the spread of risk rationality (or governance through risk) and the development of apolitical and unaccountable military markets. Risk rationality creates what I will tentatively term a preventive imperative that tends to spread across areas and is assisted in the process by the rapidly expanding ranks of risk professionals. The preventive imperative is key to the rapid growth of private military markets as well as to the difficulty of politicizing—in the sense of creating a critical public debate—about the market as opposed to about the a given scandal (e.g. Nisour Square incident) or firm (e.g. Blackwater). The difficulty of politicizing the market has strong implications for the (non-)working of accountability. It creates what I will dub an accountability paradox where the way accountability is pursued reinforces the impunity of markets and of specific market actors. The reason is that it pre-empts serious consideration of the public/private enmeshment which is the “blind spot” of present legal instruments and it positively reaffirms existing “regulation” in all its defectiveness. Neither security professionals nor lawyers are susceptible to resolve this paradox. Reference to the CIA “Killing Program” anchors and illustrates the argument. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7965 Files in this item: 1
Risk_working_paper.pdf (145.5Kb) -
Leander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: On September 16 2007 the employees of the U.S. security firm Blackwater became involved in a shooting incidence in the Nisour Square in Baghdad. They were escorting a U.S. State Department delegation, which according to the firm, came under attack. According to by-standers, the Blackwater employees opened fire unprovoked, shooting in all directions and seemingly at anyone moving, including those trying to flee or help those wounded. 17 Iraqis civilians died in the incidence and at least twice as many were wounded. President Al-Maliki immediately came out to "revoke Blackwater’s license” for operating in Iraq and Iraqi authorities engaged the process of ending contractor impunity in their country. However, it soon became clear that there was no license to revoke and that the Iraqi government may not have the authority to deny Blackwater the right to operate in Iraq, let alone decide the fate of private contractors more generally. On their part, the U.S. authorities promised to open their own investigation and expressed regret at the civilian casualties but did not end their contracts with Blackwater in Iraq or elsewhere. The incapacity of the Iraqi government to impose its authority and right to control the use of force on its territory, to hold Blackwater and/or its employees accountable for the incidence, made Jeremy Scahill conclude that: "nothing gives a more clear indication to the Iraqis that they don’t have a sovereign government” (2007). Scahill is right in pointing to the limitations of the Iraqi government’s role as the ultimate authority deciding on laws on Iraqi territory. However, it does not follow that the Mansour incidence is illustrative of the extent to which the private markets for force have undermined sovereignty generally. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7033 Files in this item: 1
wp 2007-5.pdf (162.5Kb) -
[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper argues that security belongs to a specific category of commodities: “contested commodities” around which there is an ongoing and unsettled symbolic struggle over whether or not they can and should be though of as commodities (section 1). The contested nature of commodification has implications for how markets function; market practices tend to be defined and organized in ways that minimize their contentiousness and obfuscate their expansion. The paper looks at the implications of this argument for the conceptualization of the security. It focuses on the three central articulations of contestation: the discussion about whether the use of force can be left to the market, whether it can be so in the international realm and the discussion about whether or not markets trigger increased insecurity. It shows how this specific articulation of contestation has produced markets where the practice/definition of security is as public rather than private (section 2), as inside rather than outside (section 3) and as a responsible reaction to a threat rather than as something contributing to the constitution of threats (section 4). Conceptualizations of private security consequently have to be devised to capture these practical consequences of contested commodification; they need to capture the private in the public, the inside in the outside and the securitizing in the response to threats. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7964 Files in this item: 1
Contested_Commodity_working_paper.pdf (152.8Kb) -
A Reflection on Historical Sociology and IRLeander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In 2004 I published an argument to the effect that “taking Tilly seriously” could help International Relations (IR) scholars understand some of the processes and mechanisms involved in state-building (Leander, 2004: the chapter is pasted in at the end of this statement). This short statement is a reflection on why, if I were to write that piece today, it would be written differently. I would still argue that we should all engage the Historical Sociology of State-Building (HSS) in a serious way (go beyond the folklore as I termed it in 2004) but my inclination today would be to be far more explicit about to the pitfalls of not going beyond the folklore as well as about the importance of studies of practices (in anthropology, ethnography, geography, regional/area studies or even IR, sic!) in signposting these pitfalls. This change in tone has less to do with any particular idea or argument in historical sociology, and even less with the work of any particular historical sociologist (seen the focus of this workshop Tilly will figure as the recurring reference point) than it does with the way the HSS is read, feeds into and shapes IR discussions (section 1). The way HSS has been integrated into IR has led scholars deeper into the pitfalls which hamper their understanding of contemporary state-building. More specifically it has perpetuated a misconstrued understanding of the inside/outside, it has obscured the nature and role of the private/public, and that it has devalued contextually specific articulations of politics and governance (sections 2-4). This “misunderstanding” is not only a scholastic matter as it translates into policies that are ineffective, inadequate not to say positively harmful (section 5). As the statement concludes, the implication is that IR scholars who decide to walk the terrain chartered by HSS would do well to observe the warning signposts set up by observers of political practices around these pitfalls. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7968 Files in this item: 1
-
Leander, Anna (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper analyses one influential Hollywood documentary, Edward Zwick’s movie Blood Diamond as if it were an advertising campaign. Drawing on a business school textbook: Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, it poses the kinds of question an advertiser would: namely how the brand image is established, how it is made superior to other images and how good it is at capturing would-be-consumers. The paper suggests that Blood Diamond fares well on all three accounts and it traces why this is so. Specifically, it emphasizes the extent to which the film has contributed to establish and solidify the link between blood and diamonds in a process of "cultural cannibalism”. Second, it underlines role of "Hollywood authenticity” in establishing its very particular picture of politics as superior to alternatives. This certainly is more an unintended "collateral damage” than a part the producers’/directors’ intention. Finally, the last section suggests that Blood Diamond effectively captures the spectator by the reassuring, but illusive, plurality of images and by its visual fetichism. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7031 Files in this item: 1
wp 2008-1.pdf (207.4Kb)
Now showing items 1-17 of 17