Private Military Companies and the Privatisation of Violence and Security: Rethinking the Monopoly of Violence and the Role of the State.

In the post-Cold War period, states involved in violent conflict have become increasingly willing to employ the services of private military companies, acting on an international market, to perform military-related functions. This privatisation of violence and security calls into question dominant assumptions about the Westphalian state’s claim to authority and control over violence and its role as provider of protection. In research, this trend towards privatisation has been seen as intimately linked to the logic of the so-called ‘new wars’. However, this paper argues, a more comprehensive analysis can be reached by also acknowledging that the use of non-state actors in violent conflict has clear historical connotations. Thus, this paper will place the theoretical challenges to state-centric modes of analysis in a wider historical perspective and initiate a discussion on how a historically grounded framework for analysis might further our thinking on the impact of privatisation on the role and function of the national state in the post-Cold War period. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]