Publicação
Why doesn't it work? US regulatory challenges in outsourcing private use of violence in stability operations
| Resumo: | The outsourcing of security by states to private actors is an ever growing phenomena, and can be seen as a future template of how states will proceed in their civil-military operations abroad. Even though sovereigns have outsourced violence throughout history, the context of international inclusion of protection of human rights makes it different from what happened in the past. In addition, the end of the Cold War brought a market liberalisation of the state’s monopoly over the use of force. In this context, some states suddenly assumed the role of regulator and supervisor of a private security market, rather than the more classical role of security provider. The regulation of security outsourcing in-post conflict scenarios by the US - the central topic of this dissertation - has often been seen as the product of a rapid build-up from a near regulatory vacuum, thus representing a patchwork of previously existing regulations for civilian contractors, with the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions only having highlighted its difficulties. The last decade has witnessed a growing body of scholarship looking at regulatory obstacles, and seeking to explain its pitfalls through well-established theoretical frameworks. Existing research has been fragmented among different disciplines, each approach often limited to a single regulatory dimension (legislative, contractual, economic or political). The reason for their failure to make regulatory analysis comprehensive is twofold. First, they failed to explain regulatory obstacles because - in attempting to fit this unorthodox, new type of regulatory process, which joins various stakeholders, and happens in specific conditions with low transparency and abroad - analysis was made to fit pre-existing structures (from the Cold War era), insisting on largely untenable public-private and domestic-international division. Second, in the process of doing so, scholars often reproduced commonly accepted wisdom, rather than look at the regulatory process itself, invoking the difficulties of access to information and the low transparency of the process. To overcome these obstacles, we propose a use of Bourdieu´s theory of practice to assist us in learning more about regulatory obstacles facing the US government’s outsourcing of security. By applying Bourdieu´s concepts of field, habitus and doxa to this regulatory process, we sought to unpack the identities of all 5 stakeholders involved, establishing their heterogeneous nature, and learning about the motivations behind their actions and decisions. Such an analysis demystifies the regulatory process This resulted in identifying the various types of obstacles the US Government faces: from political, over organizational and bureaucratic ones, to legislative. The study of practices further allows us to propose specific alterations, which might improve the regulatory process. |
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| Autores principais: | Ranito, Jovana Jezdimirovic |
| Ano: | 2016 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | tese de doutoramento |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso embargado |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Coimbra |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Estudo Geral - Universidade de Coimbra |
| Resumo: | The outsourcing of security by states to private actors is an ever growing phenomena, and can be seen as a future template of how states will proceed in their civil-military operations abroad. Even though sovereigns have outsourced violence throughout history, the context of international inclusion of protection of human rights makes it different from what happened in the past. In addition, the end of the Cold War brought a market liberalisation of the state’s monopoly over the use of force. In this context, some states suddenly assumed the role of regulator and supervisor of a private security market, rather than the more classical role of security provider. The regulation of security outsourcing in-post conflict scenarios by the US - the central topic of this dissertation - has often been seen as the product of a rapid build-up from a near regulatory vacuum, thus representing a patchwork of previously existing regulations for civilian contractors, with the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions only having highlighted its difficulties. The last decade has witnessed a growing body of scholarship looking at regulatory obstacles, and seeking to explain its pitfalls through well-established theoretical frameworks. Existing research has been fragmented among different disciplines, each approach often limited to a single regulatory dimension (legislative, contractual, economic or political). The reason for their failure to make regulatory analysis comprehensive is twofold. First, they failed to explain regulatory obstacles because - in attempting to fit this unorthodox, new type of regulatory process, which joins various stakeholders, and happens in specific conditions with low transparency and abroad - analysis was made to fit pre-existing structures (from the Cold War era), insisting on largely untenable public-private and domestic-international division. Second, in the process of doing so, scholars often reproduced commonly accepted wisdom, rather than look at the regulatory process itself, invoking the difficulties of access to information and the low transparency of the process. To overcome these obstacles, we propose a use of Bourdieu´s theory of practice to assist us in learning more about regulatory obstacles facing the US government’s outsourcing of security. By applying Bourdieu´s concepts of field, habitus and doxa to this regulatory process, we sought to unpack the identities of all 5 stakeholders involved, establishing their heterogeneous nature, and learning about the motivations behind their actions and decisions. Such an analysis demystifies the regulatory process This resulted in identifying the various types of obstacles the US Government faces: from political, over organizational and bureaucratic ones, to legislative. The study of practices further allows us to propose specific alterations, which might improve the regulatory process. |
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