Private security offers opportunities to states and non-state actors. As both have taken advantage of these opportunities, the market for force has affected the control of violence in many, sometimes contradictory, ways. In different instances it has both enhanced and undermined functional control and enhanced and undermined the integration of violence with the values we associate with the international community – democratic principles, human rights, and the rule of law. In each case, however, it has changed the mechanisms by which force is controlled and thereby redistributed power over the control, of violence – spreading that power differently within states and often enhancing the influence of persons and groups outside the state. Two general features of this political change, however – the growing significance of market mechanisms for eliciting control and the diffusion of control over violence – merit more discussion, as they point to the context in which the relationship between the three dimensions of control will work as this market unfolds further.

Market mechanisms

The growing importance of market mechanisms suggests that the control of violence will not only accrue to superiors in a hierarchical sense (for instance, leaders nested in electorates), but to consumers. While states can and have taken advantage of their role as consumers to increase their functional control of PSCs, market mechanisms work differently than hierarchical ones.