Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The state monopoly on collective violence and democratic control over military force
- 3 The transformation of the state and the soldier
- 4 United Kingdom: private financing and the management of security
- 5 United States: shrinking the state, outsourcing the soldier
- 6 Germany: between public–private partnerships and conscription
- 7 Iraq and beyond: contractors on deployed operations
- 8 The future of democratic security: contractorization or cosmopolitanism?
- 9 Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
6 - Germany: between public–private partnerships and conscription
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The state monopoly on collective violence and democratic control over military force
- 3 The transformation of the state and the soldier
- 4 United Kingdom: private financing and the management of security
- 5 United States: shrinking the state, outsourcing the soldier
- 6 Germany: between public–private partnerships and conscription
- 7 Iraq and beyond: contractors on deployed operations
- 8 The future of democratic security: contractorization or cosmopolitanism?
- 9 Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The privatization and outsourcing of military services in Germany has gone largely unnoticed, both nationally and internationally. While the scale and scope of military privatization in Germany is considerably smaller than in the UK and the USA, it still ranges from private contracting for military logistics and maintenance to IT services and training. This chapter argues that the persistence of Republican ideals can help us to understand why the privatization and outsourcing of military services to the private sector has not been as extensive in Germany as in its Anglo-American allies, in spite of similar security challenges. Successive German governments under Helmut Kohl (1982–98), Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005) and Angela Merkel (2005–2009) have transformed the roles and relations of the state, the citizen and the soldier according to a mixture of Republican and Neoliberal principles. At the heart of this approach has been the creation of public–private joint ventures for the provision of military services such as the white fleet, clothing stocks, army maintenance and repair, and IT. Moreover, the German government has so far resisted calls for the professionalization of its armed forces and the abandonment of the ideal of the citizen-soldier. Functional arguments cannot fully elucidate these differences because, in comparison with the UK and the USA, the German government has been under particular pressure to reform its provision of national and international security and to generate savings in military spending. Two main factors have contributed to this situation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security , pp. 156 - 193Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010