Security Beyond the State: Private security in international politics

The aim of this well-written book is essentially to develop a conceptual framework through which to engage with the complex intertwining of global security privatization developments and shifts in national and global governance. The authors also have an empirical project: to debunk certain prevailing claims about transnational private security companies (those not engaged in military activities) and their relationship to the nation state. Abrahamsen and Williams meet these aims through an interesting case study analysis of private security provision in four African countries, focusing on the protection of resource extraction in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and on daily urban security provision in South Africa and Kenya. By choosing these empirical sites of analysis that are characterized by ‘transboundary formations’ (p. 4) the authors are able to demonstrate that the growth and pervasiveness of private security is intimately linked to developments in international politics and governance. The resulting rise of new security configurations constitutes a fundamental blurring of public/private and global/local dichotomies (which still prevail in some disciplines but not in others). Through their discussions of the rise of private security, focusing on the historical development of key companies, and their empirical case studies, they ultimately develop a relational account of the public and private in which state disassembly and reassembly, and the redistribution of power, have facilitated the rise of private security in complex and dynamic ways.