Outsourcing Security

My next project is on the privatization and outsourcing of state security functions. It takes an institutional and political economy lens on why states outsource security, whether by privatization to market actors or delegation to other political entities. This project was awarded a EU Jean Monnet Erasmus+ Grant (2016-2018) and will result in a second book.

“Hiding the Security State in Markets: Outsourcing Security and Defense in the US and Europe (manuscript in progress)”

Why have modern states increasingly outsourced security and defense to the market? This is puzzling because a core feature of the power of modern states is their legitimate control over the public good of security, including policing, intelligence, surveillance, incarceration, borders, and defense. Yet instead of holding on to security authority, advanced industrial democratic polities such as the US, European states, and the EU are giving away significant aspects of domestic and foreign security power to private, market actors.

Two key observations drive this research project. First, government outsourcing in security and defense has drifted beyond the legal red lines states themselves have defined as ‘inherent governmental functions’, such as the legitimate control of violence and decisions about contracting and property rights. Outsourcing on this scale goes far beyond the logistics of conflict to the entire regulatory and administrative security state. Second, security outsourcing is initiated by states themselves. In contrast to state approaches to regulating emerging technologies or complex financial flows, where markets are often ahead of states, states have used their power and agency to intentionally shed their sovereign defense and security capacity. The conventional wisdom explaining the logic of outsourcing centers on cost control and efficiency. This explanation is inadequate, because studies have demonstrated that outsourcing often drives costs higher, particularly because government procurement markets are uncompetitive and private firms are three times more expensive than in-house government rates.

I argue that outsourcing has not been driven by strategy but by changing risk tolerance on the part of security bureaucracies. In a reversal of how 20th Century states absorbed political, financial, and legal risk for their societies and markets, states are shedding their willingness and ability to absorb the public good of security. Outsourcing diffuses risk from the public to the private sector, and distributes accountability and transparency away from the state. Even when unintended, outsourcing makes politically sensitive policies more opaque, by taking them out of the public policymaking sphere. Indeed, states may “shif[t] liabilities outside of central governments […] as a way to diminish [political costs] and reconcile competing interests”. This “blurring [of] boundaries between public and private,” is a feature of state adjustments to globalization while “render[ing] opaque political responsibility for the wrenching adjustments entailed in late capitalist development.” The implications of outsourcing the public good of security includes creating markets and interest constituencies that did not previously exist, potentially reducing state capacity over time in the areas of defense and security, and security practices shifting to globalized and diffused market- and product-based standards away from public institutional (particularly democratic) norms and practices.

“Follow the Money: The Political Economy of EU Border Security” under review.

evaluates the politics of redistribution, markets, and interest groups in EU border security funding. Finds that paths of parochial influence over border security (bureaucratic, industry, parliamentary, revolving door) produce path-dependent distributional politics.

“Muddying the Waters: Migration Management in the Global Commons” with Noora Lori, under review.