The Consequences of Non-State Security

States have access to a variety of security- and combat-oriented actors who assert a monopoly over violence. Beyond their own militaries and police forces, they can outsource their coercive capabilities to paramilitaries, militias, foreign forces, or privatised security companies. Though many have heard of the likes of Blackwater and the Wagner Group, the prevalence of non-state forms of security is far more extensive than these headline-grabbing organisations (Avant

2005; McFate 2014; Singer 2008).1 From STTEP in Nigeria, to the Dyck Advisory Group in Mozambique, to AECOM in Algeria, there are likely close to 2,000 such organisations providing a range of security services and operating across a range of domains. My doctoral research is concerned with understanding the consequences of states choosing to outsource their monopoly of violence to these non-state security actors.

My dissertation will focus on macro-, meso-, and micro-level outcomes using a mixed-method approach.

I will answer three distinct but interrelated research questions. Firstly, what are the substantive impacts of non-state security operations at the macro-level, that is, in terms of conflict promulgation or termination, conflict intensity, and conflict type? Second, how are public attitudes toward the state, toward privatisation, and towards non-state forms of security, affected by their operations within the state?

Third, what are the long-run effects of states opting for non-state security forces in terms of state capacity and state-building? Each of these questions will correspond to a separate section of the dissertation, and each will stand as an individual paper.

Existing research has thus far failed to properly conceptualise non-state security forces. For example, private security companies are often conflated with private military companies, despite existing studies suggesting they engage in different operations and are utilised by the state for different purposes. We also do not know how these organisations relate to other non-state forms of security such as paramilitaries, peacekeeping forces Mafias, and cartels.

Moreover, there does not exist any systematically collected data on non-state security forces. This means we cannot empirically analyse these groups nor incorporate them into existing studies on conflict in order to understand where different types of non-state security force operate and what their substantive effects are. My research directly addresses these conceptual, theoretical, and data limitations by introducing a new dataset on non-state security forces and treating the different forms of non-state security as an independent variable.

These research questions, aside from being substantively important and under-researched, allow me to draw from varied and interdisciplinary constellations of literature, and lend themselves to a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches. The primary contribution of this dissertation will be to the literature on state-building and security, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East, where many of these non-state security actors operate (Bates 2008; Herbst 2000; Jaffrey 2022; Ong 2018; Tilly 1992).

Many of the news articles and government documents I have been referencing in my MPhil research have been in French and Arabic. As such, I have undertaken language training during my studies, both during term time and during the summer (for example, I spent a month in Morocco learning Arabic). If conducting overseas fieldwork becomes feasible in the context of my research (pending ethics approval), I would benefit from enrolling in a language program in parallel whilst conducting my research.