Papers on private military actors presented at EISS conferences and workshops, newest first. 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z https://eiss-europa.com/feeds/themes/private-military-actors.xml European Initiative for Security Studies https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-beyond-the-state-voluntary-civilian-pro-defence-organisations-and-security-gover 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Rusudan Zabakhidze

This paper explores how the resurgence of interstate war in Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reconfigured relations between defence and society, with particular attention to the role of voluntary pro-defence organisations in security governance. Over the past decade, states historically alert to Russian imperialism have increasingly embraced comprehensive defence frameworks that extend beyond traditional military institutions and emphasise whole-of-society participation. Building on long-standing traditions of civil resistance and national defence, civilian pro-defence organisations have gained renewed prominence across the Baltics, Nordics, and Central and Eastern Europe. Taking Georgia as a case, this paper focuses on the relational dynamics between the state defence institutions and voluntary civilian pro-defence organisations. More specifically, the paper highlights how state actors seek to transform bottom-up societal mobilisation into a more sustained source of societal resilience and national defence capacity, while non-state actors simultaneously negotiate autonomy, legitimacy, and influence within evolving security and political landscape. These dynamics generate both opportunities and tensions. Hence, moving beyond narrated notions of willingness to defend, the paper explores the practices and interactions through which defence roles are negotiated, contested, and/or redefined. Building on civil-military relations theory, the paper posits that voluntary pro-defence organisations both complement and challenge traditional state authority, blurring the boundaries between civilian and military spheres and redefining the limits of state control over security governance. The paper will draw on textual analysis, semi-structured interviews with representatives of the Ministry of Defence, the Georgian Defence Forces, and voluntary civilian pro-defence organisations, as well as participant observations conducted through field ethnography planned in February-March 2026.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-criminalising-solidarity-border-securitisation-non-state-actors-and-vernacular-h 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mia Abdić

Border securitisation, externalisation, and the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance in migration contexts have become increasingly prominent features of European migration governance. This paper explores the phenomenon of the criminalisation of solidarity through a comparative overview of these practices in France, Italy, Greece, and Spain, alongside the liminal case of Serbia as a non-EU transit country along the Balkan route. While in EU migration hotspots, the criminalisation of solidarity is predominantly institutionalised through legal and judicial frameworks, the Serbian case demonstrates how humanitarian assistance can be constrained through informal and extralegal governance practices, producing effects comparable to formal criminalisation. By examining the impact of these practices on non-state actors, primarily humanitarian NGOs, the paper highlights how policies of border securitisation and the criminalisation of humanitarian aid not only target irregular migration, but actively restructure the space for humanitarian action. It argues that such policies not only have severe consequences for migrants and humanitarian actors, but also reshape understandings of the rule of law, human rights, and human dignity. Drawing on the concept of *vernacular humanitarianism*, solidarity is conceptualised as an established, non-institutionalised practice that increasingly becomes an object of security governance. This perspective allows for an overview of how everyday practices of care and assistance are transformed into sites of political contestation, where moral obligation collides with legal restriction and security rationalities. Placed in the context of broader political and cultural transformations of migration governance, the paper explores whether these practices undermine solidarity-based forms of action and contribute to shifting collective values in contemporary Europe. Finally, it examines how the suppression of humanitarian work reconfigures cultural narratives of care, responsibility, and ethics within increasingly securitised migration regimes. **Key words:** *securitisation, border policy, migration, criminalisation, solidarity*

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-privateers-to-private-maritime-security-irregular-maritime-actors-and-the-l 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Pieter Zhao

This paper examines the re-emergence of private maritime security companies (PMSCs) in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, situating their rise within both recent developments in maritime security and a broader historical context. Since the early 2000s, PMSCs have become a visible feature of global shipping security, particularly in response to piracy and other low-intensity maritime threats. Their growing role as non-state actors operating in the maritime domain raises important questions about the organization of coercive power at sea and the boundaries of state authority. Drawing on my ongoing PhD research, the paper focuses on the structural conditions that enabled the expansion of PMSCs rather than treating their emergence as a purely novel or exceptional phenomenon. It highlights how the globalization of trade, the rapid growth of the merchant fleet, and the post–Cold War contraction and reprioritization of naval forces created persistent capacity gaps in maritime security provision. Within this context, PMSCs emerged as a practical solution to long-standing challenges of securing vast and dispersed sea lines of communication, particularly in regions where states lacked the resources or political willingness to provide continuous protection. The paper then briefly situates contemporary PMSCs within a longer historical trajectory of delegated maritime violence, comparing them to earlier non-state and semi-state actors such as privateers and chartered trading companies. This historical perspective demonstrates that the involvement of non-state actors in maritime security has been a recurrent feature of naval warfare and maritime order rather than an anomaly of the contemporary era. By placing PMSCs within this longer continuum, the paper contributes to discussions on non-state actors and security governance by showing how states have repeatedly adapted the distribution of authority at sea in response to changing economic, strategic, and technological conditions.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-the-strategic-logic-of-violence-during-negotiations 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Johannes Lucht Prof. Allard Duursma Evan Perkoski

Negotiations are essential to ending armed conflict, yet we know surprisingly little about how violence evolves during the negotiation process itself. While existing research demonstrates that negotiations are essential for ending armed conflicts, most studies treat “negotiations” as a single event rather than a dynamic, multi-round process. This paper examines how armed groups behave across successive rounds of negotiations, asking when, why, and by whom violence is used or restrained during these periods. We argue that actors strategically calibrate violence to signal credibility, control, and commitment. Dominant or established groups often exercise restraint to demonstrate command and seriousness, while smaller, excluded, or newer factions use violence—especially against civilians—to assert capability, expand control, or spoil the process. Empirically, we combine new data on daily levels of violence with information on the timing and structure of peace talks across dyads and negotiation rounds. The unit of analysis is the conflict-day, allowing us to trace shifts in violence both within and across rounds of talks. This paper offers a first step toward understanding how violence operates during the negotiation process, setting the stage for broader questions about why some peace efforts collapse early, why others endure through multiple rounds, and how the sequencing and structure of talks influence the trajectory of violence on the ground.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-big-tech-at-war-the-infrastructural-politics-of-public-private-relations 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Tobias Liebetrau

This article examines the role of big tech companies in international politics through an infrastructural lens, focusing on their involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war. We situate the article in IR literature examining the public and the private not as a distinction but as public-private relations, and we draw inspiration from the infrastructural turn in social science to develop an approach that can capture the complex dynamics of state-big tech relations specifically and public-private relations broadly. The infrastructural perspective offers a way to understand how big tech companies shape international politics, moving beyond debates about state decline or corporate dominance on the one hand, and infrastructure as an external driver of change that allows for a neat separation of states and big tech and politics and technology on the other. Our analysis demonstrates three ways in which the infrastructural politics of big tech-state relations is expressed in the war in Ukraine, showing how sovereignty, geopolitical decision-making, and national security knowledge are contingent upon infrastructural arrangements entangling big tech companies and states. The analysis points to how infrastructural politics is at the core of expressing and realizing what makes both states and big tech companies, offering new avenues for understanding and examining public-private relations in international politics.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-from-revolt-to-rule-insurgency-as-proto-state-formation 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Marnix Provoost

State formation is a continuous process, marked by the centralisation and monopolisation of power to establish authority over a population within a defined territory. This paper argues that insurgency is a centrifugal force challenging this centralisation. However, insurgents are not merely destructive but, driven by an idea of an alternative political order, are establishing a new form of formal or informal governance, though at the expense of the established state’s authority and monopolies on using force, collecting taxes, and enacting laws. In its nature, an insurgency is a complex and dynamic phenomenon, itself analogous to state formation, similar in its evolution through the establishment of political authority by monopolising the use of force and generating revenue. Thus, the state and insurgents compete on three key axes of monopolisation: on legislation, on the use of force, and on taxation, each forming a critical pillar of governance and authority. These features distinguish the inherent use of force in insurgency from violence associated with mutiny, rebellion, criminals and terrorist organisations. This paper addresses theoretical gaps between insurgency and state formation by using the latter as a framework to analyse the former. Using complexity theory, it presents a model illustrating how distinct non-state groups and social structures may evolve from coexistence through cooperation to convergence into a proto-state, influenced by specific internal and external contextual factors that may contribute to insurgent success or failure. It posits that successful insurgencies often are a symbiosis of non-state groups or social structures possessing political-administrative, financial-economic, and force-exerting capabilities, enabling the formation of a proto-state. An insurgency’s nature lies in this process of integration, while its character is shaped by contextual factors. Additionally, the paper argues that securing and re-allocating revenue is a critical aspect in establishing insurgent governance and legitimacy, but often neglected the traditional political-military focus.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-private-military-companies-as-proxy-forces-in-international-politics-with-specia 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Theo Neethling

Since the Cold War’s end, private military companies (PMCs) have increasingly served as third parties in proxy wars, with states and non-state actors relying on them for military operations. These actors have become a key feature of external involvement in contemporary conflicts. Notable PMCs include Blackwater in Iraq, Executive Outcomes in Angola and Sierra Leone, and the Russian Wagner Group. Max Weber defined the modern state as a community that claims a monopoly on legitimate force. The rise of PMCs challenges this, undermining state sovereignty when governments outsource security and warfare—fundamental aspects of statehood. This shift reflects broader international trends where PMCs play an increasing role in global conflict dynamics, deviating from the traditional notion that states ensure security. Scholars argue that national sovereignty, as established after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), is in decline. Weaker states, with limited institutional capacity, struggle to control violence, making PMCs both a symptom and a cause of fragile governance. The Wagner Group, closely tied to Russia, has influenced numerous African countries since 2014, advancing Russian interests while providing plausible deniability for the Kremlin. This avoids public fallout from military losses or human rights abuses abroad. The death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in August 2023, following his rebellion against Putin, raised critical questions about Wagner’s future. As a key Russian foreign policy tool, Wagner played major roles in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Africa. Now rebranded as the Africa Corps, Wagner remains active in Africa. This article examines its influence in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mali, exploring what the future holds for this PMC as it adapts to shifting geopolitical dynamics.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-we-are-peers-now-states-relations-with-violent-non-state-actors-that-became-stat 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Ido Gadi Raz

The relationship between states and violent non-state actors (VNSAs) has been widely explored in International Relations and Security Studies over the past two and a half decades. Scholars have examined state-VNSA dynamics through frameworks of sponsorship, alliances, delegation, and proxy warfare, as well as through conflict and rivalry. However, a growing yet underexplored phenomenon is the transformation of some VNSAs into state or sub-state actors after gaining territorial control and governance capabilities. Cases such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, and various rebel groups in Syria illustrate how VNSAs can transition into sovereign entities, thereby reshaping their international roles. This article investigates how such transformations affect their relationships with states. Do states that previously supported a VNSA continue their backing once it assumes statehood? Do adversarial states reconsider their stance toward the newly established state actor? Based on a within-case analysis of the Taliban in Afghanistan after the 2021 takeover and the existing literature on state-VNSA dynamics, this study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the evolving interactions between states and VNSAs that turned into state or sub-state actors. Furthermore, it identifies the mechanisms that drive change or continuity in these relationships.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-eu-s-use-of-private-military-and-security-companies-services-filling-the-capabil 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Oldrich Bures Eugenio Cusumano

Both academic studies and internal EU documents have established that contracting Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) services by the EU is nowadays a widespread practice, despite the persisting lack of EU-level regulation and significant divergence in Member States’ national regulatory frameworks. PMSCs have been used primarily to support and sustain EU activities abroad, i.e. both civilian and military Common Security and Defence Policy missions and European External Action Service delegations and diplomatic missions. In this paper, we conduct a congruence test of two explanations for the use of PMSC services by the EU. First, building on Christopher Hill’s “capabilities-expectations gap” concept, we examine whether PMSCs have been contracted to provide manpower that the EU and its member states lack completely or which they do not possess in sufficient quantity and/or quality when they are needed by an EU mission. Second, building on Asle Toje’s “consensus-expectations gap” concept, we further explore whether PMSCs have been used to circumvent Member States’ unwillingness to provide manpower that they actually possess, thereby helping circumvent existing political constraints on EU power projection abroad.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-hybrid-axis-of-evil-policing-of-organised-crime-and-state-threats-in-global-port 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Yarin Eski

Since, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, particular concerns exist about disruptinon of energy supplies and transportation systems, including global ports, such as the Port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). While threats to critical infrastructures are not new (e.g. attacked ports during WWII), the contemporary situation is different: (digital) technology plays a key role in hybrid warfare, making the potential fallout for ports even bigger. The Netherlands has key global ports, including the Port of Rotterdam and Northe Sea Canal Area. These ports handle shipping and are important for energy distribution (NCTV, 2017). An attack on these ports could lead to a ‘serious social disruption’ for the Netherlands (NCTV, 2017, p. 1), and Europe more broadly. Especially the Port of Rotterdam has concerns due to more sanctions against Russia (Port of Rotterdam, 2022), and subsequently asks for a ‘digital anti-aircraft defence’ to fend off possible Russian cyberattacks in the port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). However, it remains unclear whether (cyber)attacks on ports can be attributed to other state actors, as well as that it remains unclear what really counts as an act of hybrid war and what role European maritime ports play in hybrid warfare. Hence, port policing should focus on a hybrid warfare scenario, next to the well-embedded tackling of organised crime; but is it status quo? This paper aims to dig into this question, using ethnographic date gathered between April 2022 and March 2023 in the Dutch ports of Rotterdam and the North Sea Canal Area/Port of Amsterdam. Moreover, this paper shall focus on the hybridized policing of organized crime and state/hybrid threats in the global port environments. There will be a focus as well on what hybridized policing as a topic implies for the interdisciplinary cross-pollination of criminology and security studies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-technological-innovation-and-national-security-variations-in-public-private-rela 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Yagnyashri Kodaru Lorenz Sommer

In liberal market economies like the US and UK, private actors have come to play an indispensable role in the emergence of robust defense industries and the provision of security. States particularly rely on the private sector in areas of high technological innovation, such as arms production and cybersecurity. While technological innovation and the resulting public reliance on private expertise has been a common denominator, the emergence of public-private relations has been inconsistent across security sectors. Despite ideological parallels between the US and the UK, public-private relationships differ in the degree of consolidation or autonomy, and standardization of practices, between the state and private actors. In this study, we map these variations in the consolidation of relationships between public and private actors, attributing it to differences in institutional legacies and security pressures. Through case studies on the US and the UK, we trace the evolution of public-private dynamics in two security sectors, defense industry and cybersecurity, since end of the Cold War. We find that more entrenched institutional legacies in the military industry have led to a closer, less market-oriented position of private actors and greater dependence on the state through contractual relationships. Conversely, less entrenched institutional legacies in the nascent cybersecurity sector have contributed to a more market-oriented, stronger position of private actors vis a vis the state, as evidenced by ongoing challenges in regulating the private tech industry. Furthermore, we find that the changing nature of security pressures in the cyberspace could push states towards a (re-)integration of this sector into more consolidated defense military pipelines. This paper contributes to the growing literature on public-private-partnerships in security governance and offers insight into the nexus of state security and technological innovation in two historically different, yet connected security policy fields.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-the-financing-of-contemporary-mercenarism-resources-routes-and-regulation 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Jovana Jezdimirovic Ranito Sorcha MacLeod

In recent years the operations of mercenaries and other comparable service providers such as private military and security companies (PMSC), have come to light more frequently, nevertheless there are still many unanswered questions surrounding the phenomena. The relevant regulatory frameworks, are of limited use given the changes in the nature of these actors and how they have been used in recent decades. Attention has been paid to, for instance, recruitment practices and the involvement of mercenaries and PMSC in non-international armed conflicts, but there are still issues that remain opaque. The financing of mercenarism is one area of concern. While the connections between mercenaries and PMSC and the exploitation of natural resources are well known, less is known about the intermediaries, routes, and resources involved in funding mercenarism . What is clear is that financing methods have evolved, especially in light of the growing significance of cryptocurrencies. This paper examines the channels exploited by mercenaries, their clients, and enablers, and questions whether existing regulatory provisions around the financing of mercenaries and related actors are fit for purpose.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-zachariah-parcels-michel-wyss-contribution 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Zachariah Parcels Michel Wyss

Presented at EISS 2024. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-alliance-formation-and-rebel-co-governance-in-north-east-syria-the-case-of-the-p 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Andrea Novellis

This research aims to investigate the relationship between rebel alliance strategies and the emergence of forms of governance during civil wars. Previous studies on alliance formation during civil conflicts have highlighted the impact of factors such as the balance of power and the likelihood of victory on rebel groups' decision-making. Through an examination of the alliance strategies employed by groups in North-East Syria, this study finds that during the early stages of multiparty civil wars, rebel groups evaluate factors such as ideological compatibility, long-term goals, and overall strategies in relation to the various parties involved in order to determine the most suitable alliance. Furthermore, it is observed that rebel alliances may be reinforced through formal agreements of co-governance and power sharing. By examining the case of the Syrian conflict, this study found that minor parties such as the Syriac Union Party (SUP) allied with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) after evaluating the ideological compatibility and strategic goals of the other actors involved in the conflict. On the other hand, the PYD shared power with minor parties as part of its strategy for consolidating control over its core territories. This alliance was formalized through a power-sharing agreement, which enabled the creation of self-government institutions in North-East Syria. The findings of this study provide insight into the different alliance formation strategies employed by rebel groups and how they shape the creation of rebel governance institutions.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-in-the-crevices-of-the-state-criminal-governance-in-uruguay 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Lucia Tiscornia

Many countries experience the presence of criminal organizations with different degrees of territorial control. In some cases, these organizations develop governance strategies--de facto controls over different aspects of social, economic, and political life in the territories where they operate. These groups’ presence produces a wide array of coexistence problems, as well as security issues. Criminal governance studies in Latin America tend to focus on countries with high levels of violence, powerful criminal organizations, and low levels of state presence in the territory. However, evidence shows that there is criminal governance also in cases like Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, where the state is present throughout the territory, and violence levels are comparatively low. This project’s main objective is to expand our knowledge about criminal governance in these settings, focusing on the case of Montevideo, Uruguay. The project employs a mixed-methods design, combining in-depth interviews with community leaders, members of NGOs, state and local authorities, and a public opinion survey containing a list experiment. This research strategy seeks to minimize the risks involved in studying criminal organizations while obtaining as much information as possible to understand the logic of criminal governance in Montevideo.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-rebel-governance-as-self-legitimation-the-farc-s-justifications-of-governance 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Wolfgang Minatti

How has the FARC insurgency sought to legitimise itself? A central endeavour of armed actors in civil war is the legitimation of their authority through engaging with civilian communities, as rebel groups are dependent on popular support to sustain themselves. However, less has been said about rebel's internal self-legitimation: rebel groups need to justify their authoritative role and their position of power not only to others but also to themselves to help them identify as rulers. Moreover, any government seeking to make peace with rebel groups will need to take into account these self-legitimation narratives to find workable and sustainable solutions. A rebel group's discourses and practices of governance, I argue, provides a crucial lens to investigate such processes of self-legitimation. This paper discusses the self-legitimation of the Colombian rebel group FARC to provide an empirical snapshot of how the group embedded moral meaning into their governance relations. Drawing on several months of fieldwork in central Colombia where I interviewed ex-combatants about their relations with civilians during the conflict, I argue that the FARC developed a relatively stable legitimation pattern, a set of discourses and practices, that allowed the rebel group to justify themselves as rulers by emphasising their peasant origin, service provision and violence as revolutionary self-defence.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-resident-resistance-the-territorial-logic-of-denouncing-organized-crime-groups-i 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Nicholas Barnes

Why do citizens living under the control of powerful organized criminal groups (OCGs) denounce them to state authorities? Since the 1980s, a variety of OCGs have maintained territorial control of hundreds of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas (informal and working-class neighborhoods). Although they have few safe or effective options to collectively resist these groups, some residents have done so by denouncing OCG members and their activities to an anonymous hotline, Disque Denúncia. Building from insights garnered during 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in one set of OCG-controlled favelas, I argue that anonymous denunciation is highly strategic in nature and revolves around two dynamics related to OCG territorial control: violent competition with rivals and police enforcement. The observable implications of the theory are tested with a geo-located longitudinal dataset of 24,000 anonymous denunciations.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-a-source-of-escalation-or-a-source-of-restraint-whether-and-how-civil-society-af 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Erica Chenoweth Evan Perkoski

Presented at EISS 2022. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-domestic-operations-and-outsourcing-of-security-what-implications-for-the-milita 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Matteo Mazziotti di Celso

Presented at EISS 2022. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-rules-expertise-and-the-rise-of-the-regulatory-security-state 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Andreas Kruck Moritz Weiss

Presented at EISS 2022. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-the-impact-of-commercial-military-actors-on-armed-conflict-termination-1980-2010 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Ulrich Petersohn Leila Kellgren Parker

Presented at EISS 2022. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-from-confrontation-to-cooperation-non-state-armed-group-un-interactions-in-peace 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Jenniina Kotajoki

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-strategic-consequences-of-tactical-alliances-the-case-of-the-us-led-coalition-ag 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Anne Sofie Schøtt

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-the-rise-of-cybersecurity-warriors 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Moritz Weiss

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-the-state-monopoly-of-violence-as-organized-hypocrisy-the-privatization-of-un-pe 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Eugenio Cusumano Oldrich Bures

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-discursive-practices-and-the-construction-of-mercenaries-as-illegitimate-fighter 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Helene Olsen

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-local-state-society-transformations-and-everyday-security-provisioning-in-san-sa 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Chris van der Borgh

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-offshore-balancing-special-operations-forces-sof-and-the-hybrid-agencies-of-demo 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Evren Eken Eylem Ozkaya Lassalle

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-the-normative-limits-on-counter-violence-by-discretionary-states 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Luis de la Calle

Presented at EISS 2019. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-the-visuality-of-military-recruitment-us-and-uk-militaries-and-pmscs-compared 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z 2019-06-13T12:00:00Z Eugenio Cusumano

Military sociology and international relations have extensively written about the transformation of the military profession and the changing motivations underlying military service. The ways in which military recruitment strategies have evolved in response to these changes, however, is much less investigated. Although some scholars have examined the evolving discourses surrounding recruitment, existing literature has primarily examined written texts, overlooking the visual component of recruitment strategies. Moreover, existing scholarship has almost exclusively examined the military recruitment strategies of public military organizations, largely disregarding the increasing role played by private military and security companies (PMSCs) as potentially alternative employers. This paper draws on Peircean semiotics to systematically compare the visual dimension of public and private military organizations’ recruitment strategies in the US and in the UK between 2001 and the present day. By examining whether and to what extent states’ armed forces and PMSCs rely on similar visual identity systems, this paper provides novel insights into the recruitment strategies and shifting role conceptions of both public and private military organizations contributing to private and visual security studies alike.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-a-public-and-private-norm-for-force-authorities-assemblages-and-re-specification 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Cyril Magnon-Pujo

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-analyzing-private-military-and-security-contractors-power-in-multi-stakeholder-i 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Berenike Prem

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-ballot-boxes-and-surgical-strikes-indian-national-security-choices-in-electoral 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Karthika Sasikumar

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-how-foreign-state-support-affects-rebel-groups-evidence-from-angola 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Quint Hoekstra

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-migrant-rescuing-as-organized-hypocrisy-eu-maritime-missions-offshore-libya-betw 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Eugenio Cusumano

In November 2014, Frontex started its Southern Mediterranean border monitoring operation Triton, followed in June 2015 by the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) anti-smuggling mission EUNAVFOR Med ‘Sophia’. Both operations’ outward communication has placed considerable emphasis on the conduct of maritime Search and Rescue (SAR). Still, this commitment was not matched by consistent action. Both Triton and EUNAVFOR have conducted a relatively limited number of SAR operations, prioritizing border control and anti-smuggling tasks. This article explains the gap between EU missions’ humanitarian rhetoric and an operational conduct primarily focusing on curbing irregular migrations as a form of organized hypocrisy. Decoupling talk and action allowed Triton and EUNAVFOR to reconcile the conflicting expectations arising from European governments’ willingness to reduce migrant arrivals and the normative imperative to act against the loss of life at sea. However, EU mission’s organized hypocrisy had several negative externalities, hindering an effective management of the humanitarian crisis offshore Libya.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-reconceptualizing-the-military-assistance-evaluating-norwegian-support-to-buildi 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Islam Jusufi

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-redefining-statehood-in-conflict-local-militias-transnational-actors-and-securit 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Edoardo Baldaro

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-the-anti-mercenary-norm-and-united-nations-use-of-private-military-and-security 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Oldrich Bures Jeremy Meyer

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-the-insurgents-right-to-surrender-and-new-military-technologies-the-risk-of-lawf 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Philippe Bou Nader

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-understanding-and-countering-violent-extremism-exploring-the-discursive-construc 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z 2018-06-15T12:00:00Z Ann-Kathrin Rothermel

Presented at EISS 2018. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2017-dynamics-of-security-privatization-and-the-evolution-of-the-regulatory-state-in 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z Dr. Andreas Kruck

Presented at EISS 2017. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2017-private-military-and-security-companies-on-twitter-hiding-in-plain-sight 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z Prof. Andrea Schneiker

Presented at EISS 2017. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2017-private-security-logos-a-visual-analysis-of-pmsc-s-legitimation-strategies 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z Dr. Eugenio Cusumano

Presented at EISS 2017. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2017-the-co-evolution-of-the-private-military-and-security-companies-and-their-enviro 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z 2017-06-15T12:00:00Z Berenike Prem

Presented at EISS 2017. No abstract on file yet.