Optimists and pessimists disagree about the consequences of privatization for the control of force, but they also view control differently. This chapter begins by fleshing out these various conceptions of control and then describing how I will define, measure, and evaluate the control of force in this study. In the second section, I develop a synthetic institutional model to generate expectations about how privatization should affect the control of force. In keeping with the discussion in the previous chapter about the variety of ways privatization can occur, I develop the logic for both the private provision of security and the private financing of security. Do contracts with PSCs affect the ability of states to control force? Can states control the export of security services? How does private financing affect the control of force? In the third, fourth, and fifth sections, I deduce hypotheses from this institutional model for each relationship and explain the set of cases I will examine to probe their plausibility. The sixth section ends the chapter by explaining the claims I am making in the study and justifying my methodology.

Clarifying the control of force

The civil–military relations literature, which specifically examines the control of force, reflects attention to all three dimensions of control evident in the debate over private security: functional, political, and social. Those who emphasize the functionality of force use a military's ability to deploy coercion effectively to defend the state's interests as the standard by which to measure control.