Saadat Umar Pirzada
Research Project
Project Title: Private Military and Security Companies and the United Kingdom: a study at the intersection of Society, Law and Economy
Description of the project: The lack of accountability and transparency in the use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in conflict and non-conflict areas has led to frequent violations of human rights. Opponents and proponents alike have called for stringent oversight and regulation of PMSCs, yet no significant development has taken place till date. From the changes in security dynamics post-Cold war to downsizing of national militaries and the advent of new forms of warfare, the reasons for their ever-increasing use have been many and varied. However, little research is available that examines the role of the socio-structural patterns of private military and security industry in influencing the current regulatory regime. This project endeavors to study how the socio-structural patterns of PMSCs influence the legal and economic phenomena in legitimizing, regulating and promoting the use of PMSCs. To empirically ground the research, it focuses on the United Kingdom, a key buyer of PMSCs services and a keen supporter of industry-led, non-binding regulatory initiatives. The aim of the project is to sociologically study the interrelations of the legal and economic spheres, to see how economic factors influence the development of law, and at the same time pay attention to socio-political and other non-economic factors that legitimize, regulate and promote the use of PMSCs. Moreover, the project seeks to question law’s place in regulating the PMSCs’ economic relations and structures (e.g., through government contracts) and to explore the embeddedness of the economic phenomena (economic institutions and economic norms) in the social and political life, which maintains and perpetuates the existing socio-structural patterns constituting the privatized military and security industry and its regulatory framework in the UK. The objective is to place law within the (social) environment it operates in, and the ‘market’ as embedded within societal structures. As such, the project focuses on economic actors (PMSCs), social and political actors (government officials and Civil Society Organizations) as well as legal actors (contracting officers and courts). It employs Karl Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness and Pierre Bourdieu’s framework of habitus, practices, fields and capital to enable the project to access the influences of the actors on the legitimacy and regulatory framework of PMSCs, how the existing state of affairs has been produced and how the actors conduct their businesses, within the space of the field(s). It will also help in exploring how external pressures affect (and embed/disembed) the field(s), and how the internal competition for power may produce results that, at least, are legitimate for the actors involved.