Reassessing private military and security company (PMSC) ‘competition‘ in civil war: lessons from Sierra Leone

Christopher M. Faulkner, Joshua E. Lambert and Jonathan M. Powell

Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2019, vol. 30, issue 3, 641-659

Abstract: This paper challenges recent claims that competitive market dynamics incentivize Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) to fully commit to providing effective services, thereby reducing the duration of civil war. Our assessment of a most-likely case scenario for this argument – Sierra Leone – reveals four critical problems. First, there is rarely direct competition, even if numerous companies are present. Second, the presence of multiple PMSCs usually represents a collaboration among subsidiaries providing distinct services, often under the same corporate umbrella. Third, data aggregation obfuscates the overlap of PMSC presence, inflating the amount of perceived competition. Finally, we raise concerns regarding how quantitative analyses can conflate conflict intensity with conflict termination.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2019.1601869 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:30:y:2019:i:3:p:641-659

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fswi20

DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2019.1601869

Access Statistics for this article

Small Wars and Insurgencies is currently edited by Paul Rich

More articles in Small Wars and Insurgencies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().