Commercial organizations are an integral part of the contemporary management of violence. Political science is stuck (as it sometimes gets) on particular narratives of violence management and tends to assume either well-meaning political leaders in control (or not) of the military that serves them or fanatics under no one’s control. This leads most to ignore huge swaths of violence management even when it is within the state apparatus (think police or prisons)—and to largely disregard violence that is contracted out or authorized by those outside the state. The contributors to these two books are to be commended for unsticking themselves. Both works offer arguments about how commercial management of violence may be different from state administration but is management nonetheless, and so we should amend our theories to take account of the varying ways in which human communities might control violence. At their best, these analyses present new empirical material and offer creative and useful concepts to take account of it; at their worst, they rehash worn stories, use concepts in an ad hoc way, or slip into arguments on the basis of assumption rather than evidence. Though both books have some of each, on balance they offer more of their best than their worst, and are thus welcome additions to the field.

In The Markets for Force, Molly Dunigan and Ulrich Petersohn take issue with treating the commercial domain of force as a unified global piece. The insight behind their collection is that there is not one market for force but many markets for force and that analysts would be better served if they took account of regional and local variations. The contributing authors offer analyses of 12 different countries, nine of them outside the North American, European, and African cases that have dominated the small literature on this subject. The collection aims to explain how the different market characteristics affect two outcomes: the state’s monopoly on violence and security as a public good. At the end, the editors also offer a typology of markets: neoliberal, hybrid, and racketeering. They argue that these market types, in complex interaction with the strength of the state, the regulatory environment, and the type of goods and services sold, have different implications for their two outcomes of interest.

I am a big fan of the overall insight. This intuition and the best of the case chapters are the volume’s most important contributions. Let me begin with a brief overview of the case chapters, organized by the strength of the state they examine—from least to most. Afghanistan qualifies as the least and Jake Sherman’s analysis is that the decision to use private military and security companies (PMSCs) has made security an excludable good, effectively undermining security as a public good but also reducing the state’s monopoly on violence. Kristina Mani provides an overview of security markets in Latin America and goes into more detail on Argentina and Guatemala. These two cases demonstrate different state strengths, regulation, and market participants but she judges that both pose more danger than hope for security as a public good. Maiah Jaskowski examines Peru and Ecuador where those selling force are state security forces themselves. Private contracting with state forces, she claims, also undermines security as a public good. Oldrich Bures describes the nascent Czech market, the nonlethal character of the services it provides and the concerning role of PMSCs in shaping the political debate about how to regulate the market.

In her chapter on Russia and Ukraine, Olivia Allison examines their export of force and the informal network through which they operate largely outside of government regulation, eroding security as a public good. Much as I appreciate this chapter, I was surprised that it did not reference Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism, Vladim Volkov’s 2002 book on the security industry in Russia, particularly because he suggests that there were some regulations put in place. Jennifer Catallo examines the unfolding market in China, which includes a domestic industry that emerged out of local police and its increasing transnational competition and operation. The managed market, she claims, has worked more to solidify than undermine the public nature of security, but this could change with greater competition.

The three chapters on the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada offer starkly different conclusions. Scott Fitzsimmons claims that the industry has ignored U.S. regulation to the detriment of public security in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although many analysts have complained about the role of PMSCs in Iraq and Afghanistan, few have argued that the industry has ignored regulation. More common arguments suggest that the scale of industry involvement and the nature of the services it provided in these wars led to greater concerns. Carlos Ortiz claims that in the UK, public—private partnership has worked rather well to have little negative impact on public security. And Christopher Spearin claims that Canada’s use of the industry has resulted in some threat to public security, but casts it as one largely managed by the Canadian government. I could not help wishing for a closer look at these three cases together. Are these authors comparing apples to apples? If so, why does the United States, with a much more developed regulatory structure, yield poorer results? Or are these authors really looking at different things? I was puzzled that the consequences of these three for the overall framework was not taken up (indeed, the U.S. case appears as positive/neutral in the conclusion).

More generally, the cases vary a good deal in the quality of their information and analysis. Some offer a first look at new evidence; others rely on sporadic coverage of something we know quite a lot about. Given that, it is perhaps not surprising that the basic insight about the different character of markets in various places holds up better than any general tendencies from different markets types. The volume is really more an exercise in opening the way for a set of interesting questions than in coming to broad conclusions.

Outsourcing War focuses on how military privatization affects conceptions of just war. Amy Eckert’s overarching claim is that while privatization challenges some elements of the just-war tradition, that tradition can be adjusted to work with this new type of security actor. She structures the book by outlining the new market for force and its challenge to the just-war tradition, explaining the tradition’s evolution around states, examining the challenges that the industry poses to the tradition, and then extrapolating about how jus ad bellum and jus in bello, in turn, might be amended. She ends by looking more broadly at how these amendments require different thinking about the public—private divide.

The idea that the just-war tradition need not be tied to the nation-state is an interesting one, and Eckert’s argument that the tradition developed before the era of the state, and therefore should not be reliant on states, makes it plausible. The overall structure of the book is clear and easy to follow. That said, lack of clarity around what drove the evolution of the just-war tradition before the era of the nation-state, and thus what might drive its adjustment to PMSCs, makes her claims less powerful than they might have otherwise been. The arguments she draws from differ in their basic logic. Some (by Janice E. Thomson, for instance) build their arguments on the logics of different forms of organization and thus might expect particular kinds of concerns based on the organizational form. Others (such as by James Turner Johnson) see a continual adjustment of practice that builds on a historical path and thus might expect different forms to play different roles depending on the context. Coming to terms with what Eckert thinks is driving this evolution could help her build an argument about how PMSCs might be accommodated in the just-war tradition.

Without an overarching logic, Eckhert’s claims about how one might fold PMSCs into the just-war tradition seem somewhat ad hoc. Sometimes she lays claims on the basis of pure description and those on the basis of what ought to be (or what would be ethically beneficial) side by side. For instance, in her analysis of the jus ad bellum difference between pre-privatization and post-privatization, she makes a descriptive claim about right authority—saying that the privatization of these services has broken the state’s monopoly on the use of force. Her claims about all the rest, however (just cause, last resort, etc.) are based on what ought to happen. Furthermore, why these particular “oughts” is opaque, and I struggled to find a clear logic behind them.

In her summary of just cause and last resort, Eckert argues that states should make their judgment by assuming that they would have to go to war without private forces. But in extrapolating for reasonable chances of success and proportionality, she says that states ought to consider private forces in this assessment. There may be a good reason for this difference, but it would have been useful to have it spelled out. Also, given her focus on description in her analysis of jus ad bellum, I was surprised that she did not look at how states (and others) have begun to fold PMSCs into international humanitarian law (informed by the just-war tradition) in the jus in bello chapter.

The conceptual fuzziness is most troublesome as the author moves to the more theoretical question of the public—private divide, which is the least satisfying part of the book. I am not sure that there really is a “classical” approach to this divide. Many recent sophisticated analyses see the divide—as well as notions of public and private—as eternally shifting. Acknowledging this could actually help Eckert make a stronger argument, and so it is too bad that she did not engage with them more. In the end, the book’s claim that the just-war tradition need not be tied to the nation-state is persuasive, but the logic for how we ought to move beyond it is less clear.

While they far from perfect, I commend the authors and editors of these books for their willingness to ask the questions that matter, rather than those for which there is data, and also for problematizing the all-or-nothing categories through which many have understood the control of force. In asking these questions and resisting the easy (and wrong) answers, they have erected scaffolding through which we can build better understanding.