A decade of EU counter-terrorism and intelligence : a critical assessment

The article is the centrepiece of a special issue co-edited with Oldrich Bures and Christian Kaunert on the European Union counterterror policies. This work offers a critical evaluation of the EU efforts in this area, its successes, failings and present and future challenges and includes in it contributions from some of the most renown experts on the subject.PostprintPeer reviewe

The anti-mercenary norm and United Nations’ use of private military and security companies : from norm entrepreneurship to organized hypocrisy

First published online : 11 January 2021A prominent anti-mercenary norm entrepreneur in the second half of the twentieth century, the United Nations (UN) has become an equally prominent user of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) services in the twenty-first century. In this article, we explain the gap between UN talk and action on private providers of security as a form of organized hypocrisy. To map the mismatch between UN rhetoric and behaviour in a measurable fashion, we combined official data on the use of PMSCs with an in-depth content analysis of the reports written by the UN Working Group on Mercenaries and an examination of the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) contracting policy. The Working Group’s very negative portrayal of PMSCs and the UNDSS caveat that armed contractors should only be used as a last resort and stands in stark contrast with UN agencies’ widespread use of private security providers. Although a decoupling between talk and action is often inevitable for complex organizations simultaneously pursuing contradictory objectives like the UN, our findings have important implications for peacekeeping. Most notably, organized hypocrisy is in danger of challenging the UN’s credibility as a norm entrepreneur, hindering the effectiveness of its agencies’ outsourcing practices and delaying the reform of UN peacekeeping and crisis management at large

Varieties of organised hypocrisy : security privatisation in UN, EU, and NATO crisis management operations

First published online: 02 September 2021International organisations (IOs) have increasingly resorted to private military and security companies (PMSCs) as providers of armed protection, training, intelligence, and logistics. In this article, we argue that IOs, seeking to reconcile conflicting international norms and member states’ growing unwillingness to provide the manpower required for effective crisis management, have decoupled their official policy on and actual use of PMSCs, thereby engaging in organised hypocrisy. Due to its stricter interpretation of norms like the state monopoly of violence, the United Nations (UN) has showcased a more glaring gap between talk and action than the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which display a more pragmatic, but not entirely consistent, approach to the use of PMSCs. By examining the decoupling between UN, EU, and NATO official contractor support doctrines and operational records, this article advances the debate on both security privatisation and organised hypocrisy.This article was supported by Czech Research Foundation [20-07805S]

Security Privatization: How Non-security-related Private Businesses Shape Security Governance

This book widens the current debate on security privatization by examining how and why an increasing number of private actors beyond private military and security companies (PMSCs) have come to perform various security related functions. While PMSCs provide security for profit, most other private sector stakeholders make a profit by selling goods and services that were not originally connected with security in the traditional sense. However, due to the continuous introduction of new legal and technical regulations by public authorities, many non-security-related private businesses now have to perform at least some security functions. This volume offers new insights into security practices of non-security-related private businesses and their impact on security governance. The contributions extend beyond the conceptual and theoretical arguments in the existing body of literature to offer a range of original case studies on the specific roles of non-security-related private companies of all sizes, from all areas of business and from different geographic regions

The Role of For-Profit Actors in Implementing Targeted Sanctions: The Case of the European Union

The evolution of sanctions from comprehensive to targeted has favored the inclusion of for-profit actors in the policy process. Sanctions are used to deal with security challenges and while the role of for-profit actors in the provision of public goods has been investigated, less has been said about their role in the provision of security. This chapter investigates the role of for-profit actors in the implementation of sanctions. More specifically, this chapter suggests a typology of regulatory environments that facilitates explaining and understanding the behavior of for-profit actors in implementing targeted sanctions. By looking at the quality of instructions provided by state authorities and their capacity to monitor the implementation of such decisions, the chapter argues that overcompliance, uneven and lack of compliance are more likely in certain regulatory environments rather than in others. The theoretical framework is tested on the case study of the restrictive measures of the EU. The data for this research was collected through semi-opened interviews and focus groups held in Brussels from 2013 to 2015

Migration and development policies : the state of affairs before the 2015 European migration crises in the Czech Republic and its current implications

Available online 18 August 2017This article analyses attitudes of key stakeholders towards migration and development policies in the Czech Republic. It is generally understood that migration policy is a set of measures aimed primarily at handling immigration flows to developed countries, while development policy seeks to foster sustainable growth in developing countries. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 experts from the public decision-making, nongovernmental, academic and private (legal) spheres to gather their opinions on the practice of, and relations between, the Czech migration and development policies. The findings of our research point to the lack of coherence between these two types of policies and they highlight several specific discrepancies across individual policy instruments. Moreover, albeit our research was conducted prior to the escalation of the EU migration crisis in 2015, several of our findings contextualize the Czech response to this crisis, both at the national and European Union level