The United States, PMSCs and the state monopoly on violence: Leading the way towards norm change

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Sage.The proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in Iraq and Afghanistan has raised many questions regarding the use of armed force by private contractors. This article addresses the question of whether the increased acceptance of PMSCs indicates a transformation of the international norm regarding the state monopoly on the legitimate use of armed force. Drawing on theoretical approaches to the analysis of norm change, the article employs four measures to investigate possible changes in the strength and meaning of this norm: modifications in state behaviour, state responses to norm violation, the promulgation of varying interpretations of the norm in national and international laws and regulations, and changes in norm discourse. Based on an analysis of empirical evidence from the United States of America and its allies, the article concludes that these measures suggest that the USA is leading the way towards a transformation of the international norm of the state monopoly on violence, involving a revised meaning. Although this understanding has not yet been formally implemented in international law, it has allowed a growing number of countries to tolerate, accept or legalize the use of armed force by PMSCs in the international arena.The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

About the Impossibility of Absolute State Sovereignty. The Modern Era and the Early Legal Positivist Claim

State sovereignty is often thought to be and seen as absolute, unlimited. However, there is no such a thing as absolute state sovereignty. Indeed, absolute or unlimited sovereignty is impossible because all sovereignty is necessarily underpinned by its conditions of possibility. The present chapter consists of two main parts. Firstly, and in order to show more clearly how sovereignty is limited, two kinds of agents are introduced: (a) individuals; and (b) states. The aim is to demonstrate how different sorts of constraints or limitations operate in relation to individuals and states without diminishing their respective sovereignties. Secondly, the chapter identifies specific theorists that take sovereignty to be absolute in the modern era, focusing in particular on two bodies of literature that constitute the roots for current legal positivism—i.e. Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes—and argues that in both cases they introduce conceptual, substantial, and contextual limitations. I argue that the modern era starts with a relative essence of sovereignty that has its origin in the working logic of fragmented regulatory governance. With this early and disjointed background of a national and transnational plurality of sources both Bodin and Hobbes aim to bring together these heterogeneous elements under the contextualisation of the paradox of sovereignty. The implications of understanding state sovereignty as limited rather than absolute are several, both directly and indirectly. A main immediate consequence is that sovereign states can cooperate together, limit their sovereignty and still be considered sovereign