CFP - A Re-examination of Private Military and Security Companies - STAIR - OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Abstracts due: April 1, 2013
Papers due: July 8, 2013
Maximum length of articles: 6000 words

Private security is big business – and important politics. As demand for pmscs increases, the academic literature has already experienced two waves of attention on the subject: firstly, in the post-Cold War era, to reflect on the emergence of pmscs, principally in Africa; and secondly, to analyse the implications of pmsc operations
during US operations in Iraq. In the context of the impending nato withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is time to re-examine the place of pmscs in domestic and international security.

St Antony’s International Review (STAIR)is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal of International Affairs, based at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, is issuing a special edition to understand the implications of pmscs. stair aims to examine the developments surrounding private security from a range of disciplines, including International Relations, Political Science, Law, Sociology, and from practitioner perspectives, through both theoretical and empirical lenses. stair welcomes insightful articles dealing with
questions such as:

- pmscs in geographical perspective: what will be the private security response to the end ofthe Iraq and Afghanistan wars? Where are the next hotspots for private security involvement? Are the borders of globalization the homeland of the pmsc?

- PMSCs and the relationship between private and public: Do pmscs embody a retreat of the state or a rearticulation and transformation of state authority? In fact, is authority necessarily a zero-sum game? Will pmsc’s clients remain predominantly governments or will they turn to the private sector? Are private security companies the military for the age of austerity – the ‘austerity
military’?

-PMSCs and regulation: Will the regulatory framework change now that there are less exigent foreign policy priorities? To what degree do pmscs operate in a legal vacuum? Are normal corporate governance arrangements sufficient for pmscs? Should a regulatory framework be national or global?

- PMSCs,ethics angender:How do contractors challenge the professional ethic of the military? How do the rules and ethics of war need to change with the emergence of contractors? Should society respond to a contractor veteran the same as to a military veteran? What does a gendered analysis of pmscs reveal?

STAIR welcomes abstracts up to 500 words in length. stair also publishes book reviews of works related to this theme. Please submit your abstracts to STAIRjournalPMSC@gmail.com. For more details regarding the submission procedures please consult www.stair-journal.org