ABSTRACT
Private military and security companies (PMSCs) and contractors raise quintessential issues of global governance—they have become both subjects and objects of administration as international organizations endeavor to regulate them and use them as tools to impose order. There is a chicken-and-egg relationship between governance and force; force can be a cornerstone of governance to coerce obedience from those who resist it, and governance can structure the conditions under which force is deployed. In this way, PMSCs can enforce global governance but are also constrained by it. Consequently, an analysis of PMSCs illuminates authority and power in global governance and, where formalized into rules, in international organization.
