Commercial Military Actors and Civilian Victimization in Africa, Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, 1980–2011

Abstract

Abstract The current international normative order strongly condemns strategies of civilian victimization, and actors engaging in atrocities face material, criminal, and reputational sanctions. The growth of the market for force has raised concerns about clients outsourcing atrocities to commercial military actors (CMAs), such as private military and security companies or mercenaries, and thereby circumventing accountability under international norms. This investigation explores whether interactions on the market for force are associated with an increase in the likelihood of violence against civilians. We argue that there is a variance in market interactions. While some market actors will comply with international norms, others will take advantage and circumvent normative restrictions. The crucial factor determining compliance and noncompliance are costs of norm violation, which vary across market actors. Those clients and CMAs with a higher exposure to sanctions, or an interest in the status quo of the normative order, are less likely to be associated with norm violations, and vice versa. We test our claims using a negative binomial regression and by drawing on new data from the Commercial Military Actor Dataset, which records contracting for force and force-related services. Overall, we found that there is a market segment where actors use market relations to circumvent international norms, yet mostly market interactions appear to comply with international norms.