Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Functions Threatens Democracy and What We Can Do about It Review

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Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Functions Threatens Democracy and What We Can Do about It ReviewIn this fascinating book, Paul Verkuil, Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, examines the USA's shift from public government to private governance. Outsourcing rose by 86% between 2000 and 2005 and the value of non-competitive contracts rose by 115%, mainly due to the war on Iraq.
He examines the public/private distinction, constitutional governance, the limits of delegation, contract theory, and structural reforms. He uses constitutional, statutory, administrative and contractual sources and work in delegation theory and transactions cost analysis.
Under the US Constitution, the people is the sovereign power, delegating its powers to the three branches of the state, executive, legislature and judiciary, which are supposed to be agents of the people. But delegating sovereign powers to private hands undermines the state's capacity to govern. Outsourcing political decisions threatens the democratic principle of accountability.
Verkuil looks at the private military, private disaster relief, private border control, private prisons and private police. He argues that the planning and execution of responses to disasters are core government duties. He notes that after 9/11, Congress voted to `deprivatise' airport security, over Bush's opposition. Private security firms had treated security as a cost-control item, forcing down the quality of services. He notes, "In Europe, the preference for public sector solutions has been trumped by a higher principle congenial both to community integration and the world of privatization." Why higher?
Privatisation does not improve performance: research shows that professional civil servants manage better than political appointees, but then better performance is only the politicians' claim, not privatisation's real aim. Its real aim is to maximise profit - which Verkuil manages not to see, writing, "Outsourcing in the face of both accountability and efficiency objections is inexplicable."
He concludes that the use of contractors to displace functions normally performed by government officials is a danger to democracy, and so should be curtailed. We need to secure and preserve public values and oppose the current unprecedented delegation of powers to private firms.
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Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Updated Edition (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) Review

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Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Updated Edition (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) ReviewThroughout history, private interests have performed military duties and always proved a critical political factor. Celts and Germans worked in the Roman Emperor's personal Praetorian Guard, King Edward I employed professional companies of archers, and the Swiss fought all over Europe, and are still guarding the Vatican. It's only in the 19th and 20th centuries that the state has become the sole legitimate agent in the conduct of military operations. The 1990s, however, have witnessed the emergence of private organized interests at every level of military operations. The twist comes because today these private military firms (PMFs) are organized as twenty first century corporations, with business plans and long term profit objectives.
Singer's analysis begins with an account of private military interests in ancient and modern times. This gets us used to the idea that PMFs have been around before and are really nothing new. In the second section, Singer classifies PMFs in three segments, each characterized by how far its activities are from actual fighting. First and most obvious there are the military provider firms that place frontline military units (e.g. Executive Outcomes) second there are the consulting firms who train and shape a client's military (e.g. Military Professional Resources Inc.) and third there are the firms that provide logistical and support services such as food delivery (e.g. Brown and Root).
Lastly, Singer examines the implications of using PMFs, which of course being corporations are motivated by profit. Singer illustrates how seemingly simple precepts result in fiendishly complex moral problems.
Do we feel uneasy at for-profit military firms? Of course we do and so we are tempted to dismiss any question of using them. But In 1994, one of the more unsavory firms, Executive Outcomes, created a plan that for some 150 million dollars could have stopped the Rwandan genocide and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.(*) The UN Security Council balked at the costs, nothing was done until the genocide was well under way and half a million people were butchered.
Do we support relief organizations such as CARE? Do we give them money? I do. But how should we feel about the Red Cross and CARE using that money to hire PMFs as protection? Is it right for them to support PMFs? Is it right of us to expect them to go into dangerous situation with inadequate UN or local military protection?
Singer's conclusions are only tentative, and given the emphasis he's placed on how complex the moral dilemma is, this is only proper. He neither condemns nor supports the rise of PMFs, he merely states that they exist and are on the rise, he describes how they operate, and he points out the practical and moral dilemmas that arise from making use of them. He ends with a rewording of the proverb that war is too important to be left to generals: war is too important to be left to private industry. In other words, he warns us that while PMFs are here to stay we must keep them in check and on a leash.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
(*) See comments for more on this.
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