Private security and national security: The case of Estonia. (November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Light, Matthew; Singh, Anne-Marie; Gold, Josh
• Other Names: Singh Anne-Marie guest-editor.; Light Matthew guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Theoretical criminology. Volume 26:Number 4(2022)
• Page Start: 664
• Page End: 683
• Publication Date: 2022-11
• Subjects: Comparative criminology -- cyber crime -- Europe -- international crime -- military -- organized crime -- police and policing -- private security -- Russia -- security management; Criminology -- Periodicals; 364.01
• DOI: 10.1177/13624806221099930
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1362-4806

Abstract

Most studies of private security postulate exclusively internal, primarily economic, causes of the industry's growth and regulation. In contrast, based on the case of post-Soviet Estonia, we investigate how a state's external security environment influences private security. Estonia's tense relations with neighbouring Russia and related pursuit of EU and NATO membership have generated several policies through which private security evolved from a lawless, politically contested industry to a modest, lightly regulated one: (1) the exclusion of public police from private security and an effective campaign against organized crime that together enabled an autonomous and non-criminalized security industry to emerge, (2) free-trade policies that permitted western companies to acquire Estonian security firms, and (3) an 'all-of-nation' approach to national security that promotes comprehensive state-civil society security cooperation. Estonia thus clarifies how high politics shapes private security, while also revealing the factors that make the industry relatively uncontentious in most industrialized democracies.