Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs

Over the past decade, states and international organizations have shifted a surprising range of foreign policy functions to private contractors. Though little noticed by the public, the extent of this shift is breathtaking: contractors working for for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as for governments are now delivering aid, negotiating peace settlements, and fighting wars. But who is accountable when the employees of foreign private firms do violence or create harm?

This timely book describes the services that are now delivered by private contractors and the threat this trend poses to core public values of human rights, democratic accountability, and transparency.

The author offers a series of concrete reforms that are necessary to expand traditional legal accountability, alter the contractual language that is the very engine of privatization, construct better mechanisms of public participation, and alter the organizational structure and institutional culture of contractor firms. The result is a pragmatic, nuanced, and comprehensive set of responses to the problem of foreign affairs privatization.

Laura A. Dickinson is the Foundation Professor of Law, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.