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This article presents a theoretical framework with which to discuss how non-state modes of security governance evolve in the context of state failure and/or collapse. To address this issue, we present the logic of security markets, which assumes that the evolution of security governance by non-state groups in failed states is a function of both resource availability and the strategies that armed groups apply to extract resources from the civilian population. Axiomatically, we expect that in the short term the central purpose for the use of force is survival and achieving the ability to finance one's capabilities to use force, although ultimately this also includes the seizure and control of territory. The main argument is that the changing competitive conditions in security markets – which we measure in terms of the total number of violent groups and their organizational design, size and strength – explain the rationales behind the decisions of armed groups either to use violence against the civilian population or to invest in the provision of security.

In order to systematically trace the private production of security and violence in areas of limited statehood, this article discusses three hybrid forms of security: (1) institutionalised security-governance in emerging non-state dynamics of violence; (2) self-governance as the local response to strategic or indiscriminate forms of violence; (3) commercialised security as the growing tendency to delegate protection from various threats to specialists from the private sector. The different dynamics relate to the logic of markets of security in areas where the state's monopoly of the use of force has collapsed and different private actors compete over territorial control, natural resources and the recruitment of members. (S+F/IFSH)

Das vorliegende Papier setzt sich mit der Frage auseinander, wie sich von Governance geprägte Räume theoretisch-konzeptionell erfassen lassen. Auf der Grundlage einer Differenzierung zentraler Governance-Elemente (Akteure, Strukturen und Prozesse) und anknüpfend an geographische Raumkonzepte schlagen wir drei Anwendungsstrategien zur Analyse vor: Lokalisierung, Relationierung und Regionalisierung. Mit Hilfe dieser Anwendungen lassen sich schließlich Governance-Räume auf unterschiedlichen Abstraktionsniveaus identifizieren, analysieren und theoretisieren. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht erstens davon aus, dass es zur empirischen Erfassung von Governance neuer analytischer Konzepte bedarf, die sich vom methodologischen Nationalismus lösen und mit alternativen Analyseeinheiten arbeiten. Zweitens kommt die Governance- Forschung jenseits und unterhalb des Staates langfristig nicht darum herum, die räumliche Dimension des eigenen Untersuchungsgegenstandes theoretisch und konzeptionell zu reflektieren.

This article develops an analytical framework to capture the spatial dimension of governance. By differentiating between main elements of governance (actors, structures and processes) and applying geographical concepts of space we suggest three strategies of application: localization, relationalization and regionalization. Applying these strategies enables researchers to identify, analyze and theorize the spatial dimension of governance on different levels of abstraction. In sum this article firstly argues that empirical work on governance needs to dismantle the methodological nationalism approach and work with alternative units of analysis such as space conceptions.(SFB-Governance Working Paper Series/ FUB)