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Credit rating agencies play a powerful and contentious role in the governance of global financial markets. Introducing an original framework for delegating political authority to private actors, this book explains common trends in the regulatory use of private ratings for public purposes and analyzes regulatory changes after the Financial Crisis.

This article analyzes the empowerment and disempowerment of credit rating agencies (CRAs) as private regulatory intermediaries. Until the recent financial crisis, regulators heavily relied on private credit ratings to impose risk-sensitive requirements on financial market actors (targets). Regulatory use of credit ratings was instrumental in empowering CRAs because regulatory authority was delegated to them and their own private power was bolstered by public endorsement. But regulators' subsequent efforts to disempower the CRAs—more recently regarded as dysfunctional "runaway" intermediaries—have proven costly, complicated to do, and hardly consequential in limiting CRAs' de facto power. This dynamic reveals a path-dependent power shift in favor of private intermediaries that is more pronounced (1) the larger the intermediary's own sources of power when an RIT arrangement is established, (2) the larger the transfer of authority to the intermediary, and (3) the longer regulators rely on the intermediary.

This article points out that dynamics of private authority over time and de-privatization processes are analytically and practically crucial, but so far under-researched aspects of private authority and privatization. It argues that more scholarly attention should be paid to these phenomena and advocates a state-focused, but dynamic theoretical approach which takes seriously the empirical possibility that states may play an asymmetric role in the authorization (i.e. privatization) and dis-empowerment (i.e. de-privatization) of private governance actors. For that purpose, it proposes a fruitful and constructive combination (rather than rivalry) of theoretical literatures such as principal-agent theory, political economy research on private authority and historical institutionalism. Adapted from the source document.

This article seeks to systematise and advance the theoretical debate on the causes and conditions for the privatisation of security. Drawing on previous research on private military and security companies (PMSCs) and theories from International Relations and Comparative Politics, it reconstructs functionalist, political-instrumentalist and ideationist explanations for why and under what conditions even 'strong' and democratic Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states (extensively) use PMSCs. An analysis of inter-temporal and cross-national (United States, British, German and French) patterns of security privatisation indicates that all the three theoretical models point out causes and conditions that are relevant for a comprehensive explanation, but none is sufficient alone. Therefore, the article uses both the models and the empirical evidence to propose a synthetic perspective, which treats different explanatory conditions and logics as complementary, rather than rival. Going beyond the atheoretical conclusion that a multitude of disconnected factors are in some way relevant for a comprehensive explanation of security privatisation, I develop a thin and a thick synthesis that rely on a domain-of-application approach and sequencing, respectively. The thin synthesis spells out how different explanatory factors operate in specific domains, whereas the thick synthesis elaborates how different conditions and mechanisms apply to different phases of security privatisation and how they interrelate. Adapted from the source document.

This volume provides researchers and students with a discussion of a broad range of methods and their practical application to the study of non-state actors in international security. All researchers face the same challenge, not only must they identify a suitable method for analysing their research question, they must also apply it. This volume prepares students and scholars for the key challenges they confront when using social-science methods in their own research. To bridge the gap between knowing methods and actually employing them, the book not only introduces a broad range of interpretive and explanatory methods, it also discusses their practical application. Contributors reflect on how they have used methods, or combinations of methods, such as narrative analysis, interviews, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), case studies, experiments or participant observation in their own research on non-state actors in international security. Moreover, experts on the relevant methods discuss these applications as well as the merits and limitations of the various methods in use. Research on non-state actors in international security provides ample challenges and opportunities to probe different methodological approaches. It is thus particularly instructive for students and scholars seeking insights on how to best use particular methods for their research projects in International Relations (IR), security studies and neighbouring disciplines. It also offers an innovative laboratory for developing new research techniques and engaging in unconventional combinations of methods. This book will be of much interest to students of non-state security actors such as private military and security companies, research methods, security studies and International Relations in general.

AbstractMaking security has been Leviathan's home turf and its prime responsibility. Yet, while security states in advanced democracies share this uniform purpose, there is vast variation in how they legitimize and how they make security policies. First, the political authority of elected policy‐makers is sometimes superseded by the epistemic authority of experts. Second, states make security, in some instances, by drawing on their own capacities, whereas in other fields they rely on rules to manage non‐state actors. Based on this variation in authority foundations and policy instruments, we disentangle Leviathan into different types of (i) positive, (ii) managing, (iii) technocratic, and (iv) regulatory security states. Our typology helps better understand contemporary security policy‐making; it advances regulatory governance theory by conceptualizing the relationship between expertise and rules in a complex and contested issue area; and it provides insights into the "new economic security state" and the domestic underpinnings of weaponized interdependence.

European security policy is still widely regarded as the realm of national and "positive" states. In contrast to this conventional view, this article argues that the European Union – and the broader European multi-level system – can be conceived as a "regulatory" state in many areas of European security policy-making. The European regulatory security state (ERSS) relies on epistemic authority (i. e. experts) to indirectly produce European security policies by means of setting and enforcing rules. The article introduces the concept of a "European regulatory security state" and illustrates how the ERSS manifests itself empirically; it discusses the extent to which Russia's war against Ukraine and the European responses to it pose a challenge to the ERSS; and it assesses how normatively desirable – and sustainable – the ERSS is.