Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.

Focusing on four East European polities-Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania-this book examines the dynamics and implications of processes of commercialization of security that have occurred following the collapse of communist regimes. These processes have been central to post-communist liberalization, and have profoundly shaped those states and their integration into European institutional structures and global economic and political circuits. They have also affected - and been shaped by- the behaviour and power of regional and global actors (e.g. European institutions, regional, and global corporations) in Eastern Europe. By virtue of the fact that they combine in complex ways local, national, regional, and global dynamics and actors, processes of security commercialization in the former Eastern bloc can be seen as instances of 'glocalization'. Several aspects of security commercialization are particularly important. To begin with, private actors -specifically private security companies (PSCs)- have been reconstituted as partial agents of public power. As such, they have come to be systematically involved in performing security practices traditionally associated with the state. In addition, a potent commercial logic has come to permeate public security institutions. This has led to redefinition of the relationship between the state and its population in ways that defy conventional wisdom about the role of the state, and pose difficult normative challenges. More broadly, processes of security commercialization in Eastern Europe, which involve important performative dimensions, have led to the emergence of complex, hybrid networks of security providers that transcend domestic/international, public/private boundaries and behave, in many ways, as entrepreneurs.

Many international relations scholars argue that private authority and private actors are playing increasingly prominent roles in global governance. This book focuses on the other side of the equation: the transformation of the public dimension of governance in the era of globalization. It analyses that transformation, advancing two major claims: first, that the public is beginning to play a more significant role in global governance, and, second, that it takes a rather different form than has traditionally been understood in international relations theory. The authors suggest that unless we transcend conventional wisdom about the public as a distinct sphere, separate from the private domain, we cannot understand the dynamics and consequences of its apparent return. Using examples drawn from international political economy, international security and environmental governance, they argue that 'the public' should be conceptualized as a collection of culturally-specific social practices.

This book examines the practices enacted by three key institutions of the transatlantic security community-the EU, NATO and the OSCE-in the name of combating international terrorism, and analyzes the ways in which those practices have both been affected by and contributed to changes in the field of security. It argues that contemporary attempts to respond to the perceived threat of international terrorism reflect a particular ethos of risk-management and involve a combination of two different-an inclusive and an exclusionary-logics of security. The book examines the interplay between the two logics and analyzes their implications, including the ways in which practices that instantiate those logics have contributed to processes of redefinition of norms of governance and reconstitution of boundaries in the security community. In developing this analysis, the book also explores the normative and political dilemmas generated by patterns of inclusion/exclusion created in the name of fighting terrorism. On this basis, the book seeks to make a significant contribution to the study of security practices and international governance in the post-9/11 world. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.