Book Reviews The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security Deborah D. Avant Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, h30.99, 324pp. ISBN: 13 978-0-521-61535-8 Journal of International Relations and Development (2008) 11, 75–77. doi:10.1057/jird.2008.3 Since the end of the cold war the ‘who is who’ in military and security affairs has evolved very rapidly. Private actors of various stamps have come to occupy increasingly prominent positions. In some cases their presence is considered illegitimate by most observers, as, for example, is the case with ‘terrorist’ organizations. In others, their role is not only considered legitimate but results from public policies, as is the case with most security contractors working in Iraq. Avant’s book deals primarily with the latter situation. More specifically, as the book title signals, Avant probes the consequences of the ‘market for force’. As this review will underline she does so in an interesting and thorough way, yet somewhat paradoxically Avant understates her own contribution to the ongoing discussions by not placing the ‘big’ points of her study at the fore and instead insisting on the immediate complexities and dilemmas a variety of agents face in the market for force. Avant’s book is structured to provide a precise and detailed discussion of how the development of a private market for force impacts on state control over the use of force. The book strongly emphasizes that this is less straightforward than usually assumed and that there are two sides to a coin. This approach is not only comprehensible in a context where discussions are fraught with unfounded generalizations supporting ‘pessimistic’ or ‘optimistic’ views (as Avant terms the positions her book is up against). It is a relief. Indeed, this book is a model of a serious study. It disentangles the notion of control into three distinct subcategories (a functional, a political and a social category) derived from existing bodies of literature on the issue. It uses these notions to derive hypothesis about what effects we should expect to see in weak and strong states, respectively. It then proceeds to look at how these hypotheses are born out in three different situations: (1) the situation where states contract military services (mainly looked at through contracting by the US, by Croatia and by Sierra Leone); (2) the situation where states export military services (mainly exports by the US, the UK and South Africa) and cases where private actors finance military services (the case of Shell in Nigeria, of the International non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) in Goma and the Conserva- tion INGOs in the Garamba parc). The overarching idea is that the extent to which state control over the use of force will be strengthened or weakened depends on the degree of fit between the existing control mechanisms and the changes provoked as well as on the co-variation in the three dimensions of control. The conclusion is that in most cases there is neither fit, nor co-variation. Consequently, ‘the market for force has undermined states’collective ability to monopolize violence in the international system’ (p. 264). The exception to this general rule is the effect Journal of International Relations and Development, 2008, 11, (75–91) r 2008 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1408-6980/08 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/jird