Hostile Business and the Sovereign State: Privatized Governance, State Security and International Law (Globalization: Law and Policy)

Book Details

• Publisher: Routledge

• Author: Michael J. Strauss

• Language: English

• Edition: 1st Edition

• ISBN: 9781138296145

• Pages: 196

• Cover: Hardcover

• Release Date: 14-12-2018

• Package Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.7 inches

About the Book

In "Privatized Sovereignty: The New Threat to State Control", Michael J. Strauss investigates an emerging and often overlooked threat to state sovereignty: the rise of private companies exerting control over functions traditionally handled by governments. Over the past few decades, the privatization of state activities, accelerated by the globalization of business and the liberalization of international capital flows, has allowed companies to take on roles once filled by sovereign authorities. This shift introduces significant challenges to territorial control and national security.

Strauss introduces three new key concepts to explain these challenges:

1. Post-Government Companies: These are private entities that have made privatized activities their core business. Control over such companies can lie with individual investors, corporations, investment funds, or even hostile state actors through state-owned enterprises or sovereign wealth funds.

2. Imperfect Privatizations: This refers to situations where a state privatizes an activity, but the purchaser is another state’s public sector, raising concerns about foreign control over critical functions.

3. Belligerent Companies: These are companies whose operations can undermine the host states' interests, potentially becoming hostile to national security and stability.

This groundbreaking work sheds light on the opaque ownership structures and how influence over companies handling privatized sovereign activities can fall into the hands of criminal organizations, terrorist groups, or other hostile state actors. Strauss critically assesses the limitations of current legal and regulatory frameworks and discusses how these norms might evolve in response to these threats.

Privatized Sovereignty is a must-read for scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners in international relations, security studies, and business law who are concerned with the implications of privatization, globalization, and the future of state sovereignty.