Doctoral Project
The Privatisation of Force and its Impact on Peace- and Statebuilding
The increasing tendency to outsource the use of force, both by state and non-state actors, has fundamentally changed the nature of conflicts in the 21st century. While the strategic and legal dimensions of contracting private military and security support have been widely studied, the impact on local socio-political dynamics remain underexplored. This doctoral project investigates how the privatisation of force is perceived by conflict-affected populations, whether they trust private combatants, and ultimately how these perceptions affect peace- and statebuilding efforts. Building on principal-agent and credible commitment theories, the study contends that attributes of private and irregular combatants - such as their motivation, affiliation, or type of service – shape the legitimacy of and trust in private combatants, and thereby also in the hiring authority. Methodologically, the project will deploy a mixed method approach, including a discourse analysis of common narratives around private military activity, followed by a survey-based conjoint experiment. The main case of the study will be Nagorno-Karabakh, which offers a multidimensional example to investigate how privatisation of force plays out on the ground in conflicts. The dissertation will have an interdisciplinary character by contributing to peace and conflict studies, political science and area studies.
Curriculum Vitae
Merritt Fedzin is a doctoral researcher at the department of politics at the Leibniz-Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from the Hertie School in Berlin, and a Bachelor’s Degree in European Studies from Otto-von-Guericke-University in Magdeburg. Merritt has specialized in international security and conflict studies, and her regional interest stretches from Eastern Europe to Western and Central Asia.
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