Deborah Avant
Biographic Data
| ID | 323036 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah Avant |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah |
| FAMILY NAME | Avant |
| SIGNATURE | AVANT D |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4881-2377 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 259 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The ambit of transitional justice
Between Probability and Possibility
Scholars endeavor to understand the world in order to make it better. To do that, they should pay attention not only to probability but also possibility. I argue that accepting, and centering, the uncertainty endemic to the human condition and human relations could lead to at least two productive shifts. First, it could encourage holding tensions between particularity and generalization, description and theorization, and complexity and simplicity…
The ethics of engaged scholarship in a complex world
Social scientists must grapple with how to pursue knowledge about an uncertain and complex world. This challenge is accentuated when scholars wish to engage responsibly with policy-makers and the public in the interests of social betterment. In this article, we use the scholarly literature on uncertainty and complexity to examine how these issues complicate the practice of engaged scholarship. We ground our analysis in interviews with publicly en…
Can CSR strategy mediate conflict over extraction? Evidence from two mines in Peru
Global Governance in a World of Change
Global governance has come under increasing pressure since the end of the Cold War. In some issue areas, these pressures have led to significant changes in the architecture of governance institutions. In others, institutions have resisted pressures for change. This volume explores what accounts for this divergence in architecture by identifying three modes of governance: hierarchies, networks, and markets. The authors apply these ideal types to d…
Pragmatism in IR
The contributors to this forum all draw significantly from pragmatist philosophy and social theory for making sense of international politics. Collectively, we affirm the value of pragmatist work beyond metatheory and methodology, both politically and epistemically—that is, as both a moral project and an explanatory one. Indeed, we are especially united on the notion that pragmatism “bridges” the divide between these things, and several contribut…
America's Pragmatic Role
What has made the United States a global leader? Though analysts often attribute American success to a combination of resources and ideas, a subtle undercurrent in these arguments points to pragmatism and the creativity it often generates as an important part of the story. First theorized by American philosophers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pragmatism emphasizes that creativity can reshape how we see norms and interests to ma…
Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence
Many view civil wars as violent contests between armed combatants. But history shows that community groups, businesses, NGOs, local governments, and even armed groups can respond to war by engaging in civil action. Characterized by a reluctance to resort to violence and a willingness to show enough respect to engage with others, civil action can slow, delay, or prevent violent escalations. This volume explores how people in conflict environments …
Political Institutions and Military Change
Even powerful states face disaster if their armies do not adapt military doctrine to meet new challenges. Comparing the cases of the United States Army in Vietnam and the British Army during the Boer War and the Malayan Emergency, Political Institutions and Military Change offers an account of the conditions that help shape doctrine within military organizations. Drawing on the new institutional economics, Deborah D. Avant assumes that actors at …
Special Issue on “American Bias”
A “Big Tent” Issue
This, our team's penultimate issue of the Journal of Global Security Studies, demonstrates the big tent we hoped for from the journal's start. It is big in both its demonstration of our growing backlog (we are trying to pack in as much as we can to give our successors a little more editing space) and in its showcasing of our substantive, methodological, and theoretical diversity. We believe the backlog and the different article orientations toget…
Exclusion and Inclusion in Global Security Studies
Journal Article Exclusion and Inclusion in Global Security Studies Get access Deborah Avant, Deborah Avant Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bear Braumoeller, Bear Braumoeller Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Erica Chenoweth, Erica Chenoweth Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sarah Croco, Sarah Croco Search for other works by this …
The Private Security Events Database
Since the 1990s, the private provision of military and security services has become a common feature of local, national, and transnational politics. The prevalence of private security has generated important questions about its consequences, but data to answer these questions are sparse. In this article, we introduce the Private Security Events Database (PSED) that traces the involvement of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in event…
Innovations in the Study of Nonviolent Resistance, Treaty-Making, IOs, and the Effects of Hegemony on Domestic Political Economy
Journal Article Innovations in the Study of Nonviolent Resistance, Treaty-Making, IOs, and the Effects of Hegemony on Domestic Political Economy Get access Journal of Global Security Studies, Volume 3, Issue 3, July 2018, Pages 249–250, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogy020 Published: 28 June 2018
Breadth, Conversation, and Controversy
The “big tent” mission of the Journal of Global Security Studies is well illustrated by this issue, as our first four articles explore issues from ontological security to cyber secrecy to sexual torture to traditional analyses of compellent threats. The next three articles illustrate the value of conversation between different parts of the field in their juxtaposition of arms control, humanitarianism, and empire; security governance and domestic …
Geopolitics and Oil, Insurgent Politics, Nuclear Politics, Basing Politics, and Norm Politics
This issue launches the third volume of the Journal of Global Security Studies. It begins with an article by Cullen Hendrix arguing that geopolitics conditioned the oil curse. Particularly, he claims that the negative impact oil production has on a country's democratic tendencies is less a timeless result of market dynamics and more a particular consequence of geopolitics in the transition from the Cold War. His reanalysis of data and case examin…
Different Pathways to Creative Research and an Experiment with Implications for “Bridging the Gap”
The research articles in this issue demonstrate different approaches to creative research in security studies. Our first article by Kathryn Alexander demonstrates the value of bringing insights from one field to another. She draws on findings from American politics on the importance of religiosity for policy attitudes to extrapolate an argument about state bellicosity relevant to international security. Building on Americanists’ arguments, she in…
Policy, Politics, Theory, and Practice
The contents of this issue tackle a number of problems relevant to public policy and academic theory alike. In the first article, Thomas Ambrosio weighs in on a topic that has dominated headlines in 2017: US-Russian relations. His analysis focuses on how the United States moved from viewing Russia as a potential partner in the first years of the 21st century to seeing it as a threat to US interests. Drawing on the record of executive branch testi…
Questioning the Obvious
The articles in this issue are joined by their insistence in pushing past common assumptions or truisms in global security. As they do, each analysis demonstrates new insights that should elicit debate and future research. The issue begins with an analysis that asks whether the internet requires hegemonic governance, rather than assuming that it does. Joshua Rovner and Tyler Moore examine the technical and political fallout from Stuxnet and the S…
The New Power Politics
Traditional analyses of global security cannot explain the degree to which there is “governance” of important security issues—from combatting piracy to curtailing nuclear proliferation to reducing the contributions of extractive industries to violence and conflict. They are even less able to explain why contemporary governance schemes involve the various actors and take the many institutional forms they do. Juxtaposing the insights of scholars wr…
Exploring Conflict Dynamics
One of the most important turns in security studies has been the turn to understanding the dynamics of contention, violence, and conflict. As several articles in the first special issue of JoGSS pointed out, the global nature of security studies has led to more actors and more complicated dynamics than have typically been assumed in the security studies field. In different ways, all of the articles in this issue highlight important—and often unde…
Piracy, Censorship, First Impressions, and Support for the Draft in the United States
The final issue of JoGSS’ first volume begins with paired articles on piracy and ends with a forum on censorship. These bracket an innovative argument about the importance of first impressions for threat perception and a careful empirical analysis of why support for the draft in the United States has waned. The articles in this issue showcase a wide variety of methods, many different theoretical starting points, and engage both contemporary and h…
States, Non-State Actors, and Their Implications for Ethics
Journal Article States, Non-State Actors, and Their Implications for Ethics Get access Deborah Avant, Deborah Avant Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Felix Berensköetter, Felix Berensköetter Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Erica Chenoweth, Erica Chenoweth Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Stuart Kaufman, Stuart Kaufman Search for…
Pragmatic Networks and Transnational Governance of Private Military and Security Services
In 2004 private military and security companies lacked effective transnational governance. Ten years later, however, an agreed-upon framework drew these services within established international law. It inspired various complementary non-binding instruments and instigated changes in government policy. Hegemonic-order theories, whether realist or liberal, would expect this change to reflect shifts in US preferences. But the United States displayed…
The New Power Politics
Pragmatic Networks and Transnational Governance of Private Military and Security Services
In 2004 private military and security companies lacked effective transnational governance. Ten years later, however, an agreed-upon framework drew these services within established international law. It inspired various complementary non-binding instruments and instigated changes in government policy. Hegemonic-order theories, whether realist or liberal, would expect this change to reflect shifts in US preferences. But the United States displayed…
From Mercenary to Citizen Armies
Mercenary armies went out of style in the nineteenth century; it became common sense that armies should be staffed with citizens. I argue that even though realist explanations focusing on the fighting prowess of citizen armies and sociological explanations focusing on the fit between citizen armies and prevailing ideas can rationalize this change, they cannot explain it. I examine, instead, the politics behind the new reliance on citizen armies a…
Are the reluctant warriors out of control? Why the U.S. military is averse to responding to post‐cold war low‐level threats
(1996). Are the reluctant warriors out of control? Why the U.S. military is averse to responding to post‐cold war low‐level threats. Security Studies: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 51-90
The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine
Journal Article The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine: Hegemons in Peripheral Wars Get access Deborah D. Avant Deborah D. Avant University at Albany State University of New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 37, Issue 4, December 1993, Pages 409–430, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600839 Published: 01 December 1993
Private Security and Democracy
Arguments about the importance of democracy for international behavior assume that states rely on military organizations rather than “hired guns.” With the growth of the private security market this assumption no longer holds true. Focusing on the United States, we use original data to compare the impacts of using private military/security forces and military forces on attributes identified as endemic to democracies: constitutionalism, transparen…
The Privatization of Security and Change in the Control of Force
Perhaps the most dramatic incursion of the private sector into public policy is in the realm of security. Though the legitimate use of force is presumed to be the realm of the state, during the 1990s and into the new century the private sector's role in security has mushroomed. When Sierra Leone faced an insurgency in 1995, Valentine Strasser's government hired Executive Outcomes, a South African security firm, to train and support its troops. Wh…
The Private Security Events Database
Since the 1990s, the private provision of military and security services has become a common feature of local, national, and transnational politics. The prevalence of private security has generated important questions about its consequences, but data to answer these questions are sparse. In this article, we introduce the Private Security Events Database (PSED) that traces the involvement of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in event…
The Implications of Marketized Security for IR Theory
Over the course of the last fifteen years states—along with companies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and others—have increasingly turned to markets rather than state-organized military hierarchies for security. This article puts forth hypotheses about how this marketization might affect three major literatures in international relations theory: the democratic peace, late state building, and theories of the frequency…
Military Contractors & the American Way of War
Contractors are deeply intertwined with the American military and U.S. foreign policy. Over half of the personnel the United States has deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 have been con- tractors. Their relationship with the U.S. government, the public, and domestic and international law differs from that of military personnel, and these differences pose both bene1⁄2ts and risks. America's use of private military and security companies (P…
Conflicting Indicators of 'Crisis' in American Civil-Military Relations
The indicators of the crisis in American civil-military relations can be disaggregated into three categories: (1) the level of military influence on policy; (2) the degree to which the military is representative of society; and (3) the level of civil-military tension. Behind each indicator is a different implicit theory about civil-military relations. These theories offer contradictory assessments about what we should want civil-military relation…
The Market for Force
The legitimate use of force is generally presumed to be the realm of the state. However, the flourishing role of the private sector in security over the last twenty years has brought this into question. In this book Deborah Avant examines the privatization of security and its impact on the control of force. She describes the growth of private security companies, explains how the industry works, and describes its range of customers – including sta…
The Privatization of Security
Private security companies
Although it was once assumed to be solely the province of the state, the private sector is increasingly involved in the use of force. Consider the recent experience in Iraq. When the Iraqi Army was
Expanding Global Military Capacity for Humanitarian Intervention
Michael E. O'HanlonWashington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. xiii, 125pp, US$46.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8157-6442-1), US$18.95 paper (ISBN 0-8157-6441-3)In a number of instances since the end of the Cold War, civil wars and other violent upheavals have elicited less than enthusiastic responses from the community. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, joins a variety of scholars who examine pra…
Conserving nature in the state of nature
Prevailing analyses of INGO influence have focused on their advocacy role, claimed that they are motivated by values and assumed state monopoly over legitimate coercive power. As INGOs increasingly implement policy where state power is weak or non-existent, their commitment to their mission frequently causes action that violates their proper role. This article examines one case to probe how the INGOs community responds when the principles to whic…
Mercenaries
Transnational organisations and security
The fields of international relations and criminology analyse security from different directions, but both have had a dominant focus on states and state agencies until recently. Even as they looked at a wider range of actors as security providers, an important category of security actors has not been analysed so far – ‘non-violent’ transnational organisations. Transnational non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and transnational corporations (TNC…
Contracting for Services in U.S. Military Operations
When the U.S. deploys its forces around the world, an increasingly important part of its operations is no longer managed by the U.S. military, per se, but rather by what some call contractors, others call private military and security companies, and still others call mercenaries. In this essay, I will briefly describe the private security industry and the larger global market for force that it is a part of and how the U.S. military's increasing r…
U.S. Military Attitudes Toward Post-Cold War Missions
In this article, we seek to determine whether officers support the post-Cold War's range of new missions and why. To this end, we examine the attitudes of U.S. officers at the command and staff colleges for each service branch. On average, we find that while officers support traditional missions more than new missions, they do support these new missions and believe they address the greatest dangers facing the U.S. We also find that officers are m…
The ethics of engaged scholarship in a complex world
Social scientists must grapple with how to pursue knowledge about an uncertain and complex world. This challenge is accentuated when scholars wish to engage responsibly with policy-makers and the public in the interests of social betterment. In this article, we use the scholarly literature on uncertainty and complexity to examine how these issues complicate the practice of engaged scholarship. We ground our analysis in interviews with publicly en…
Between Probability and Possibility
Scholars endeavor to understand the world in order to make it better. To do that, they should pay attention not only to probability but also possibility. I argue that accepting, and centering, the uncertainty endemic to the human condition and human relations could lead to at least two productive shifts. First, it could encourage holding tensions between particularity and generalization, description and theorization, and complexity and simplicity…
Pragmatism in IR
The contributors to this forum all draw significantly from pragmatist philosophy and social theory for making sense of international politics. Collectively, we affirm the value of pragmatist work beyond metatheory and methodology, both politically and epistemically—that is, as both a moral project and an explanatory one. Indeed, we are especially united on the notion that pragmatism “bridges” the divide between these things, and several contribut…
Exclusion and Inclusion in Global Security Studies
Journal Article Exclusion and Inclusion in Global Security Studies Get access Deborah Avant, Deborah Avant Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bear Braumoeller, Bear Braumoeller Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Erica Chenoweth, Erica Chenoweth Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sarah Croco, Sarah Croco Search for other works by this …
NGOs, Corporations and Security Transformation in Africa
Transnational non-state actors interested in maintaining a presence in parts of the world where the state is weak are an important part of the privatization of security that has not been well analyzed. In this article I lay out propositions about how an increasing role for non-state actors in security may transform the conceptualization of security and the use of violence more generally. I argue that international NGOs and transnational corporati…
The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine
Journal Article The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine: Hegemons in Peripheral Wars Get access Deborah D. Avant Deborah D. Avant University at Albany State University of New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 37, Issue 4, December 1993, Pages 409–430, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600839 Published: 01 December 1993
Military Readiness
Are the reluctant warriors out of control? Why the U.S. military is averse to responding to post‐cold war low‐level threats
(1996). Are the reluctant warriors out of control? Why the U.S. military is averse to responding to post‐cold war low‐level threats. Security Studies: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 51-90
Conflicting Indicators of 'Crisis' in American Civil-Military Relations
The indicators of the crisis in American civil-military relations can be disaggregated into three categories: (1) the level of military influence on policy; (2) the degree to which the military is representative of society; and (3) the level of civil-military tension. Behind each indicator is a different implicit theory about civil-military relations. These theories offer contradictory assessments about what we should want civil-military relation…
U.S. Military Attitudes Toward Post-Cold War Missions
In this article, we seek to determine whether officers support the post-Cold War's range of new missions and why. To this end, we examine the attitudes of U.S. officers at the command and staff colleges for each service branch. On average, we find that while officers support traditional missions more than new missions, they do support these new missions and believe they address the greatest dangers facing the U.S. We also find that officers are m…
From Mercenary to Citizen Armies
Mercenary armies went out of style in the nineteenth century; it became common sense that armies should be staffed with citizens. I argue that even though realist explanations focusing on the fighting prowess of citizen armies and sociological explanations focusing on the fit between citizen armies and prevailing ideas can rationalize this change, they cannot explain it. I examine, instead, the politics behind the new reliance on citizen armies a…
The Privatization of Security and Change in the Control of Force
Perhaps the most dramatic incursion of the private sector into public policy is in the realm of security. Though the legitimate use of force is presumed to be the realm of the state, during the 1990s and into the new century the private sector's role in security has mushroomed. When Sierra Leone faced an insurgency in 1995, Valentine Strasser's government hired Executive Outcomes, a South African security firm, to train and support its troops. Wh…
Conserving nature in the state of nature
Prevailing analyses of INGO influence have focused on their advocacy role, claimed that they are motivated by values and assumed state monopoly over legitimate coercive power. As INGOs increasingly implement policy where state power is weak or non-existent, their commitment to their mission frequently causes action that violates their proper role. This article examines one case to probe how the INGOs community responds when the principles to whic…
Expanding Global Military Capacity for Humanitarian Intervention
Michael E. O'HanlonWashington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. xiii, 125pp, US$46.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8157-6442-1), US$18.95 paper (ISBN 0-8157-6441-3)In a number of instances since the end of the Cold War, civil wars and other violent upheavals have elicited less than enthusiastic responses from the community. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, joins a variety of scholars who examine pra…
Mercenaries
The Market for Force
The legitimate use of force is generally presumed to be the realm of the state. However, the flourishing role of the private sector in security over the last twenty years has brought this into question. In this book Deborah Avant examines the privatization of security and its impact on the control of force. She describes the growth of private security companies, explains how the industry works, and describes its range of customers – including sta…
Private security companies
Although it was once assumed to be solely the province of the state, the private sector is increasingly involved in the use of force. Consider the recent experience in Iraq. When the Iraqi Army was
The Privatization of Security
The Implications of Marketized Security for IR Theory
Over the course of the last fifteen years states—along with companies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and others—have increasingly turned to markets rather than state-organized military hierarchies for security. This article puts forth hypotheses about how this marketization might affect three major literatures in international relations theory: the democratic peace, late state building, and theories of the frequency…
Contracting for Services in U.S. Military Operations
When the U.S. deploys its forces around the world, an increasingly important part of its operations is no longer managed by the U.S. military, per se, but rather by what some call contractors, others call private military and security companies, and still others call mercenaries. In this essay, I will briefly describe the private security industry and the larger global market for force that it is a part of and how the U.S. military's increasing r…
NGOs, Corporations and Security Transformation in Africa
Transnational non-state actors interested in maintaining a presence in parts of the world where the state is weak are an important part of the privatization of security that has not been well analyzed. In this article I lay out propositions about how an increasing role for non-state actors in security may transform the conceptualization of security and the use of violence more generally. I argue that international NGOs and transnational corporati…
Global Liberalism and Political Order
Private Security and Democracy
Arguments about the importance of democracy for international behavior assume that states rely on military organizations rather than “hired guns.” With the growth of the private security market this assumption no longer holds true. Focusing on the United States, we use original data to compare the impacts of using private military/security forces and military forces on attributes identified as endemic to democracies: constitutionalism, transparen…
Military Contractors & the American Way of War
Contractors are deeply intertwined with the American military and U.S. foreign policy. Over half of the personnel the United States has deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 have been con- tractors. Their relationship with the U.S. government, the public, and domestic and international law differs from that of military personnel, and these differences pose both bene1⁄2ts and risks. America's use of private military and security companies (P…
Transnational organisations and security
The fields of international relations and criminology analyse security from different directions, but both have had a dominant focus on states and state agencies until recently. Even as they looked at a wider range of actors as security providers, an important category of security actors has not been analysed so far – ‘non-violent’ transnational organisations. Transnational non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and transnational corporations (TNC…
The New Power Politics
The Return of the Public in Global Governance
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…
The New Power Politics
Traditional analyses of global security cannot explain the degree to which there is “governance” of important security issues—from combatting piracy to curtailing nuclear proliferation to reducing the contributions of extractive industries to violence and conflict. They are even less able to explain why contemporary governance schemes involve the various actors and take the many institutional forms they do. Juxtaposing the insights of scholars wr…
Exploring Conflict Dynamics
One of the most important turns in security studies has been the turn to understanding the dynamics of contention, violence, and conflict. As several articles in the first special issue of JoGSS pointed out, the global nature of security studies has led to more actors and more complicated dynamics than have typically been assumed in the security studies field. In different ways, all of the articles in this issue highlight important—and often unde…
Piracy, Censorship, First Impressions, and Support for the Draft in the United States
The final issue of JoGSS’ first volume begins with paired articles on piracy and ends with a forum on censorship. These bracket an innovative argument about the importance of first impressions for threat perception and a careful empirical analysis of why support for the draft in the United States has waned. The articles in this issue showcase a wide variety of methods, many different theoretical starting points, and engage both contemporary and h…
Political science (45 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Economics (20 works) · Political economy (18 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (12 works)