Holding private military and security companies to account: from legal to democratic accountability

On 2 May 2017, Jelle Leunis obtained his PhD in political science from the Free University of Brussels (VUB) on the accountability of private military and security companies (PMSCs), a topic that in this past has proved of interest to UCall too. The full title of the thesis is: ‘The regulatory governance of armed force: Holding private military and security companies to account’. I had the honor to be a member of the examination committee. In this post, I set out, and subscribe to Leunis’s view that the fetishization of legal mechanisms to hold PMSCs to account has overshadowed the question of how to involve citizens in PMSC-based security governance. Enhancing the political-democratic accountability of the use of PMSCs has obvious merit, but further research will be needed regarding how such accountability could be enhanced for affected populations in conflict areas.