Subcontracting Coercion: The Case of Immigration Enforcement in Malaysia.

In the developed and developing world, states are increasingly subcontracting security and other services traditionally associated with state sovereignty to private companies and private voluntary organizations (Singer 2003; Avant 2005). These private actors are playing emerging roles in situations where states and even multinational organizations are unable or unwilling to govern or perform particular public functions (Keohane and Nye 2000). This subcontracting of security is a particularly puzzling phenomenon in Southeast Asia, where states traditionally have been reluctant to compromise sovereignty and have been hesitant to privatize certain industries. To explain the dependent variable, the privatization of particular security functions in Indonesia and Malaysia, I broadly draw on new institutionalism and treat security as an institution. I then test two competing approaches, one reflecting a rationalist (principal-agent) explanation and another drawing on sociological institutionalism. I find that principal-agent approaches are better able to explain the initial steps to privatize certain state functions. But importantly, I note that such approaches miss important symbolic and social aspects to privatizing security that sociological institutionalism highlights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]