2026 European Security Studies Conference

Session

Beyond the State

BESTA

12 Jun 2026, 16:00

Stockholm University

Conveners

Beyond the State

• Mark Rhinard (Stockholm University)

Description

Private and extra-legal actors are at the center of politics today. A proliferation of these actors — including mercenaries, private security companies, cartels, gangs, local militias, and rebels, among others — has been identified as the central source of the state’s loss of monopoly over the use of violence and influence over its territories and communities. Throughout the world, these actors have been fulfilling political functions through the use and threat of violence and by cultivating complex and overlapping relationships with each other, local communities, and the state. The behaviors of these actors and interactions between them, local communities, and the state have significant political and social consequences that we are only beginning to understand. The panel aims to explore these complex links and interactions at the local, national and transnational levels. It aims to bring scholars seeking to understand the history, dynamics, and policy implications of this increasingly complicated landscape. It intends to address the following questions: How and why do extra-legal actors use violence, and what are the consequences of this violence? How and why do these same actors seek to provide goods and services to communities and create social and political orders? How have states responded to these actors, and why have they sometimes chosen to collaborate with and support them and others to combat them fiercely? How have citizens and local communities responded to these actors? What moral and legal challenges do these interactions imply? The panel welcomes diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to the connections between private and public spheres in international security.

488. Beyond the State: Voluntary Civilian Pro-Defence Organisations and Security Governance in Georgia

Rusudan Zabakhidze (Swedish Defence University)

12/06/2026, 16:00

Beyond the State

Paper Abstract (Closed Panels)

This paper explores how the resurgence of interstate war in Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reconfigured relations between defence and society, with particular attention to the role of voluntary pro-defence organisations in security governance. Over the past decade, states historically alert to Russian imperialism have increasingly embraced comprehensive defence...

372. From Privateers to Private Maritime Security: Irregular Maritime Actors and the Long History of Delegated Security at Sea

Pieter Zhao (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

12/06/2026, 16:10

Beyond the State

Paper Abstract (Closed Panels)

This paper examines the re-emergence of private maritime security companies (PMSCs) in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, situating their rise within both recent developments in maritime security and a broader historical context. Since the early 2000s, PMSCs have become a visible feature of global shipping security, particularly in response to piracy and other low-intensity...

415. Criminalising Solidarity: Border Securitisation, Non-State Actors, and Vernacular Humanitarianism in Europe

Mia Abdić

12/06/2026, 16:20

Beyond the State

Paper Abstract (Closed Panels)

Border securitisation, externalisation, and the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance in migration contexts have become increasingly prominent features of European migration governance. This paper explores the phenomenon of the criminalisation of solidarity through a comparative overview of these practices in France, Italy, Greece, and Spain, alongside the liminal case of Serbia as a...

484. The Strategic Logic of Violence During Negotiations

Johannes Lucht (ETH Zurich)

12/06/2026, 16:30

Beyond the State

Paper Abstract (Closed Panels)

Negotiations are essential to ending armed conflict, yet we know surprisingly little about how violence evolves during the negotiation process itself. While existing research demonstrates that negotiations are essential for ending armed conflicts, most studies treat “negotiations” as a single event rather than a dynamic, multi-round process. This paper examines how armed groups behave across...