Is someone’s mercenary another’s contractor? American, British, and Russian private security companies in US and UK parliamentary debates

Scholars disagree on whether an anti-mercenary norm exists, whether today’s private military and security companies (PMSCs) fall under its scope, and whether the privatization of security erode parliamentary control over the use of force. We contribute to these debates by conducting a content analysis of parliamentary debates on PMSCs in the UK and US (2001–2019). Our results show that American and British politicians engage in a vehement, bipartisan criticism of Russian PMSCs, whose employees are consistently stigmatized as ruthless mercenaries irrespective of the activities they perform. Criticism of their own government’s use of PMSCs, by contrast, is more nuanced and largely made by liberal and social democratic politicians only. These findings support the argument that an anti-mercenary norm narrowly focused on for-profit providers of combat still exists, but also highlights that its interpretation is biased by nationalism and politico-economic preferences, which shape the frequency and nature of politicians’ stigmatization of private security providers