ABSTRACT

This chapter begins by developing a principled critique of the case put forward by economic liberals and libertarians for allowing the market an extended role in the allocation of security provision. It assesses the merits and shortcomings of the dominant alternative discourse that seeks to subject the security market to specific kinds of legal regulation; before reflecting on how the provision of security might be reconfigured in ways that accord greater priority to questions of equity and democratic deliberation. The chapter discusses some of the normative considerations raised by private security; reflecting, in particular, on the meanings that security has as a social good within liberal democratic societies, and considering the criteria that ought to be employed to decide how that good is distributed and regulated. The principal reason supporting this interpretation is that security provision constitutes an integral part of the ‘rights and goods enjoyed in common’ that help generate people’s sense of a ‘citizen identity’.