Public-Private Cooperation in Global Security Governance – Entanglement, Infrastructure and the Affordances of Fundamental Rights

Abstract

This chapter traces the many entanglements between international organisations and private actors in the space of global security governance. By analyzing the controversies surrounding the revised legal mandate of Europol and the contribution of private actors in countering terrorism online, the chapter describes three modalities of this entanglement: (i) the role of private actors as sites of data collection and providers of sources of information that are increasingly relied upon by international institutions, (ii) the enrolment of private platforms in the implementation of governance projects by international organizations, and (iii) the attunement of such governance projects to the experimental, opportunistic and flexible logic of tech companies and platforms – what Fleur Johns has described as a ‘lean start up’ mentality. Having traced these multiple points of influence, interaction and interdependence, the chapter further proposes an infrastructural approach to the study of such public-private cooperation. This implies a recognition of how law and materiality are entangled in the production of social order, and an attentiveness to the role of digital infrastructures and socio-technical protocols in redrawing the public-private divide and constituting, mediating and materialising the exercise of international institutional authority. These observations crystalize in an urgent call to direct our thinking on rights and regulation towards these infrastructural formations and the political affordances that they entail.

Keywords: International Organisations, Europol, GIFCT, Algorithmic Governance, Infrastructure