Canada’s Shadow Workforce: The Effects of Military Privatization on Political Behaviour and Authority within Liberal-Democratic States, and their Implications for International Security
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
This study looks at the effects of military privatization on political behaviour and authority within liberal-democratic states. In particular, amid a global growth in the private military industry, it examines how private contractors are perceived by the public, the mechanisms involved, and whether hiring them for military operations truly lowers political risks and masks state authority. These latter effects are often stated benefits of contracting out, but they are understudied in a Canadian context, despite having significant implications for democratic systems and the exercise of state power. To bridge this gap, this study develops a novel "symbolic capital typology" divided along three key dimensions – soldier/contractor, domestic/foreign, and combat/non-combat – to describe the expected relationships between different foreign policy actors and how they might be perceived by the public. It hypothesizes that contractors will be viewed differently than soldiers; this will stem from negative contractor perceptions and a lack of transparency, which reduce their "symbolic capital" relative to other foreign policy actors; and these differences will distort subsequent preferences and political outcomes by separating the public from the true costs or burdens of foreign policy decisions – an effect that lowers political risks and masks state authority. In testing these hypotheses, this study conducts a nationwide survey of almost 5,000 Canadians to examine actor perceptions and levels of transparency while also gauging their effects on foreign policy preferences, political risks, and state authority. It finds that while a simple soldier/contractor dichotomy is insufficient to account for the times in which the "symbolic weight" of these actors overlaps, generally contractors are still viewed far more negatively than soldiers. Actor-type, therefore, matters in public perceptions of foreign policy and in preference articulation, but this has limits. When controlling for transparency, negative contractor perceptions only have an effect on issues of contract spending and support for war, but this is not overly pronounced. Instead, if contractors lower political risks, this seems to stem less from negative perceptions of them being "guns for hire" and more from institutional factors that reduce their visibility and "symbolic weight" relative to soldiers, which has implications for both Canada and abroad.
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Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction machine sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Le volet Gemma est une étiquette directe du modèle pour chaque travail de la base, lue sur la notice réduite au titre. Le volet Codex est un classifieur appris des 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et calibré sur les taux pondérés de l'échantillon; les champs sans appui suffisant ne portent aucun appel Codex. Le mode candidate est l'union des deux volets; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont pas des étiquettes humaines.
Scores du classifieur distillé par catégorie (deux têtes)
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,001 | 0,006 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,009 | 0,004 |
| Communication savante | 0,003 | 0,001 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,006 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule source (Gemma direct ou Codex distillé), pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».