Piracy studies: Academic responses to the return of an ancient menace

Maritime piracy and its community of inquiry

Maritime piracy has returned as a major concern for international security. While armed robbery, as well as hostage- and ransom-taking at sea have been an integral part of the history of seafare and maritime trade, until recently piracy was no longer considered a problem demanding major political action. Even as late as the 1990s, piracy was approached either as a historical concern or as an issue for port regulations and port safety. This evaluation of piracy has changed considerably. Navies worldwide now understand the fight against piracy as one of their main concerns. The United Nations (UN) Security Council, NATO and the EU recognize piracy as a major problem of international security. Numerous international and regional organizations, including the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the African Union (AU) and the International Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), are developing and implementing counter-piracy plans and programmes. The increase in piracy in three geographical areas has spurred this development. First, piracy in South East Asia, notably the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea, has been considered problematic since the 1990s. Second, the coast of Somalia and the Horn of Africa have received increasing attention from 2007. Finally, the West African coast, notably the Gulf of Benin, became the third major trouble spot as of 2011. In all cases, major international shipping routes have been threatened and an extensive set of regional and international institutions have developed their responses to piracy accordingly.

Concurrent with the increase in piracy incidents and the intensity of international activities, academic attention to piracy has been significantly growing. With counter-piracy policy on the rise, an academic field of ‘piracy studies’ has emerged, which interprets the return and persistence of piracy and provides expertise for counter-piracy actors as well as a wider public. In his classic, The Public and its Problems, John Dewey (1929/1984) remarked that the rise of a political problem usually gives rise to a community of inquiry aiming to fathom responses. With the rise of piracy as a political problem, and following Dewey to the letter, the interdisciplinary project of ‘piracy studies’ is emerging. Dewey suggested that one of the primary functions of a community of inquiry is to translate an ‘indeterminate situation’ into a ‘problematic situation’, and into more specific ‘problems’ that can be dealt with (cf. Brown, 2009: 152–158; Campbell, 1995: 193–200). Hence, a community of inquiry develops, often in close collaboration with practitioners, interpretations of situations, problematizations, solutions and coping mechanisms that can master specified problems. Piracy studies can be considered as an attempt to translate the indeterminate situation of growing violence and crime at sea into the more specific problems of piracy, and assist in the development of coping mechanisms for these problems.

The term ‘piracy studies’ was originally coined by Derek Johnson and Erika Pladet (2003). They introduced the term to outline the agenda of studying piracy and to plea for more academic attention to the phenomenon and the problems it causes. In the early 2000s ‘piracy studies’ was still a niche project of maritime and area specialists, but this situation has changed considerably. The number of researchers interested in piracy has multiplied; academic publications have mushroomed. At the 2011 annual conference of the International Studies Association, more than 30 papers on piracy were presented. A recent bibliography (Bueger, 2012; cf. Menefee and Mejia, 2012) counts over 200 articles and books published recently. These studies have translated the indeterminate situation of growing non-state violence at sea in quite different ways.

Different disciplinary perspectives and paradigms have provided frameworks for translating piracy. Scholars from security and strategic studies have turned piracy into a problem of threats and strategic responses (e.g. Germond and Smith, 2009; Murphy, 2010; Vreÿ, 2009). They describe piracy as a threat to referent objects such as the economy, trade, free navigation at sea, populations dependent on humanitarian deliveries, or the environment. They also debate piracy as a problem that exacerbates security challenges such as terrorism or failed states. Legal scholars have expanded the provisions of international and national laws available to deal with piracy and translated piracy into a problem of (international) crime that requires the advancement of legal and law enforcement apparatuses (Azubuike, 2009; Guilfoyle, 2010; Menefee, 1990; Treves, 2009). They address the conceptual and practical problems of prosecuting piracy suspects or the harmonization of laws. Economists and the technical disciplines, such as computer sciences, have approached piracy as a management and technical challenge. Piracy is studied as a problem of efficiency, and research concerns the optimization of shipping routes, transit corridors, surveillance methods, self-defensive measures of vessels or the outline of innovative insurance solutions (e.g. Bendall, 2010; Bensassi and Martínez-Zarzoso, 2012; Jakob et al., 2011). Critical researchers from various disciplines including anthropology and criminology, peace research or development studies have addressed piracy as form of local organized crime or social banditry (e.g. Hansen, 2009; Klein, 2013; Vagg, 1995). Others have problematized piracy as a question of structures and ‘root causes’. Factors that have been identified to give rise to piracy include lawlessness, weak governance, official corruption or poverty and unemployment in the countries that host pirates (e.g. Coggins, 2010; Hastings, 2009; Samatar et al., 2010). Sociologists and psychologists emphasize the humanitarian consequences of piracy and study forms of assistance to the victims of piracy, such as maritime professionals, in coping with their experience (e.g. Kleinman, 2011).

While this list is certainly not exhaustive, it demonstrates the different academic problematizations of piracy, as well as the variety within the project of piracy studies. While working under divergent perspectives and paradigms, piracy studies achieves coherence through the shared interest in understanding piracy and developing responses to it through the use of a scientific method. Piracy studies inter-disciplinary, in so far as it is studied from different disciplinary perspectives, while no discipline has become hegemonic. However, there is also an increasing cross-fertilization between disciplines, spurred by the motivation of understanding the problem holistically.

Three main concerns have so far attracted most scholarly interest: the study of causes, organizational structures and practices of piracy, the institutional responses to piracy, as well as attempts to historicize and deconstruct the wider politics of piracy. These three areas constitute the main pillars of piracy studies. This review is structured accordingly, and I evaluate the progress and the current state of knowledge within each of these sub-fields. I conclude by discussing the relation between the three pillars and in offering a précis of the lessons learned from piracy studies.

Causes of piracy and the analysis of piracy practices

Inquiries on the phenomenon of piracy constitute the first pillar of piracy studies. Investigations of the conditions that give rise to piracy, and how piracy practice is organized, carried out and anchored in local contexts, leads to knowledge important for developing adequate responses to piracy, as well as preventing it. While the majority of early piracy studies focused on documenting and examining the incidences of piracy, knowledge about the factors giving rise to piracy is meanwhile well advanced.

In an early seminal contribution to piracy studies, John Vagg identified three factors driving East Asian piracy: economic dislocation, ‘recognition of piracy as an available cultural or subcultural possibility’, and opportunity (Vagg, 1995: 63). Drawing upon field research in East Asia, Vagg suggested that the first factor provides two reasons why a ‘local population would tolerate pirates’, that is ‘intimidation of the populace and economic incentives’ (Vagg, 1995: 67). He describes the second factor as a deeper one, which allows for the idea that ‘raiding ships at sea is culturally “thinkable”’ (Vagg, 1995: 67). ‘Opportunity’, according to Vagg, refers to official, administrative corruption, which tolerates piracy and reduces the risk of getting caught.

Contemporary studies have approached the drivers of piracy by large n quantitative analysis and have more closely zoomed in on two of Vagg’s factors, namely economic incentives and opportunity. In one of the first quantitative studies, Donna Nincic (2008) demonstrated that a vast majority (98%) of piracy attacks occurred in the waters of failed states, or in proximity to them. Nincic identified the presence of ships (the length of the country’s coastline, the number of major ports, and the presence of hub ports or the vicinity to major sea-lines of communication), as well as intra-state competition over the monopoly of violence, as the main factors. Justin Hastings (2009) specified such results, showing the factors that cause variation in piracy. In highlighting the importance of infrastructure for pirate operations (notably access to markets), Hastings demonstrated that ‘state failure is associated with less logistically sophisticated hijackings (kidnappings for ransom), while state weakness encourages more sophisticated attacks (those where the ship and cargo are seized and sold)’ (Hastings, 2009: 213).

More recent studies by Bridget Coggins (2010), Anja Shortland and Sarah Percy (2011) have further refined such results in moving from the state to the regional and village level, and in further differentiating between levels of governance. These studies primarily draw on the case of Somalia, and demonstrate that piracy activities prosper in areas which are relatively stable, but also corrupt, and which have a sufficient level of infrastructure and resources. Hence, it is not a high level of anarchy, absence of authority or poverty which allows for piracy to prosper, but an ideal mix of weak governance, corruption and sufficient infrastructure. What has been largely left out of the picture is one of the crucial factors that Vagg (1995) introduced: the cultural acceptability of piracy. In quantitative studies, factors rendering piracy culturally thinkable have largely been equated with domestic economic structures, natural resources or the skills of the population. Phrased otherwise, fishing nations or regions are more likely to produce piracy. Arguably, this is a quite simplistic understanding of culture. Instead, richer understandings of culture will lead us to investigate historical patterns (are regions with a history in piracy more likely to produce it?) or cultural acceptability as an aspect of justification (how is piracy turned into an accepted practice?).

Murphy (2011) contributes to this field of inquiry by delivering a thick, qualitative and current historical analysis of the emergence of piracy in Somalia. He has focused on the local conditions that gave rise to piracy, as well as the interactions between piracy, governance in Somalia and international interventions. He is not after the factors that cause or drive piracy, but rather he investigates the actors which created the conditions for piracy. He substantiates the claims of quantitative studies, and adds to them in providing the mundane details of the rise of piracy in Somalia, and by showing how piracy became an acceptable practice in the country. Murphy demonstrates that Somalia is a country without government, but is not ungoverned. Rather than a state, governance was in the hand of various political entities, including the sub-regional governments of Puntland, clans and religious leaders, as well as different institutions such as the officially recognized trans-federal government. Considering these governance structures, Murphy argues that the failed state metaphor is of little help. He documents the evolution of piracy, and shows that pirates are learning actors, who have increasingly learned how to turn piracy into a profitable business: from ad hoc operations to professionalized forms of organized crime. In doing so, Murphy successfully challenges the common wisdom that state failure is a meaningful explanatory factor for piracy. Instead, the local actors that have produced the conditions for the evolution of piracy have to be closely scrutinized. The only limitation of his account is that he draws solely on secondary data without always fully reflecting on the validity of his evidence.

Future research in the first pillar will have to continue zooming in on the micro-dimension of piracy. Drawing on contributions such as Murphy (2011), it should seek to address questions such as: why do local communities support or participate in piracy; how do pirates learn and advance their strategies; how is the idea of practising piracy anchored in local traditions; and how is the concept of piracy travelling to different parts of the world? Such empirical knowledge will then also assist in enriching the data basis for large sample size statistical analysis and formulating new hypotheses.

The current counter-piracy regime

The second pillar of piracy studies comprises research that focuses on the international response, criticizes it and aims to develop the repertoire of counter-piracy policies further. A large share of contemporary piracy studies falls into this category, with legal questions having centre stage. Research in this pillar is crucial to provide orientation to counter-piracy practitioners, address coordination problems, identify gaps in the response, and study the effects of the counter-piracy regime for global security governance and international relations at large.

Over the past five years, counter-piracy policy, notably in response to Somali piracy, has developed into a ‘complex organizational field’ in which different state and non-state actors and international organizations work and compete (Bueger, 2013). The UN Security Council has been active in the matter since 2008: a contact group has been set up at the UN; over 30 states contribute naval vessels or equipment to counter-piracy; several military operations in the Gulf of Aden patrol the sea, interrupt pirates and arrest them if possible; and over 1000 piracy suspects are awaiting trial or have already been prosecuted. In Somalia and the East African region, major capacity development programmes have been launched that aim at developing law enforcement in the region and increasing prison capacities. Awareness campaigns, rehabilitation and alternative livelihood projects are implemented in Somalia.

Kraska (2011), as well as Geiss and Petrig (2011), provide essential assistance in disentangling this very complex organizational field. Geiss and Petrig contribute with an accessible discussion of the legal regimes that pertain to piracy and the intricate practical problems within it, while Kraska takes a broader perspective in discussing legal resources along with the broader repertoire of diplomatic, corporative and military responses to piracy.

Geiss and Petrig (2011) conducted a comprehensive survey of the legal resources and the institutional challenges of counter-piracy. In this survey, they document the breadth of legal documents relevant in detailing the history of the law of counter-piracy, starting from the League of Nations and the enforcement powers originating in different legal regimes. This includes resources such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (SUA) convention, Human Rights Law and UN Security Council Resolutions 1846 and 1851. They also illuminate the debate on the response of core contemporary legal challenges to piracy, including questions of prosecution, jurisdiction, venues and transfer of piracy suspects from arrest nations to prosecuting nations. The last question of transfer protocols is crucial, given that the vast majority of patrolling naval states has hesitated to initiate criminal procedures and that there is a clear tendency towards regionalizing the problem. Geiss and Petrig have provided a comprehensive overview that demonstrates that a sufficient legal regime to counter-piracy exists, but vast legal problems in implementation and alignment of laws persist. If anything, Geiss and Petrig’s account is limited by its understanding of counter-piracy as a mainly technical legal problem, without paying sufficient attention to the political and geo-strategic dynamics underlying it.

Kraska’s (2011) broader perspective has partially helped to overcome this gap as he has situated the legal dimension in the larger strategic context. In his review, Kraska takes a historical account, emphasising key events and documents. He situates contemporary counter-piracy in a context spanning from antiquity and discusses different types of institutional responses (including corporate, strategic, legal and diplomatic ones). Industry responses include the development of tools such as best management practices to deter piracy, and the ongoing debates in the IMO. Kraska focuses on naval strategy by analyzing the US discourse on maritime security and counter-piracy and studying the creation of operations such as the Combined Maritime Task Forces, Operation Ocean Shields, and the EU’s Operation Atalanta. He introduces the basics of the legal regime and discusses how prosecution can be organized internationally. Moreover, he provides a detailed history of diplomatic initiatives, focusing on the question of how piracy triggered international collaboration in the frame of the UN Security Council, as well as on IMO-sponsored regional fora, such as the Djibouti Code of Conduct process. In summary, Kraska has provided an almost evolutionary account of the development of a counter-piracy regime. By his focus on core events, his story is one of continuous progress with little space for drawbacks, disjunctions or political struggles in developing the counter-piracy regime.

Kraska, as well as Geiss and Petrig, have provided important general overviews of counter-piracy policies. Also useful as introductory textbooks to the field, they have disentangled the complex responses mixing international and national dimensions. Both contributions, however, tend to be limited by their legal perspective. The underlying assumption is that the challenges of counter-piracy governance are mainly questions of coordination, harmonization or efficiency that can be addressed on a technical level. However, counter-piracy governance is also a field of contradictions, competition and struggles. As with other international domains, it requires the analysis of authority relations, power effects and the struggles within the counter-piracy field. While this is one dimension that requires further attention in the second pillar, there are also a number of policy-related questions which have not been studied sufficiently (cf. Bueger et al., 2011; Struett et al., 2012). These include, for example, the interaction between national, regional and international actors. It also includes the often forgotten land side of counter-piracy policies. Moreover, more generic questions need to be addressed as well. This includes scrutinizing the political dynamics of counter-piracy and investigating how counter-piracy has broader effect on regional and global security relations. What are, for instance, the consequences of counter-piracy for security alignments in piracy-infested regions, or even on a global scale?

Theorizing piracy

The third pillar of piracy studies comprises works that contextualize contemporary piracy in a broader historical development, deconstruct the concept of piracy, and discuss the normative dilemmas underlying piracy and international responses. Such works fall mainly in the realm of political, legal and economic theory, but history is crucial for piracy studies in several senses. First, it raises awareness that piracy is not a new phenomenon and connects the experiences of historical piracy to its contemporary form. Second, it allows for contemplation of foundational problems entailed in piracy, thus addressing issues such as how piracy shapes understandings of global order, the concept of sovereignty, the constitution of international law and non-sovereign spaces, the importance of global circulation and trade in a capitalist age, and what constitutes legitimate violence. In doing so the third pillar links piracy studies to the concerns of other broader intellectual domains.

Among the first to recognize the importance of piracy for the formation of the modern international system, Janice Thomson (1994) argued that the problem of piracy was foundational for demarcating a space of legitimate violence as the monopoly of the state. State sovereignty became defined as the ability to eliminate private, non-regular armies such as pirates. Therefore, piracy was a core category in the formation of the modern international system of sovereign states. Others have shown how ideas developed within historical piracy organizations, and how these have shaped contemporary understandings of democracy, organization and social movements. Land (2007), for instance, argued that pirates of the ‘golden age’ developed an autonomous, radically democratic, anarchistic form of social organization that stood as a challenge to the dominant social order of the time and that these forms are represented in present day piracy. Others theorize that contemporary responses to piracy are a paradigmatic case for contemporary governance. For instance, Lobo-Guerrero (2008) has shown how the governance of piracy by private security actors (insurance companies) is symptomatic for how, in a neo-liberal age, risks are handled, and global circulation as the condition of possibility for a liberal way of life becomes securitized. These are only some of the contributions that document the deeper constellation of which the concept and problem of piracy is part.

Heller-Roazen (2009) has made a major contribution to this discourse by offering the most comprehensive historical account of what he calls the ‘piratical paradigm’ to date. In his account, he shows how a piratical paradigm has existed throughout history and is at the roots of universalist political thought. To do so he has mastered an impressive arsenal of texts and authoritative thinkers, from Roman legal codes, Homeric epics, and the emergence of the law of nations, to German idealist philosophy and the modern history of warfare. He argues that pirates represent the universal foe throughout history. Heller-Roazen suggests that piracy is a paradigm insofar that it involves core characteristics. It evolves in a region in which exceptional rules apply, such as the high sea or international airspace, and it involves agents which display an antagonism of a general or universal kind, as given in the title of ‘enemy of all’. In consequence, piracy is a problem that brings about ‘confusion and, in the most extreme cases, the collapse of the distinction between criminal and political categories’ (2009: 11). This confusion leads to difficulties in finding measures against piracy, since they ‘must involve the measures used in prosecuting both belligerents and criminals: procedures of external relations and of internal security, technologies of politics, as well as of police’. Tracing these characteristics throughout history, Heller-Roazen reveals how piracy was and is a fundamental problem for creating modern political orders, and explains how the hybrid character of piracy makes it an intractable problem. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, Heller-Roazen ends his historical reconstruction with the 1985 Achille Laura incident, without giving us more precise clues on how contemporary counter-piracy in Somalia or East Asia fits into this overall picture.

In a similar vein, Colas and Mabee (2010a) have contributed to the understanding of piracy through a historical and theoretical discussion of the development of private violence. Their discussion investigates different forms of private violence, including pirates and privateers, smugglers and warlords, and private security companies. These different forms of private violence reveal different relationships between force, territory and authority. At the core of their volume is the deconstruction of the private–public and state–non-state distinction. The presumption is that ‘there is no such thing as public or private violence. There is only violence that is made “public” and violence that is made “private”.’ (Owen, 2010: 18) Hence, it is important to trace ‘how public–private distinctions shift and change as an effect of political power’ (Owens, 2010: 19). The authors situate piracy in the discussion of non-state violence and show how private ocean-borne violence is related to political power and imperial projects. Three chapters of the volume explicitly address cases of piracy – French privateers in Norwegian waters, 18th-century piracy in the Atlantic, and Piracy in the Malacca Straights – and Colas and Mabee conclude that ‘phenomena such as piracy and privateering […] were not simply incidental to the unfolding of modern warfare, statebuilding, the world market and international revolution. They were intrinsic to the genesis and development of these structures of modern international relations’ (2010b: 104). They are, however, also clear that historical piracy has little in common with contemporary piracy. Colas and Mabee (2010b: 105) argue that ‘there are plainly some family resemblances with the pirates of the ‘golden age’’. The argument is a powerful corrective for contemporary counter-piracy discourse, which remains overcrowded with questionable historical analogies.

In summary, research in the third pillar of piracy studies is strong in situating the contemporary counter-piracy developments in a long-term perspective, and in connecting historical and contemporary experience. It is certainly not the strength of this pillar to propose or suggest coping mechanisms for contemporary piracy. However, such research is instrumental for understanding the problematization of piracy and its hidden paradoxes and controversies. Hence, it will remain an ongoing challenge to relate these more abstract and general discussions to the study of contemporary piracy and counter-piracy practice. Studies on contemporary (counter-)piracy that focus on issues of authority, power, violence and control can gain much from this third pillar.

Inquiry: the agenda of piracy studies

In exploring the three main pillars of piracy studies (practice of piracy, political responses and theorizing piracy), it can be seen that researchers have made significant contributions in interpreting the problem of piracy. They have developed knowledge which simultaneously contributes to scholarly agendas – such as the study of the emergence of transnational threats, the study of global and regional security governance, and the relation between private violence and political order – as well as put forward claims and perspectives valuable for the practitioners of counter-piracy.

Piracy is a common concern for different disciplines, and although this review has premiered the discussions within socio-political analysis, the study of piracy is an interdisciplinary project, where researchers share a common concern. It is in this sense that piracy studies can be characterized as a community of inquiry. Members of a community of inquiry bring a scientific attitude to the problematic situation. Theory and methods are understood as tools to address the problematic situation. Although piracy studies researchers use very different theories and methods, and have different understandings of them, they share the willingness and belief to tackle the problematic situation in using scientific methods. Understanding piracy studies as a community of inquiry foregrounds interdisciplinarity and the importance of collaborations between various practitioners, experts and scientists. It highlights that academic research does not have to justify its value through the distance to practice, but can do so by seeking proximity to the practical worlds of experience. However, as this review has shown, piracy studies is not ‘problem-solving research’, it does question the frames of reference, discourses and world views of elites. Nonetheless, in taking a critical stance and in stressing the importance of reflexivity and deconstruction, it is research that resonates with practitioners beyond the academic community.

Hence, there might be an important general lesson from piracy studies, namely regarding how new projects of research emerge and how research organizes itself to be interdisciplinary, practice-oriented and critical. Interdisciplinarity, practice orientation and critique are not mutually exclusive objectives; rather, they complement each other. The broader policy lessons of piracy studies concern how problems emerging from a distant place are to be approached and how maritime space will be governed in the future. Scholars of piracy studies emphasize that piracy will not disappear in the next couple of years. Indeed, the message of the success of Somali pirates sent around the world makes it likely that piracy will increase, whether it is piracy in East and West Africa or in entirely different regions.