Governing airport security between the market and the public good

Security Governance between Necessary Virtues and Neutral Nodes

Security and how it becomes enacted in contemporary societies has come a long way. Thinking about security often carries the notion that the state has been responsible for, and in fact has been in charge of, the provision thereof throughout history (Garland, 1996: 448). Yet still, the last couple of decades have brought about a considerable change of the role of the state. In short, liberal modes of government have enabled security provision that “will seek to cooperate with, contract out or enter into partnership with the agencies, groups and bodies of civil society” (Dean, 2002: 42). This “transformation of policing” (Bayley and Shearing, 1996) along the lines of neoliberal economic theory must arguably be conceptualized as an ongoing phenomenon that can be traced way back (Jones and Newburn, 2002). However, scholars have been unanimous about the accelerated dynamics in this change and the rise of the private security sector.

Empirical insights into the formal re-organization of police work and ensuing forms of “managerialism”, “consumerism” and “promotionalism” that stand as emblematic for the commodification of security (Loader, 1999), research into the emergence of new spatial setups such as gated communities and other forms of private property as well as hybrid spaces of “mass private property” (Shearing and Stenning, 1983) that are often patrolled by private security companies, and academic engagement with the changing dynamics of cooperation between multiple public and private security agencies have been along the major lines of inquiry. On a more general level, and in line with those tendencies, a shift from traditional repressive policing toward preventive and risk-based forms of policing (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997; Feeley and Simon, 1992) and an increased use or even lead of technology have been pointed out (De Pauw et al., 2011; Marx, 1988). As Garland (2001: 4) summarizes what is at stake:

private prisons, victim impact statements, punishments in the community, “quality of life” policing, restorative justice – these and dozens of other developments lead us into unfamiliar territory where the ideological lines are far from clear and where the old assumptions are an unreliable guide.

In normative terms, two major trajectories can be identified that theorize the shift from a supposed state monopoly of security toward contemporary assemblages that consist of a multitude of both state and non-state actors. Scholars who promote the incorporation of non-state actors in security provision are generally skeptical when it comes to the suitability of the state as the primary institution for often delicate security tasks, given that public bodies are believed to be inflexible, bureaucratic and not particularly sensitive to the specific needs of distinct social environments (see, for instance, Johnston and Shearing, 2003; Shearing, 2006; Shearing and Wood, 2003a, 2003b). As Garland (1996: 453) puts it, “the recurring message of this approach is that the state alone is not, and cannot effectively be, responsible for preventing and controlling crime”. The underlying assumption of such a stance is that security as a public good can be enacted considerably better through individual configurations, for instance on the local community level (Shearing and Wood, 2003a). Moving away from a theoretical primate of the state then allows for an arguably better suited mode of analysis. In an effort to scrutinize how state and non-state actors co-operate in specific contexts, Shearing and Wood (2003b: 404) propose to look into particular “nodes of governance” from an unprejudiced angle, thus ensuring that “no set of nodes is given conceptual priority”.

A distinct reading of security governance highlights the normative implications of the notion of security itself, thereby emphasizing its crucial, yet ambivalent, role as both prerequisite and danger for societal and individual freedom (see, for instance, Lippert and O’Connor, 2003; Loader, 1997; Loader and Walker, 2001, 2004, 2006; Zedner, 2006a, 2006b). Here, the state is conceived as a normative anchor of security provision in otherwise a-moral forms of liberal governance that are increasingly determined by neoliberal market imperatives. Despite being aware of the potential shortcomings of the state as a “meddler”, “partisan”, “idiot” or “cultural monolith” (Loader and Walker, 2006: 168–180), scholars who follow this reading put forward the democratic foundation, legitimation and direct accountability of public bodies. This emphasis is based on the general notion that security and policing “represent a limit case of the freedoms and pleasures of consumption” (Loader, 1999: 387). After all, “the need for economic regulation should be re-examined from time to time” (Starkie, 2002: 63), and with it the relationships between public and private agencies. The ensuing section briefly locates the particular space of the airport and its characteristics among the axis between state monopolization and liberal marketization of security provisions.

Airports as High-Risk, Low-Cost Hybrids

Contemporary airports are complex sites of global mobility and connectivity (Fuller and Harley, 2004) that are indebted both to the logics of tight protocols of international security and to liberal market imperatives. The organizational structure of modern airports resembles a “fragmented array of horizontal, vertical and lateral linkages” (Frederickson and LaPorte, 2002: 33), incorporating a considerable amount of private actor service provisions, and particularly privatization and contracting of security tasks from state bodies to private firms. As Starkie (2002: 64) emphasizes, “airports, many of which have been treated in the past as public service organisations directly controlled by government administrations, have increasingly been restructured as public enterprises, or have been privatised”. Thus, airports fall in line with what Shearing and Stenning (1983: 496) have deemed “mass private property”. Those hybrid properties carry a strong notion of public space, but in fact are owned and/or operated by private companies. Transportation infrastructures command critical attention in their role to operate between the public purpose of providing mobility and the aspiration to generate revenue. In terms of security provision, private ownership makes for interesting constellations of the public and the private. In some instances, public authorities remain in charge and as such govern private space directly, while in other cases they cooperate and share/split tasks with private companies. More often than not, private policing even completely replaces state provisions, as can for instance be witnessed in shopping malls or sports arenas.

In accordance with such an understanding of hybrid space, Rigakos and Greener (2000) have tagged airports as “bubbles of governance” that enact highly differentiated forms of security governance in order to be able to cope with the “myriad threats to social order” that create “myriad opportunities for the selling, trading, and contracting of security provision” (Rigakos and Greener, 2000: 146). Crucial for this understanding of bubbles is the notion that they represent spatial spheres which are governed by particular modes of public–private relationships. However, those relationships are restricted to the specific bubble – once the individual leaves the bubble, they would no longer be subjected to its particular mode of governance. Building on this very relationship of the individual with a multitude of public and private actors, Shearing and Wood (2003b) have used the term “denizen” to emphasize the changing constellations of governance that impact everyday life contexts. Other than traditional forms of citizenship, the concept of denizenship then disconnects the fixed link to the state and rather refers to liberal government that is enacted through changing constellations of the public and the private. Individuals would then enter or pass through distinct spheres such as private homes, public streets or hybrids such as malls or airports on a daily basis, and thus possess “multiple denizenships depending on the number of domains of governance through which their lives are regulated” (Shearing and Wood, 2003b: 408) – subsequently opening up a research agenda of how particular denizenships impact individuals and their conceptions of, and attitude toward the provision of security in distinct spatial constellations that are determined by their specific forms of marketization through liberal ideas of government.

Contemporary airports are in fact prime examples for flexibilization through the establishment of competitive market logics for all kinds of service provisions, and thus from a standpoint of liberal government it should be hardly surprising that security makes no exception from this general tendency. When approached from a security angle, however, the choice for contracting screening duties becomes less obvious. With references to terrorism and international crime, airport security has experienced major adjustments in terms of technological upgrades and policy changes in the past decade (Adey, 2004, 2006; Jones, 2009; Leese and Koenigseder, 2015; Lyon, 2006; Salter, 2008c; Schouten, 2014). Particular emphasis is put on risk-based and preventive approaches, some of which are triggered long before passengers actually arrive at the airport (Amoore, 2011; Bennett, 2005; Hobbing, 2010; Leese, 2014; O’Connor and de Lint, 2009). As O’Connor and de Lint (2009: 56) argue, “the sequence: danger/fear → precautionary measures + risk assessment → threat aversion is found in practices pursued by an assembly of agencies and […] the effect is a new governance normal”. This new governance normal is supported by an innovation-centric account of security that strives to constantly implement the latest security technologies at the screening checkpoint (Barros, 2012; Guittet and Jeandesboz, 2010; Jones, 2009).

However, while sophisticated screening technologies can serve as capable support for security provisions at the airport, the eventual decision whether a passenger would pose a risk and should be detained and further scrutinized at the checkpoint remains one that is made by a security officer. If a potential security breach has been detected, manual second screening is set to determine whether the threat is a real one. Thus, security boils down to an individual decision, made under time constraints of high passenger throughput. It then appears only reasonable that this decision should be made by an experienced, well-trained and highly motivated security officer. Thus, how can we make sense of the practice of contracting screening operations to private security companies, when competitive tendering puts severe economic pressure on those companies and arguably impacts the quality of the product – which is after all the provision of (international) security?

Scholars have intensely criticized practices of contracting security screening at the airport (Frederickson and LaPorte, 2002; Jones, 2009; Lippert and O’Connor, 2003), and the common position of critique might be summarized such that contracting exposes the provision of security to a highly competitive market environment in which the price is the dominant criterion and thus turns screening operations into low-cost labor. Ensuing consequences such as little organizational identity, short-term job training and high staff turnover, so the argument goes, diminish the overall quality of security provision to a level that might actually increase the risk of security breaches and thus threaten international security. And while this argumentative chain appears to be widely accepted, there remains a need for empirical research that scrutinizes how airport security governance becomes enacted in specific assemblages of the state and the market. While great parts of the existing literature highlight the situation in the USA and Canada, Europe and particularly Germany remain surprisingly understudied. The notable account provided by Hainmüller and Lemnitzer (2003) falls short of empirical depth, and thus this article seeks to address this gap and to provide an informed basis for further discussions.

Contracting Security

Liberal government has advocated “the modelling of state administration on the regulations of the market, best illustrated in the widespread ‘neo-liberal’ adoption of models of public-sector organization held to be derived from the market, or an image of an ideally functioning market” (Dean, 2002: 43), resulting in tendering for contracts, the incorporation of private actors and the implementation of quasi-markets in many areas. As Ilcan and Basok (2004: 132) frame the issue, “the rise of advanced liberalism is accompanied by the proliferation of new technologies of government that arise out of the shifting of responsibilities from governmental agencies and authorities to organizations without electoral accountability and responsibility”. Drawing on this very notion of interlinked market mechanisms and political rationalities (Gamble, 1995: 517), White (2012) suggests an analytical agenda for a “new political economy of private security” that unfolds along the dimensions of the political and the economy, however in the vein of Foucauldian thought on liberal government ceases to conceptualize them as distinct categories. Thus, rather than reproducing traditional angles, “dichotomies between politics/economics, states/markets and structure/agency are consciously broken down and reframed within an integrated approach” (White, 2012: 86), allowing security governance to be thought of in terms of “private security providers as political economic actors moving back and forth within a political economic dialectic” (White, 2012: 96).

The business case for the contracting of security provisions at the airport is in fact a simple one. As Salter (2010: 68) has it, “screening is perceived as a lower-intensity policing function […] and can be done effectively and efficiently by private contractors”. Throughout most of Europe, the provision of security at airports has traditionally been a monopoly of the state. Toward the end of the 1980s, however, and due to the ever-increasing numbers of flights and passengers, public bodies slowly began to conceive of their tasks in more economic terms. As Ericson (1994: 171) points out, during this period governments began to realize that “there are finite resources that impose limits on security provision” and thus searched for new and more cost-effective ways of policing the airport. The 1988 UK aviation deregulation act has been deemed a trail blazer toward a wave of privatization, outsourcing and contracting across European airport security (Hainmüller and Lemnitzer, 2003: 9). German authorities however remained skeptical and reluctant to the possibility of liberalized airport security. It was only in 1990, “when budget constraints of the state made changes in the distribution of the financial burden seem inevitable” (Hainmüller and Lemnitzer, 2003: 11), that political action was undertaken. Subsequently, an aviation security fee was introduced in order to compensate for costs in terms of personnel and expensive screening technologies (such as metal detector portals). However, airport security remained a public task for the time being. By 1992, contracting of screening operations became a legal option, but it was only in 1995 that screening operations were eventually contracted to a private security company for the first time, with the airports of Stuttgart and Hamburg being the frontrunners for this new mode of security provision.

In regulatory terms, the choice for a principal/agent setup prevailed over the option of complete privatization. The Federal Aviation Act provides the possibility of contracting security provisions, yet requires a state body (the Federal Police) to be formally in charge of screening operations (LuftSiG, 2005: §5). This particular mode of liberal security governance, in which “the government may transfer responsibility for programme or service delivery to a private or not-for profit organization and yet maintain policy, regulatory, and monitoring roles” (Ilcan et al., 2003: 631) is in fact very similar to the Canadian case. In both legislations, screening duties by private contractors are left under the supervision of a public authority, and yet their trajectories are rather different. As Salter (2008d: 331–332) details, “previous to 9/11, in Canada (and the United States) aviation passenger screening was done by airlines according to national standards set by the transportation authority”. Only post-9/11 debates, framed predominantly in terms of counterterrorism, had put the question of screening on the security agenda, whereas before “it was depoliticized, expressed in terms of cost and regulations and technical standards” (Salter, 2008d: 332). In response, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) was founded, however without entirely abandoning contracting practices for screening provision.

In both cases, private companies are eligible to execute what might be described as “police work light”. Or, in concrete terms: searching passengers and carry-on luggage for dangerous and forbidden objects, but calling on the actual police in case further action has to be undertaken. The role of private security companies in this relationship might thus also be compared to “deputy sheriffs”. As one representative from a private security company put it: “We are just the first wave. We detect, and then we notify. That’s it. The very moment a conflict arises, problems occur, we pass the torch. That’s a matter for state authority then, that’s what we have it for” (9 June 2011). ¹ Osborne and Gaebler (1993) have famously described such constellations as “steering/rowing”, with the state steering at a distance while the rowing work is executed by other (private) agencies. Such governance-at-a-distance in fact presents a particular mode of exercising government, introducing private sector tools and solutions to the realm of security, however with power remaining within the public body (Garland, 1996: 454).

Most notably, the introduction of market logics into service provisions produces “downsizing and contingency, total quality management (TQM), and outsourcing – each of which is legitimated through particular constructions of globalization/uncertainty and risk” (Amoore, 2004: 181). The notion of risk, as has been outlined above, is an important one in the constitution of security governance. As Ilcan et al. (2003: 629) have it,

the management of risk through contracted, non-standard employment is primarily a programme for shifting risks and uncertainties to a newly constituted insecure working population and in so doing, to externalize the risks associated with changing market demands and unstable future funding levels.

The question of insecure workforces and the quality of private service provisions is in fact a crucial one. Hainmüller and Lemnitzer (2003: 22) have argued that in principal/agent setups, the provision of security performs considerably higher than in cases of whole-scale outsourcing, as “due to the right institutional incentive structure (rigid monitoring and powerful sanctioning), the regime is still compatible with the security goal”. Their claim, made 12 years ago, is primarily built on the effectiveness of monitoring and auditing, however it appears questionable whether it can be upheld in empirical analysis, as will be shown throughout the remainder of this article.

Market Triggers, Normative Consequences

Contracts for screening operations at German airports have to be renewed through public tenders every five years. Bids from private companies must include, among others, concepts for job training, implementation, quality control, networks and communication. However, as one representative from a private security firm clearly puts it, “the price is a killer criterion” (8 November 2012). In fact, as admitted by several interviewees, other factors will regularly be trumped by budget arguments and the contract will eventually be awarded to the lowest bid. And while the logics of price regulation might in theory indeed lead to more cost-effective and efficient services, the private security sector tends to struggle within this marketized environment. After all, the provision of security remains a normatively charged high-reliability task that requires adequate resources. However, price dumping has evolved as a common strategy for private actors, sometimes deliberately used to break open new business opportunities. As argued by a representative from a private firm: “You can always say: OK, we really want this contract, this is a matter of prestige. And then you say: OK, then in this case we won’t make a profit, but we will accept a loss” (8 November 2012). Those factors combined have on the one hand led to a considerable number of bankruptcies, and on the other hand have severely affected the image of the private security sector. As one respondent said:

Quality is expensive, and we all know that this is true for security and security firms. But one also has to say that at least in part this is the private companies’ own fault. They have ruined their reputation in the context of public tenders and dumping offers. (8 November 2012)

Experts unanimously stated that staff expenses are the most effective adjustment in order to gain leverage when it comes to bids for contracts. As one interviewee pointed out:

To be fair, one has to admit that this is a sector that does not pay well. In my opinion, there is a clear discrepancy between job specifications and payment. I find this quite remarkable, I mean the employees are really struggling to maintain a regular standard, financially speaking. (31 May 2011)

Certainly, not all private firms are willing to cut even deeper into staff expenses, but even those who refuse to do so have to admit that their wages are comparably low. As one executive put it:

There are a lot of tenders where we have to admit that we are too expensive. But I mean, you can’t really save money by cutting costs for personnel. They have to live off of something, and they are not well paid anyway. If you cut into that – that is just impossible. (8 November 2012)

The passing on of economic pressures from public bodies to private companies and eventually to the workforce is however not the only effect of liberal security governance. Through contracting, a particular mode of responsibilization is enabled. Not only does the state re-locate its democratic mandate for security to the realm of private actors, but private security companies are holding their employees accountable for the quality of security provision on an individual level. In case of a security breach – either a real one, or a virtual one in the form of a secret-shopping audit (i.e. unknown persons, equipped with dangerous and forbidden objects, who are sent through the checkpoint in order to determine whether they would be detected or not) – individual responsibilities are in fact retraced to the individual security officers on duty at the given point in time. Disciplinary consequences then range from additional training to termination of the contract. As one interviewee said:

Secret-shopping puts the employees under a certain pressure to be always attentive and always having to be attentive. Because they always have to reckon with somebody who carries something. That is the reality, after all. Whether this measure is appropriate is disputable. But tests are conducted on a regular basis. […] As soon as an object is not detected, the employee has to undergo additional training. […] Then there will be a report, saying employee X has missed this or that. (8 November 2012)

To clarify the dimensions of individual responsibilities, Salter (2007: 56) has pointed out that a screening agent at a middle-sized airport such as Ottawa carries out more than a million security decisions per year. And each one is a potential real threat as well as a potential audit for quality control.

A third string of critique toward marketization of security provisions comes from an organizational perspective. While “contracting can work well when there are organizations skilled in providing the services needed” (Frederickson and LaPorte, 2002: 39), this particular skill at the same time largely depends on available financial and human resources (Frederickson and LaPorte, 2002: 36). As has been shown, competitive tendering puts considerable constraints on the financial resources of private firms. From there, a direct link can in fact be drawn to an apparent lack of a suitable workforce pool. As one representative pointed out: “Who applies for those jobs anyway? Half of the employees in the private security sector comes straight from the employment office. That shows the level which we operate on” (8 November 2012). And while from former unemployment no lesser job performance can be extrapolated, similar arguments have been put forward during several interviews. Moreover, this particular characteristic has arguably been reinforced by job training regulations for screening operations at German airports. Private security officers are not required to complete a regular two or three year job training, as is the case for many other professions. Mandatory training is provided by a mere multi-week training course that consists of an overall volume of 160 hours. The training course framework and its contents are determined by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, but the actual training courses are held by private security companies, which turns them into popular partners for the employment offices. Low level qualification requirements and in-house training indeed qualifies the private security sector as a fashionable opportunity for the government to put citizens to work.

Subsequently, formerly unemployed applicants for screening duties at the airport receive considerable financial support from the employment offices – which is paid directly to the private security firm. As one executive from a private company said: “Those are the candidates they send to us in order to apply for jobs. And to make sure that we accept them, the employment office lures us into it by paying for the job training” (6 June 2011). One might indeed be inclined to say that those are not the best starting grounds to obtain a qualified and motivated workforce. As another executive added: “Payment takes care of the rest. With this level of wages you only attract certain parts of society” (4 December 2012). Thus, working conditions and low wages in the security sector considerably reduce the pool of potential employees and arguably impact the quality of security service provision. As an executive from a private security company admits: “It is difficult to make a general statement here, but one can observe that the quality of the employees has not been increasing over the last couple years, but rather decreasing” (4 December 2012). After all, as Lippert and O’Connor (2003: 339) emphasize, “one can cost-cut and downsize only so far; beyond a certain point, organizations fail to produce or perform service functions”.

It should however be noted that poor working conditions and payment do not automatically equate poor quality of security provision. As one interviewee in fact points out:

I believe a screening agent is an expert for their job, and that is to produce security. And I would claim that they know how to handle their tasks, and that they handle them well, and that there is no reason to believe that the same screening agent would do a better job if they were employed by the state. (20 December 2012)

The problem becomes clearer, however, when looking at the level of staff turnover the private security sector has to cope with. For the Canadian context, Lippert and O’Connor (2003: 343) have pointed out extremely high turnover rates in contracted airport security screening between 121 and 300 percent per year, and numbers for the US vary from an annual average of 126 percent up to peaks of 416 percent at single airports (Seidenstat, 2004: 281).

The reasons for this level of turnover arguably lie in structural limitations of the sector, such as “little chance for improvement, lack of adequate training, tedious and boring work, and other job-related factors” (Seidenstat, 2004: 281) that put severe constraints on long-term career perspectives within airport security. Not surprisingly, interviewees have repeatedly pointed out that many employees regard a job in the private security sector as merely a short-term, transitory option. As one respondent framed it:

Today, within private security companies, we have a lot of people, especially those who came from the employment offices, who are really glad to have a job again. But if they can find something better, they will be gone in the blink of an eye. That means you’ll have a high level of turnover. And this is not to say that turnover is high because people don’t like the job. On the contrary, many do like the job […] but they can just step up financially after two or three years, and they take that opportunity. As a consequence, within the private security sector, you rarely have anyone who sees the job as a long-term career path and carries it out for longer than five years. Thus, you are stuck in a tread-mill and this creates a whole new level of training expenses, because you constantly have to train new people. (8 November 2012)

Arguably, this is also a major reason why the required job training is kept to a minimum level. On the downside, however, the ensuing lack of long-term training raises major concerns. As one expert put it:

It’s an extremely responsible job that demands a lot from the employees, also in terms of concentration and thoughtfulness. It’s more or less a short-term training course job, although with an exam at the end. But with one month of job training, I’d be unleashed onto mankind to produce security for thousands of passengers. (6 June 2011)

This quote fairly summarizes the multiple dilemmas that private security providers at the airport face. This is not to say that the current system would not work – but private security is generally regarded to be more prone to operational failure due to budget constraints and its consequences, even when under supervision from a state body in principal/agent setups. As has been shown, liberal governance at the airport enables the implementation of market logics that lead to the rather unbridled profit orientation of private actors. However, as argued above, any analysis of complex governance structures must take into account not only the economic aspects of liberal government, but also the political questions that hinge on the retreat of public agencies from service provisions. As Salter (2008a: 23) emphasizes, it is important to “measure not simply the economics or business cases but also the democratic and social implications of new modes of control and facilitation”. Or, as Loader (1997: 386) states, the shortcomings of marketization pointed out so far should be contextualized with a “wider, more diffuse unease about permitting market imperatives to determine the distribution and accountability of policing and security”.

Liberal Government and Security as Public Good

Several authors have pointed to such a general unease with liberal security provision that is regulated through neoliberal economic means (for strong accounts see, for instance, Loader, 1997; Loader and Walker, 2006; Zedner, 2006a). With security being a good that benefits society as a whole as well as its individual members, its provision must be connected to questions of political legitimacy and the state. At least in an ideal world, public bodies are not bound by the constraints of the market. However, as has been shown, finite financial resources have been an incentive for the state to make use of marketization and to contract security provision at the airport – thus becoming a consumer rather than a producer of security. Arguably the most crucial consequence from this shift, as Ilcan et al. (2003: 635) point out, is that “the increasing reliance on contract governance and the use of market-like mechanisms in public service provision necessitates an assessment of accountability”.

As Shearing and Wood (2003a: 216) argue,

those who “act publicly” act in ways that are accountable. In this vein, “private acts” do not call for accounts or justifications of past actions. This is so because private actions are seen as furthering private interests, and as such are not usually a public matter.

The state and its institutions are expected to operate alongside a pre-determined and transparent agenda that serves the public. Put in very simple terms: the task of police agencies is to provide security. And if they fail to do so, they must present themselves as accountable toward the public. There is an ideal typical link between citizenship and its role in the constitution of the state and the public sphere. However, recalling the notion of denizenship introduced earlier, individuals today are rendered subjects of changing forms of security governance that depend on the respective spatial context. In other words: the role of private security companies is also to provide security, but not exclusively. As has been shown, they face considerable cross-pressures through their exposure to market mechanisms – some of which they then pass on to an insecure and flexibilized workforce.

A particularly interesting aspect in the German case is that the principal/agent setup is organized in a strictly hierarchical form. The Federal Police not only remain in charge of all statutory powers and critical decision making, but their competences expand as far as having a say in the private security providers’ internal organizational processes. What Hainmüller and Lemnitzer (2003: 12) have called a “rigorous institutional straightjacket” goes in fact as far as setting up work schedules for private security officers. As one representative said:

The private firms don’t have any choices in the organization of screening operations. They have to meet the exact requirements of their customers. Everything is regulated so tightly that the only thing that remains open for decision is the color of the uniform and the tie. Everything else is determined from the customer’s side. (4 December 2012)

One expert indeed went as far as to claim that such strict hierarchy was a legal misconstruction:

There is a construction flaw in §5 of the aviation security act. The flaw is that the Federal Police have the operative responsibility. […] They in fact run the private security company, arrange work schedules, assess the strengths of the employees and so on, although they lack the expertise for this task. (8 November 2012)

This in turn raises questions concerning the core expertise of liberal policing today. Police work, as Ericson (1994) has pointed out, consists for a large part of the management and distribution of expertise and knowledge. In the case of airport security screening, the role of the Federal Police has been reduced to organizational tasks such as monitoring and auditing the contracted screening operations. What Loader (1999: 375) calls police “managerialism” has in this case resulted in various forms of quality control. Besides the above mentioned secret-shopping, a system of audits has been established to ensure that all contractual obligations are adequately executed. As one interviewee said: “Those processes are audited on a regular basis. And after each audit we can see that the screw has been severely tightened. This goes on and on in waves” (20 December 2012). Within marketized government environments, audits enact a key function as numeric and quantified interfaces between the public and the private as they enable standardization, evaluation and assessment. As Shearing and Wood (2003a: 216) point out, “audit as a technology has also been associated with the rise of ‘business planning’ processes, where devolved state authorities and providers set targets and render themselves accountable, in a future-oriented manner, for achieving these targets”.

As such, the rise of audit technologies is a direct consequence from the establishment of markets for service provisions and the management thereof. As Ilcan et al. (2003: 636) frame the issue, “the functions of the formal government are transformed from implementing policies and services to managing and auditing multiple contracts of relatively autonomous entities”. However, besides this rather simple organizational function, audit technologies also enable the re-location of accountability from public bodies to private actors. If contracted service providers fail to meet the performance requirements set by their customers, it can easily be argued that such failure must not be blamed on the public body itself. Thus, arguably the political rationale behind the contracting of security provisions at the airport has not exclusively been driven by the desire to cut costs, but also by the desire to re-locate accountability. The incorporation of private companies disrupts the direct accountability of public agencies to the citizen. The re-location of accountability does however not stop there, but as has been pointed out, private contractors have added another layer that directly incorporates the individual employee. Primarily through auditing technologies, responsibility for (real or virtual) security breaches is traced back to the security officers whose faulty conduct has caused the breach.

As Garland (2001: 18) has it, “performance indicators and management measures have narrowed professional discretion and tightly regulated working practice” – and arguably not to the advantage of the workforce. As Amoore (2004: 181) argues, “contingency and uncertainty have multiple and contradictory meanings for workers in their everyday lives”. In this case one of the consequences is being used as a layer of accountability for failure of security provision. This is not to say that public accountability would have vanished, but it takes on a considerably different form. Framed in Osborne and Gaebler’s (1993) terms: when the police steer to port, but the private actors and their workforce row to starboard instead, not the actual police work has been faulty but auditing mechanisms might have been insufficient and the organizational screws might not have been tight enough. As has been shown, the Federal Police have parted with their core task of security provision through screening operations in favor of managing along a neo-liberal agenda that has freed them both from budget constraints and the chores of actually providing security. However, such a conceptual turn toward liberal government has come with a price tag. Negative consequences have impacted an underpaid and flexibilized workforce, and arguably the provision of security as a common good itself.

Conclusions

This article has empirically explored the effects of liberal modes of security provision at German airports, thereby providing a critical re-evaluation of a dynamic field that constantly introduces new technologies and policies, and yet fails to address one of its core issues – namely to remedy the hardships of the private security companies that operate the checkpoint. Considering the overarching agenda of neoliberal governance, it appears that such failure is in fact deliberate. The analysis claims that competitive tendering practices trigger a causal chain of economic pressures on the private sector, ultimately contributing to the transformation of screening tasks into low-cost labor. From this development, a number of consequences have emerged, most notably a substandard pool of workforce, high staff turnover and reduced long-time job expertise. Arguably, this is also the reason why job training for screening duties at the airport is kept to a minimum. Notably, by way of such practices, state bodies remain in charge, while the private security sector is forced into a subservient position that differs considerably from a conceptualization of a powerful status of private security through knowledge and expertise.

Neoliberal modes of marketization are however only one part of the story. The contracting of security provision at the airport is underpinned by questions of political accountability of the public sector, and how those accounts are transformed through the incorporation of private security companies. Ultimately, as has been argued, in two subsequent steps accountability is re-located to the private sector, and then to the individual level, where it can be retraced to the failure of particular security officers. Thus, political and economic contexts combined appear to stand in stark contrast to the provision of security as a public good (“safe travels for all”), especially when taking into consideration discourses on counterterrorism and the emphasis on the importance of airport screening for international security.

The decisive question that arises from the empirical analysis is whether liberal government is a suitable mode for the provision of security after all – be it through contracting or be it through complete privatization, as had been the case in Canada prior to 9/11. Another regulatory path has been taken by the USA, where after 9/11 airport security had been put under the responsibility of the newly founded federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA). However, reports from within the TSA suggest that its employees face hardships that are quite comparable to the ones described in this article (Harrington, 2014). What to make from such findings, then? Apparently, the decisive factor in the institutional setup of security provision is not so much the question of whether public bodies should execute tasks directly or whether they could possibly be contracted to the private sector. The more important question arguably hinges on sufficient budget allocations that allow for adequate payment and long-term career perspectives for security officers. It is this very question of budgeting that is at the center of neoliberal business agendas that promise to cut costs and increase efficiency and effectiveness through the promises of the market. However, as the empirical insights into German airport security have demonstrated, this promise has come with a considerable downside.

Subsequently, I want to underscore the claim that more public responsibility in security provision would be a desirable regulatory choice, and the argument put forward here is a two-fold one. First of all, the state should refrain from liberal modes of security governance altogether, no matter whether neoliberal rationalities are applied within public bodies themselves or passed on to private companies via competitive tendering. And second, this plea must be grounded in the very value of security. As Loader and Walker (2006: 167) have famously postulated, “the state’s place in producing the public good of security is both necessary and virtuous”. It is necessary because the state has the ultimate choice to withstand marketization, and it is virtuous because security is too much of a fundamental prerequisite of society to be left to business reasoning.