Transnational organisations and security

The fields of international relations and criminology analyse security from different directions, but both have had a dominant focus on states and state agencies until recently. Even as they looked at a wider range of actors as security providers, an important category of security actors has not been analysed so far - 'non-violent' transnational organisations. Transnational non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and transnational corporations (TNCs) are not security organisations per se, but the strategies these transnational non-state actors pursue in response to violence affect security for both themselves and the societies in which they operate. We argue here that security at the local level is an outcome of interactions among diverse actors including transnational organisations and call for a research agenda focused on how transnational actors choose their response to insecurity and how those choices affect security governance.