The Corporation as a Security Actor

TotalEnergies and Lafarge in the Post-Westphalian International Order

Abstract

This article examines how the production and governance of security are being transformed in the post-Westphalian international order, with particular attention to the diffusion of the state monopoly on violence, the marketization of security, and the rise of corporate quasi-sovereignty. The theoretical framework draws on scholarship on changing sovereignty (Krasner, Kaldor, Sassen, Ruggie), while the methodology combines within-case process reconstruction with cross-case comparison. Empirically, the paper analyses two French multinational cases: TotalEnergies in Mozambique (LNG) and Lafarge in Syria. The cases represent distinct security configurations – one hybrid state-corporate model and one privatized/criminalized model – and allow the study to map how firms shape security arrangements in conflict environments. The core argument is that in the post-Westphalian order sovereignty is not disappearing but being reorganized. Corporations may temporarily perform state-like functions, yet they do not become fully sovereign actors. At the same time, deterritorialized accountability mechanisms are expanding through transnational legal and normative frameworks, including home-state judicial institutions and civil society litigation networks. The two cases therefore suggest that the central structural shift is not the “death of the state,” but the decoupling and selective recoupling of sovereignty and responsibility across multiple governance arenas.