Private Security and the State

One of the interesting things that I notice here in Kampala is the prevalence of agents of the government (like police and the military) playing a role doing the kinds of things you normally think of police doing.  Like policing.  And hanging around.  No donuts here, but there do seem to be a lot of police checking their cell phones all the time.

I'm still sort of getting ahold of all the uniforms here and what uniform is associated with which organization, and my observations are purely impressionistic, but it seems to me that there are many fewer private security officials here in Uganda when compared to Latin America.  Especially when compared to middle class and upper class neighborhoods in cities like Guatemala City, Lima, and La Paz.  There, every city block, coffee shop, bank, and grocery store seems to have its own private security firms.  Here, you see some of that, but you don't see (for example) private security guards driving around in cruisers that are not distinguishable from police cars.

Latin Americanists have often framed the rise of private security as a problem: private security as a response to the State's inability to control crime.  And because only the rich can afford private security, it means that the poor are hit harder by crime (which is typically the case anyways, but this is just widening the class gap).  Of course, that may be true--although it's also an empirical assertion that I've never seen tested.

However, the absence of private security here makes me wonder if that story is only part of the picture.  Maybe Kampala has so few private security firms because the state is unwilling to permit the possible threat to power that private police forces might create.  Does the absence of private security reflect the state's tendencies to resist pluralism and democracy?