Although the security sector reform (SSR)literature highlights the importance of civil society involvement in reform initiatives, scholars have devoted relatively little attention to the specific role of the private sector in SSR (Caparini, 2010; Gordon, 2014; Knight, 2009; Kümmel, 2003; Loada and Moderan, 2015).
Most of the treatment of the subject touches on the outsourcing of SSR to private development and security companies and on the inability of state sponsors of SSR to enforce accountability of privatised interventions (Abrahamsen and Williams, 2006; Mancini, 2005; Perito, 2009; Puck, 2017). The SSR literature has scarcely addressed the needs of economic elites from the “human security” perspective. Scholars are only just beginning to explore systematically the role of the private sector in supporting citizen security strategies (Flores-Macías, 2014; Moncada, 2016; Pearce, 2018; Rodríguez-Franco, 2016). This paper explores the role of big business in the cases of Colombia and Mexico. In doing so, it adds to the growing body of literature on the domestic factors that facilitate SSR by establishing the support of economic elites as a crucial factor for the successful implementation of SSR.