Allowing private companies to de facto exercise legal authority is becoming increasingly common in several countries. Externalizing legal authority is sustained by a discourse replacing a conventional institutional approach to law enforcement with a functional approach where the agent is less important than efficiency and expected outcomes. Drawing on two brief case studies in Sweden—automobile inspections and reviews of international financial transactions—we argue that legal authority is transferred to for-profit actors with only a minimum of safeguards and accountability. For-profit actors are legal authority insiders but outsiders in the democratic chain of accountability.

允许私人公司事实上行使法律授权在一些国家变得越来越普遍。通过一种话语来维持法律权威的外在化，而这种话语是用一种功能性的方法代替了执法的传统制度性方法，在这种方法中，代理人的重要性不如效率和预期结果。我们以瑞典的两个简要案例研究为基础，即汽车检查和国际金融交易回顾，我们认为法律授权仅以最少的保障和问责制就移交给了营利性行为者。营利性参与者是法律权威内幕人士，但在民主问责制链条上却是局外人。