Greed and Control is an attempt to dissect the international norm against mercenaries to help better understand the normative hurdles faced by the modern private military industry. As previous research has found the French Revolution to have been a turning point in the use of mercenaries, the thesis traces the normative background of this development and applies the findings into the modern discourse.

Using a constructivist approach, the thesis analyses a selection of sources from the 16th (Machiavelli, Luther) and 18th (Burke, Rousseau) centuries. The findings are then used to reveal the normative content of the modern discourse, represented by the materials of a military industry trade organization (IPOA) and the work of one of its most prominent critics (Scahill). Based on previous research on the subject, the approach assumes the norm to have to components; one pertaining to motivation, the other to control.

The thesis argues that the motivation and control aspects of the norm are closely interlocked, the former serving the latter, a legitimate motivation being one which places a soldier under legitimate control. The growth of the republican tradition has been a major driving force in the development of the anti-mercenary norm. Social contract theory and the concepts citizenship and an impersonal state with the exclusive right to wage war led to the formation of the antimercenary norm in largely the same form it can be found in the present discourse. While the norm is being challenged, it appears presently still quite institutionalized.