Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making

Bøås, Morten; Strazzari, Francesco

doi:10.1080/03932729.2020.1835324

Cited by 21 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…These contributions are broadly relevant, as the EU becomes increasingly surrounded by hybrid political orders (e.g. in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Sahel) (Bøås & Strazzari, 2020;Cambanis et al, 2019;Santini et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings reveal two sets of challenges for the EU to join the "geopolitical game" in the Middle East, and by extension also in North Africa and the broader neighbourhood where hybrid actors increasingly define political order (e.g. in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Sahel) (Bøås & Strazzari, 2020;Cambanis et al, 2019;Santini et al, 2020). EU foreign policy discourse and practice on hybrid actors complicates both local/national and transnational/regional engagement.…”

Section: Ready For Geopolitical Contestation?mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Moreover, the fact that these are well-known and longstanding entities in the EU's Southern Neighbourhood means that the EU has taken a foreign policy stance towards them, which is not necessarily the case for lesser known or relatively newly salient organizations that would fit the definition (e.g. groups in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Sahel) (Bøås & Strazzari, 2020;Cambanis et al, 2019;Santini et al, 2020).…”

Section: Eu Discourse On Hamas and Hezbollah: Research Design And Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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EU foreign policy and hybrid actors in the Middle East: ready for geopolitical contestation?

Lecocq

2020

Global Affairs

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The 2019 European Commission recognizes a need to learn the language of power and geopolitics for the EU to become a stronger player in a contested world. Yet the EU experiences difficulties in navigating the geopolitical scene in its immediate neighbourhood, the Middle East and North Africa, characterized by fast-changing alliances among international and regional powers but also a wide array of non-state and hybrid actors. Policy recommendations urge the EU to include the latter in its foreign policy calculus. This article investigates how the EU accounts for a specific set of actors by exploring its foreign policy discourse. Specifically, it analyses how two hybrid actors, Hamas and Hezbollah, are discussed within the European Parliament, Commission and Council. It is argued that internal contestation over the terrorist nature of these actors poses challenges for the EU to join the geopolitical game in its Southern neighbourhood.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ready For Geopolitical Contestation?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Eu Discourse On Hamas and Hezbollah: Research Design And Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

EU foreign policy and hybrid actors in the Middle East: ready for geopolitical contestation?

Lecocq

2020

Global Affairs

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“…17 The absence of such functions has as suggested by Morten Bøås and Francesco Strazzari, as a hale mark of the Sahelian states, and is a hallmark of many other states as well, and has, as we shall see in the next section, been taken advantage off by jihadists, especially the lack of security for the local rural population. 18 In this case, both sides produced important insights: spaces are seldom ungoverned; jihadists can establish themselves in relatively functioning states; yet areas where the state is weak seem to result in possibilities for these organizations to grow stronger. In this way, two (JNIM and Shabaab) out of three of the strongest jihadist organizations in Africa seem to have emerged from civil war zones and areas with weak state control.…”

Section: The Great Debatesmentioning

confidence: 98%

‘Forever wars’? Patterns of diffusion and consolidation of Jihadism in Africa

Hansen

2021

Small Wars & Insurgencies

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The article will discuss the patterns that jihadism has followed when spreading throughout sub-Saharan Africa, addressing the major scholarly debates but also to bring forward the elements that various African cases seemingly have in common. The discussions over African Jihadism has seen several great debates, over the ungoverned space theory, a dichotomous discussion of the local and the global as opposing explanatory models, and a discussion of the role of 'greed' and economic incentives. The article argues that these discussions need to be transcended, and that dichotomous discussions fail to see more complex patterns of interaction between various factors, and the complexity of social relations that at times depend on the different contexts we study. Understanding how global networks can harness local conflicts to gain support is key to understanding African jihadist groups, and how those harnessing strategies can be limited. The article also suggests that there is an emerging consensus over several of the factors that do occur in sub-Saharan African jihadism and present the implications of these findings for the ongoing conflict in Mozambique and Tanzania.

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“…Our account of entangled (in)securities therefore builds on assemblage theorizing and the myriad ways in which it has advanced our understanding of emergent political orders in the Sahel. These have been conceptualized as ‘hybrid’ (Raineri and Strazzari, 2019) or ‘heterarchical’ (Hüsken and Klute, 2015), marked by blurry demarcations and shared sovereignty between state and non-state actors; they are ‘fluctuating, entangling and disentangling’ (Hüsken and Klute, 2015: 324) and ‘complex, often kaleidoscopic political configurations that have shifted away from any aspiration to be monopolizing systems of governance and patronage and can best be understood as a multitude of shifting alliances due to competition among networks of patronage’ (Bøås and Strazzari, 2020: 11). While these networks of patronage are unavoidably transnational, their composition has recently started to change.…”

Section: Transnational Entanglements and Sahelian (In)security Assemb...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnationally entangled (in)securities: The UAE, Turkey, and the Saharan political economy of danger

Stambøl,

Berger

2023

Security Dialogue

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Contemporary security interventions in Africa are characterized by an increasing pluralization of external actors, bringing with them new security rationalities, practices, and technologies, sometimes with profound influences on local security dynamics. While studies have focused empirically on East and South Africa, this article explores the roles of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey in the Sahel region of West Africa. To make sense of their engagement, we develop the notion of ‘transnational security entanglements’ by bringing the literature on (in)security assemblages into productive dialogue with scholarship on transnational entanglements in the fields of global history and law. Both literatures depart from relational ontologies, eschew methodological nationalism, and emphasize the interplay between the human and the non-human in the making of the social world. At the same time, we argue, the focus on entanglements adds a specific analytic of South–South connections and transregional circulations to extant scholarship on (in)security assemblages. To illustrate the importance of these transregional connections beyond the North Atlantic, we draw on interviews and media reports about the myriad ways in which connections between the UAE and Turkey with various actors in the Sahel shape current transformations of political orders in the region.

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Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making

Cited by 21 publications

References 20 publications

EU foreign policy and hybrid actors in the Middle East: ready for geopolitical contestation?

EU foreign policy and hybrid actors in the Middle East: ready for geopolitical contestation?

‘Forever wars’? Patterns of diffusion and consolidation of Jihadism in Africa

Transnationally entangled (in)securities: The UAE, Turkey, and the Saharan political economy of danger

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