Transnational conflicts and the politics of scalar networks: evidence from Northern Africa

This article offers a conceptualisation of transnational conflicts between state and non-state actors. Theorists of globalisation and transnationalism have developed a number of approaches in order to rethink the roles of these actors in conditions of globality. Their reluctance, however, to develop middle-range concepts has left us with arguments that are unable to deal with the complexity of transnational conflicts. In the theoretical section we develop a conceptual vocabulary that tries to do justice to these complexities and to questions of hierarchy and internal differentiation of the conflicting formations. We focus in particular on the ways conflict is mediated through various scalar networks. In the empirical section we draw on two cases from Northern Africa—the Ethiopian state versus Oromo ethno-nationalists and the Moroccan state versus Western Sahara activists—in order to illustrate how these concepts can contribute to a theoretically guided understanding of the emergence and perpetuation of transnational conflicts.