Contextualizing the Relationship Between Borderlands and Political Violence: A Dynamic Space-Time Analysis in North and West Africa

This paper examines the role of borderlands in contemporary armed conflicts in North and West Africa. Borderlands are important to the legitimacy and security of states because of their association with sovereignty and the provision of order. They are also essential to efforts by non-state groups to bypass or challenge the same. However, not all borderlands are the same and the evolution of conflict is a complex and dynamic process. Building on previous work on African borderlands, this paper considers how the permeability of borderlands impacts the propensity for nearby violence and how this relationship varies over both space and time. While there is an association between violence and borderlands in aggregate, this is highly contextualized by both the characteristics of the borderland in question and the larger geopolitical context underpinning the violence.