Understanding transnational political realities around the Somali conflict: Emerging assemblages in global politics and the end of "western interventi

This proposal outlines a study of transnational political realities around the Somali conflict in order to re-conceptualise the role and significance of the actors and processes shaping political possibilities. It argues that international studies has tended to reduce such dynamics to interactions between "western intervention" and "local" actors. Alternatively, it has focused on theorising the political behaviours of "local" and "regional" actors, in opposition to, and for the sake of, "western intervention." Instead, this study will follow a number of significant moves in the literature to de- centre "western intervention" in the study of transnational political realities around conflict. To do this it will develop an assemblage approach to frame an empirical investigation of the transnational political dynamics around the Somali conflict, that does not start with categories such as "local", "regional" or "western" or focus on processes of "intervention". Instead, it would develop a holistic and re-conceptualised understanding of the multiplicity of actors shaping dynamics in conflict zones - their role, networks, and discourses - and how they exercise and negotiate power to shape political possibilities. It will do this through a global political ethnography that will develop a thick description, of the workings of this assemblage across three intersecting policy areas - elections, security sector reform, and revenue-sharing. It will use this thick description to re-assess and reconceptualise the transnational actors, discourses and processes shaping political possibilities, as well as contribute to debates on the changing global politics and "international order", from a context hitherto marginalised in such discussions.