Periodic Reporting for period 4 - TRANSJIHAD (Explaining Transnational Jihad - Patterns of Escalation and Containment)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-03-01 bis 2025-06-30
This ERC research project had two main objectives:
1. To empirically investigate how jihadist conflicts become transnational and under what circumstances they can be contained.
2. To theoretically synthesize relevant approaches from Religious Studies, Security Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies in order to investigate different dimensions of transnationalization of jihadist conflicts. This implies combining quantitative data and qualitative methods.
Importance: In various regions of the world, we continue to see a rapid spillover of jihadist violence from one country to a neighboring country, often attracting both foreign state intervention and foreign fighters from different parts of the world. These contemporary trends point at the urgent need to understand the dynamics behind the transnational “potential” of jihadist conflicts, and ways to derail or even prevent escalation.
The TRANSJIHAD project sought to understand how jihadist conflicts become transnational and how this alters the conditions for conflict resolution or containment. The project was based on the analytical concept of transnational conflict constellations to describe structures that bind actors, ideas, and organizations across borders without requiring intentional centralized coordination.
The project brought together scholars from different disciplines (Peace and Conflict studies, Political Science, and Religious Studies) to explore both the pathways of transnationalization (based on case-studies of different conflict-settings) and the implications for preventing further diffusion and escalation.
Two key research questions structured the project:
1. Why and how do jihadist conflicts become transnational?
2. How can such conflicts be contained or resolved, given their transnational nature?
The project was rooted in comparative and interdisciplinary methods, and examined transnationalization from three perspectives (theological, emotional, and political). It combined textual/hermeneutic analysis of jihadist theology with empirical case studies in key regions (South Asia, the Sahel, the Middle East). It also included digital ethnography and interpretive engagement with worldview analysis. Moreover, the project utilized advanced regression-based, large-N methods to identify larger trends and patterns across different conflict zones.
The project has overall demonstrated that the ideational architecture and organizational plasticity make transnational jihadism diffuse and resilient. Understanding and addressing these dynamics requires new frameworks—ones that transcend the territorial imagination and engage the moral-political foundations of violence. The interdisciplinary design has primarily sought to prevent an over-emphasis on selected factors of transnationalization and containment, which ensured modesty and triangulation to make the findings and explanations robust.
1. To empirically investigate how jihadist conflicts become transnational and under what circumstances they can be contained.
2. To theoretically synthesize relevant approaches from Religious Studies, Security Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies in order to investigate different dimensions of transnationalization of jihadist conflicts. This implies combining quantitative data and qualitative methods.
Importance: In various regions of the world, we continue to see a rapid spillover of jihadist violence from one country to a neighboring country, often attracting both foreign state intervention and foreign fighters from different parts of the world. These contemporary trends point at the urgent need to understand the dynamics behind the transnational “potential” of jihadist conflicts, and ways to derail or even prevent escalation.
The TRANSJIHAD project sought to understand how jihadist conflicts become transnational and how this alters the conditions for conflict resolution or containment. The project was based on the analytical concept of transnational conflict constellations to describe structures that bind actors, ideas, and organizations across borders without requiring intentional centralized coordination.
The project brought together scholars from different disciplines (Peace and Conflict studies, Political Science, and Religious Studies) to explore both the pathways of transnationalization (based on case-studies of different conflict-settings) and the implications for preventing further diffusion and escalation.
Two key research questions structured the project:
1. Why and how do jihadist conflicts become transnational?
2. How can such conflicts be contained or resolved, given their transnational nature?
The project was rooted in comparative and interdisciplinary methods, and examined transnationalization from three perspectives (theological, emotional, and political). It combined textual/hermeneutic analysis of jihadist theology with empirical case studies in key regions (South Asia, the Sahel, the Middle East). It also included digital ethnography and interpretive engagement with worldview analysis. Moreover, the project utilized advanced regression-based, large-N methods to identify larger trends and patterns across different conflict zones.
The project has overall demonstrated that the ideational architecture and organizational plasticity make transnational jihadism diffuse and resilient. Understanding and addressing these dynamics requires new frameworks—ones that transcend the territorial imagination and engage the moral-political foundations of violence. The interdisciplinary design has primarily sought to prevent an over-emphasis on selected factors of transnationalization and containment, which ensured modesty and triangulation to make the findings and explanations robust.
The project team has:
- examined the quantitative aspects of transnationalized jihadist conflicts, identifying trends across conflict zones
- theological aspects of transnational jihad
- contributed with theory-development on jihadism as a conflict-constellation
- theory-development on worldview-analysis in relation to jihadist conflicts.
The project team had collaborations with researchers and projects at Global Studies at University of California Santa Barbara, the Divinity School at Harvard University, The Peace and Conflict Studies Department at Uppsala University, Political Science at Aarhus University, and PRIO in Oslo.
- examined the quantitative aspects of transnationalized jihadist conflicts, identifying trends across conflict zones
- theological aspects of transnational jihad
- contributed with theory-development on jihadism as a conflict-constellation
- theory-development on worldview-analysis in relation to jihadist conflicts.
The project team had collaborations with researchers and projects at Global Studies at University of California Santa Barbara, the Divinity School at Harvard University, The Peace and Conflict Studies Department at Uppsala University, Political Science at Aarhus University, and PRIO in Oslo.
We expect the transdiciplinary approach to be fruitful for the new avenues for containment thinking that we have cultivated. Our close dialogue with practitioners within the fields of mediation, defence and P/CVE we expect has strengthened the research impact of our findings and improve the practical relevance of our research focus.'
Methodological and conceptual outputs:
Bundled Conflict Constellations: A new conceptual frame to analyse linked conflicts beyond state borders. Transnationalization can be seen as a conflict-structure, which enables scholars and policymakers to trace the layered interconnections between actors, territory, material and non-material enablers of transnationalization.
A multi-perspective framework: The project has brought forward that transnationalization can be studied on different levels (looking at the conflict, the movement(s), or the ideologies/theologies), leading to different analytical foci and conclusions about the main drivers of transnationalization. It has also brought forward how bridging perspectives from the Countering Violent Extremism literature, and the Conflict Resolution literature can strengthen containment thinking.
Worldview Analysis: The project has contributed to the development of a method for interpreting the internal logic of actors in religiously inspired violence.
Transnationalization as process not a binary: Transnational jihad emerges gradually through the interaction of local, national and global dynamics. The project has shown that it is helpful to think about different degrees and forms of transnationality, more than an either/or category. For example, one of the project’s studies generated new data that documented substantial variation among different jihadist groups in terms of their degree of transnationalization, specifically in regard to their a) transnational attack patterns and b) transnational recruitment of foreign fighters.
Statistical analysis: The project has provided the first large-N, regression-based study of al-Qaeda’s and IS’s emergence as parties in civil wars, thereby making a key contribution to the empirical peace and conflict literature. Despite jihadist conflicts accounting for a substantial share of the world’s civil wars, their emergence had never been studied through quantitative methodological approaches, a research gap filled by our project.
Methodological and conceptual outputs:
Bundled Conflict Constellations: A new conceptual frame to analyse linked conflicts beyond state borders. Transnationalization can be seen as a conflict-structure, which enables scholars and policymakers to trace the layered interconnections between actors, territory, material and non-material enablers of transnationalization.
A multi-perspective framework: The project has brought forward that transnationalization can be studied on different levels (looking at the conflict, the movement(s), or the ideologies/theologies), leading to different analytical foci and conclusions about the main drivers of transnationalization. It has also brought forward how bridging perspectives from the Countering Violent Extremism literature, and the Conflict Resolution literature can strengthen containment thinking.
Worldview Analysis: The project has contributed to the development of a method for interpreting the internal logic of actors in religiously inspired violence.
Transnationalization as process not a binary: Transnational jihad emerges gradually through the interaction of local, national and global dynamics. The project has shown that it is helpful to think about different degrees and forms of transnationality, more than an either/or category. For example, one of the project’s studies generated new data that documented substantial variation among different jihadist groups in terms of their degree of transnationalization, specifically in regard to their a) transnational attack patterns and b) transnational recruitment of foreign fighters.
Statistical analysis: The project has provided the first large-N, regression-based study of al-Qaeda’s and IS’s emergence as parties in civil wars, thereby making a key contribution to the empirical peace and conflict literature. Despite jihadist conflicts accounting for a substantial share of the world’s civil wars, their emergence had never been studied through quantitative methodological approaches, a research gap filled by our project.