Beyond Events and Perceptions: A Multi-Actor Diagnostic of Insecurity in the Sahel

In fragile and conflict-affected settings, insecurity diagnostics routinely rely on single perspectives—event data, administrative reporting, or population surveys—treating divergence across sources as measurement error. This paper advances a different proposition: insecurity is not only a level to be measured, but a relationship to be diagnosed. We develop and apply a multi-actor diagnostic framework that treats systematic divergence between resident and authority assessments of insecurity as an analytically meaningful outcome rather than a residual. Using harmonised survey instruments across Niger and Mali, we construct a parsimonious Core Insecurity Index capturing current insecurity and perceived change over time, and operationalise misalignment through signed gaps, absolute divergence, and quadrant configurations. The comparative results reveal sharply different structures of misalignment. Niger exhibits wide dispersion and frequent off-diagonal configurations between resident and authority assessments, while Mali shows substantially lower divergence and stronger convergence, with meaningful sub-national variation. These patterns are robust to alternative index constructions and sampling sensitivities. Substantively, the findings demonstrate that insecurity diagnostics fail most predictably where insecurity is lived as anticipatory constraint—through mobility restriction, uncertainty, and everyday adaptation—rather than as administratively visible incidents. Methodologically, the paper reframes triangulation from a logic of validation to one of inference, showing how disagreement itself can function as a diagnostic signal of information asymmetry, governance incentives, and legitimacy conditions. The study contributes a portable diagnostic approach for insecurity measurement in fragile settings, with implications for research design, policy targeting, and security governance. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ARTICLE IS CURRENTLY UNDER REVIEW FOR PUBLICATION