INTERPRETING INSECURITY: POPULATION AND AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVES FROM MALI

This paper develops a quantitative, multi-vantage diagnostic of insecurity, conflict attribution, radicalisation, and terrorism perceptions in Mali. Drawing on parallel population (N = 1,876) and authority (N = 751) surveys, it treats insecurity and violence not as objective conditions to be causally explained, but as socially interpreted and morally evaluated phenomena. The analysis constructs graduated indices capturing perceived insecurity, conflict attribution repertoires, radicalisation salience, dialogue orientation, and terrorism framing, calculated separately for populations and authorities. Findings show that insecurity is widely experienced as a graded and relational condition rather than a binary state; conflict is primarily attributed to banditry and governance-related resource disputes rather than to identity or ideology; perceived increases in radicalisation are low among respondents willing to discuss the issue; and terrorism is framed predominantly through economic vulnerability and recruitment dynamics, with consistently low sympathy but non-trivial openness to dialogue. Convergence between population and authority framings is substantial, while divergence reflects positional framing rather than factual disagreement. The paper argues that such convergence, divergence, and silence are analytically meaningful in their own right, with direct implications for governance legitimacy, prevention strategies, and intervention feasibility in fragile contexts.