The four papers that make up this special section deal with the complex relationship between emergent non-state armed actors and notions of state sovereignty broadly conceived. With much of the existing literature in this area focused on violence and declining state authority, these linkages remain largely underexplored. Datasets on non-state conflicts frequently overlook such considerations (Sundberg et al. 2012: 353) or tend to assume that the rising power of these actors is a side-effect of declining central authority or state failure. More recent research has, however, shown that both pro and contra regime forces often weaken or even cause state failure, rather than the other way around. They get involved as 'extra-state veto-players' and have a direct impact on sovereignty by challenging 'the state monopoly on violence and by de-formalising security provision' (Aliyev 2017: 1979).

The spread of armed actors is not uniform and they exhibit different characteristics (tribal, sectarian, internationalist), strategies (revolutionist, expansionist, defensive, status quo), and activities (local government, infra-structure management, taxation) (Erdağ and Yetim 2020). As their numbers and activities have increased within the MENA region since the Arab "Spring", a rapid transformation has taken place as previously highly stable—even dynastic—regimes have given way to new forms of hybridized sovereignty (Turan and Hoang 2019). This has had profound implications for the region's politics including its security architecture (Kardaş, 2020: 64–6; Hoffman 2019). As such, it is important to rethink the nature and limits of both state and non-state sovereignty. This special edition seeks to contribute here by investigating how armed non-state actors and states co-constitute each other and evolve in a stratified/structured context.