Articulated sovereignty: Extending Mozambican state power through the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park¹

Since its inception in 2001 and subsequent integration into the tri-national Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP), Mozambique's Limpopo National Park (LNP) has been progressively transformed into a functioning wildlife park. Standing behind this transformation has been a profound expansion of Mozambican state power over and through the park. While this reinforces predictions in the early transfrontier conservation literature, it stands in tension with observations that these projects threaten state power. I address this tension by developing the concept of articulated sovereignty, which understands sovereignty as a heterogenous set of powers that are produced through often unequal interactions with other actors, including foreign or extra-territorial actors. In short, sovereignty is articulated through these interactions. I draw from this to show that the same partnerships that seem to threaten sovereignty in some respects in fact shore up the power of the Mozambican state in other respects. I focus in particular on the foreign-assistance-enabled extension of state power through the development of legal and technical capacity, park administration and infrastructure, a ranger force, and the relocation of communities beyond park borders. I additionally draw on articulated sovereignty to show that the state and territory, like sovereignty, are built through various articulations with extra-territorial partners, thus drawing into question the sovereignty-state-territory triad. I close by reflecting on the utility of articulated sovereignty beyond the realm of conservation. In short, articulated sovereignty sheds light on both the sovereignty complexities of transfrontier conservation projects like the LNP/GLTP and how sovereignty actually plays out in the world.