| Although there is a perpetual proliferation of administrative practices and processes in policy making and delivery among intergovernmental organizations, the geographic pattern of policy action can vary significantly. In this study, effort is dedicated to the search and support for an alternative African transnational theory of international organizations where the activities of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in managing the Cabo Delgado Insurgency are scrutinized. In looking at the factors that influence SADC’s administrative activities, this article evaluates the SADC’s two identities and push an alternative Triadic identity to explain SADC’s response mechanism to the Cabo Delgado insurgency in Mozambique. While relying on normative public administration principles and IR theory, the study places its focus on the SADC bureaucratic and political frameworks and how these structures shape decision making. As a part of theory building, the study unpacks the contextual conditions of SADC member states and how the transnationalization of these country-specific factors to SADC shapes the decisions and policies of the international organization. By introducing this triadic identity of SADC, contribution is made towards an alternative African transnational theory of administration that emphasizes state level contextual conditions in the quotidian activities of the regional body. Thus, the research extends the bounds of public administration to the traditional domain of International Relations scholarship to support emerging transnational theories of administration while stimulating regional policymaking and continuously reconfiguring the support for homegrown development initiatives that affect regional policymaking. |