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Since its establishment, the African Union (AU) takes on an active role in regional security matters through different types of interventions. These interventions, however, remain undertheorized. This paper argues that African hybrid regionalism, which combines problem-solving and regime-serving logics of cooperation, shapes the AU's intervention practice in specific ways. To this end, I first theorize how the parallel presence of these logics shapes AU interventions before probing the empirical validity by studying coercive interventions undertaken by the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) between 2005 and 2021. For this purpose, I employ methods of content analysis to systematically code all publicly available meeting documents issued by the PSC. The results demonstrate that the AU strives to prevent and manage crises through interventions but does so in ways that protect or promote incumbent regimes, either by producing direct benefits for them or, when their actions contribute to the crisis, by avoiding head-on confrontations. This suggests careful balancing of the two main impetuses in African security regionalism, namely solving transnational problems and serving the interests of incumbents.

During the year 2000 an initiative among the African states to transform the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) gained momentum. It resulted in the ratification of the Constitutive Act and its adoption at the 36th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka. Parallel to this process of reorganisation towards closer inter-state collaboration on the African continent in the spirit of Pan Africanism emerged the systematic effort to redefine developmental priorities and to claim a new common position of African states in the globalised world. The "African Renaissance" initiative of South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki resulted in a "Millenium Africa Recovery Programme", which was finally revised and presented as the "New Africa Initiative" (NAI). Adopted at the same OAU Summit in Lusaka in July 2001, the NAI serves as a blueprint for Africa's development strategy at the beginning of the 21st century. It was presented to the G8 summit in Genoa, where the leaders of the world's powerful countries decided on a follow up by appointing individual special advisers to explore support to the NAI and future collaboration on the basis of this document. This paper offers a preliminary assessment of the New Africa Initiative within the context of the transformation of the OAU into the AU. It identifies and summarises essential new aspects advocated, critically examines the degree of realism and points at the possible limitations. The analysis also considers first reactions to the initiatives and reflects on the perspectives.

Abstract
Since its establishment, the African Union (AU) takes on an active role in regional security matters through different types of interventions. These interventions, however, remain undertheorized. This paper argues that African hybrid regionalism, which combines problem-solving and regime-serving logics of cooperation, shapes the AU's intervention practice in specific ways. To this end, I first theorize how the parallel presence of these logics shapes AU interventions before probing the empirical validity by studying coercive interventions undertaken by the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) between 2005 and 2021. For this purpose, I employ methods of content analysis to systematically code all publicly available meeting documents issued by the PSC. The results demonstrate that the AU strives to prevent and manage crises through interventions but does so in ways that protect or promote incumbent regimes, either by producing direct benefits for them or, when their actions contribute to the crisis, by avoiding head-on confrontations. This suggests careful balancing of the two main impetuses in African security regionalism, namely solving transnational problems and serving the interests of incumbents.

The concept of peacekeeping has been the subject of several studies specifically since the end of the Cold War. This thesis focuses on the evolution of peacekeeping both at the conceptual and the practical level by looking at the comparative roles of the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) in the African continent through three case-studies in order to test the capabilities and effectiveness of the EU and the AU in dealing with conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur and the Central African Republic. In this context, this thesis compares and contrasts the effectiveness of these two institutions in peacekeeping; bearing in mind the fact that peacekeeping is also about diplomacy and it must not always be about the use of force. Accordingly, this thesis argues that although the AU is younger and has less experience in peacekeeping when compared to the EU, both institutions which are considered not to be entirely successful in their peacekeeping functions face several challenges in ending the current conflicts and preventing further ones. ; Barışı koruma kavramı Soğuk Savaşın sona ermesinden bu yana pek çok çalışmanın konusu olmuştur. Bu tez, Avrupa Birliği ve Afrika Birliği'nin Afrika kıtasındaki uygulamalarına dair örneklerden yola çıkarak, barışı koruma kavramı ve uygulamalarının kavramsal ve pratik düzeydeki evrimine odaklanacaktır. Bu genel kapsamda, Avrupa Birliği ve Afrika Birliği'nin Darfur, Demokratik Kongo Cumhuriyeti ve Merkezi Afrika Cumhuriyeti'nde meydana gelen çatışmalardaki karşılaştırmalı kapasiteleri ve etkinlikleri üç örnek-olay çerçevesinde incelenecektir. Barışı korumanın yalnızca güç kullanımı değil, aynı zamanda diplomasi ile ilişkili olduğunu göz önünde bulundurarak, söz konusu iki örgütten hangisinin Afrika kıtasında barışı-korumada daha etkili olduğu sorusunun cevaplanması bu tezin ana temasını oluşturmaktadır. Bu çerçevede tezde, Afrika Birliği'nin, Avrupa Birliği ile kıyaslandığında barışı korumada daha az deneyime sahip bir örgüt olmasına karşın, her iki örgütün de çatışmaları sona erdirme ve önlemede çeşitli sorunlarla karşılaştıkları ve tam olarak başarı sağlayamadıkları savunulmaktadır.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the Task Forces created by the African Union (AU) to address the security threats posed by Boko Haram and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). It argues that these Task Forces are well suited to address transnational armed groups whose ambiguous political goals and extreme violence make traditional conflict resolution ineffective. Although the Task Forces fall within the AU's collective security mandate and broadly within the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), their distinct characteristics make it more capable of addressing these new cross-border threats. Their reliance on nationally funded and directed militaries also allow the Task Forces to fulfil both the goals of the AU and the interests of the regimes that take leadership roles within these structures.

This article considers the role of the African Union (AU) in developing digital policy instruments that apply across the continent. The AU has launched a series of digital policies that are meant to guide legislation in member states in the past decade. The article explores the extent to which such instruments are effective in shaping law and policymaking in African countries. It finds that a set of methodological flaws in AU policy initiatives undermine the practical effect of the handful of AU-led policy instruments. Not only are the instruments adopted through a process lacking dynamism but also that the substance of the instruments falls short of international benchmarks, thereby undercutting their underlying objectives. The article submits that AU policymakers should carve an original policymaking role that helps make digital policies timely, dynamic and substantively robust.

AbstractIn December 2015, the African Union (AU) took the unprecedented step of threatening to use military force against the government of Burundi's wishes in order to protect civilians caught up in the country's intensifying domestic crisis. This article traces the background to this decision and analyses the effectiveness and credibility of the AU's use of coercive diplomacy as a tool of conflict management. After its usual range of conflict management tools failed to stem the Burundian crisis, the AU Commission and Peace and Security Council tried a new type of military compellence by invoking Article 4(h) of the Union's Constitutive Act. We argue that the threatened intervention never materialised because of (1) the Burundian government's astute diplomacy and (2) several African autocrats' resistance to setting a precedent for future interventions where concerns about civilian protection might override state sovereignty.

Fully revised and updated, the second edition of The African Union continues to offer the most comprehensive overview of the work of the African Union (AU), with special emphasis on its capacity to meet the challenges of building and sustaining governance institutions and security mechanisms. This new edition:Re-examines the African Union at the historic moment of the golden jubilee of the OAU, its predecessor. It examines the AU's efforts in its first decade, points out some of the organization's weaknesses, and posits options for addressing more effectively the challenges of peace, security,

This article evaluates the transformational role of the African Union (AU) in enhancing state-building and reversing the fragility of African states. Essentially, the AU was repackaged in July 2001 as a strategic platform to meet new aspirations for African unity and development. This article notes that after over half a century of collective African attempt at strengthening its state system, the picture is still one of fragile statehood, thus emphasizing the imperative of evolving new strategies to reverse the forces of state fragility in the continent. The article contends that in the face of concerns for African development within the context of sustainable development goals (SDGs), a healthy and functional state system is an irreducible minimum requirement. In order to repair the seemingly battered image of statehood in Africa, the AU must contend with, and overcome, the interplay of internal and external forces that conduce to and trigger fragility.

No other African Union (AU) institution represents as significant a departure from the past as the African Peace and Security Architecture, a framework for anticipating and responding to crises, and conflicts on the continent. The Architecture lays the foundations for African peacekeeping missions, the promotion of human security, and provides the Union with a legal right of intervention. A decade prior to the AU's establishment, African governments had resolutely rejected a more modest expansion in the security competencies of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity. This chapter investigates what prompted this volte-face from African governments, highlighting the significance of democratisation in pivotal states in the 1990s, the influence of African humanitarian tragedies during the same period and the nature of decision-making at the AU.

The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have been accused of simply not doing enough in terms of ensuring peace and stability in Africa. This study examines the activities of the UN and the AU in ensuring peace and security in Africa by using the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a case study. It explores the roles of the UN and the AU, first by looking at how peace operations evolved in the UN, studying the structure, process, and activities of the UN Security Council in this regard during and after the Cold War to establish whether the UN has paid requisite attention and devoted sufficient resources to Africa. The study then continues with an analysis of the AU to discover how the organisation has treated the issue of peace and security on its own continent. In conclusion, the findings indicate there is a significant gap between organizational rhetoric and operational reality for both the UN and the AU. ; October 2021

Darfur confirms what was already known: the Urdted States and its European allies want Africans to take chief responsibility to stop mass killing in their region, and Africans are willing to try by using and strengthening the African Union (AU). Yet creating an AU 'capability to protect' depends vitally on Western help. lt is not enough to increase the supply of African peacekeepers: peacekeeping works when the warring parties are ready for peace, whereas genocide occurs when there is no peace to keep. Besides more peacekeepers, Africa needs a capability for forcible humanitarian intervention. This implies AU forces superior to the forces doing the killing, including those of the complicit regime - a tall order to be sure, but feasible because killing forces usually lack combat capability and are ready to kill but not to fight. To build such a force, the AU should look upon NATO as a model for force planning and force generation, and as a partner ready to assist and stand behind AU forces. (Survival / SWP)

Political leadership in Africa is changing. Evidence of this can be found in the Arab Spring, democratic elections on the continent and the rejection by the African Union (AU) of undemocratic and unconstitutional regime change on the continent. However, procedural rather than substantive democracies operate on the continent, often entrenching authoritarian regimes through elections. These elections show some signs of democratisation and democratic participation, but result predominantly in the extension of the competitive authoritarian regime.The AU subscribes to universally accepted democratic norms, which are often not realised in member states, or sanctioned by the AU. This tacit approval of electoral authoritarianism requires an investigation into the role, if any, of the AU in entrenching electoral authoritarianism on the continent. Applying Levitsky and Way's (2002; 2010) analytical framework leads to the conclusion that the AU has exerted leverage over authoritarian presidents and their regimes in all but a few cases. However, the AU is not yet able to advance the democracy project on the continent, as linkages focus predominantly on socio-economic development and infrastructure expansion rather than the promotion of democracy per se.