Undoing coups: the African Union and post-coup intervention in Madagascar
In: Politics and development in contemporary Africa
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In: Politics and development in contemporary Africa
World Affairs Online
In: PRIF Spotlight / Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 2019/5
World Affairs Online
In: Working paper series of the Centre for Area Studies No. 2
In: Global studies quarterly: GSQ, Band 3, Heft 3
ISSN: 2634-3797
Abstract
Pan-Africanism and references to a shared African cultural identity have an important function in the way the African Union (AU) seeks to mobilize a sense of belonging among African citizens. However, we know very little about how African citizens, in turn, relate to and identify with the AU and what shapes their sense of belonging as political subjects of the AU. In addressing this lacuna, this article takes a bottom-up perspective on the formation of an AU identity among African citizens, placing citizens' own sense-making practices about the relevance and value of the AU in their everyday lives center stage. Drawing on focus group discussions among citizens in Burkina Faso and The Gambia, I show that the way research participants relate to the AU is based on and mediated through experiences. Rather than a vague Pan-African identity, what shapes the way citizens relate to the AU are concrete experiences with the organization's norms and policies and their tangible effects on everyday life, which are conditioned by people's (different) exposure to AU policies and their positioning within existing social, political, and economic structures. The importance of experience in forging a sense of belonging among African citizens does not preclude the existence of a shared Pan-African identity, but it offers important cues for both how to study the formation of an AU identity and how it can be shaped in the future.
In: Review of international studies: RIS, Band 48, Heft 4, S. 626-645
ISSN: 1469-9044
International organisations (IOs) are said to command growing levels of authority. But in studying this phenomenon, scholars predominantly focus on the formal capacities member states assign to IOs. Much less attention is paid to the effects of IO authority, that is, how authority is exerted in practice and what it does within the affected societies. Based on a case study of the African Union's (AU) anti-coup regime, I make the case for a 'bottom-up' approach to IO authority, focusing on its localised enactment and effects. Analysing the AU's authority through a governmentality lens and drawing on several months of field research, I show that the AU's authority to govern coups is indeed effective: in commanding the re-establishment of constitutional order, the AU prescribes a particular imaginary of political order to resolve conflict and shapes the conduct of political actors in affected states by inscribing them into this order. But rather than operating in a top-down, direct way, the AU's authority is enacted in a distant, diffuse manner. Although based on formal powers assigned to the AU, neither the way this authority is exercised nor its effects can be inferred merely from these formal powers.
World Affairs Online
In: PRIF Blog
World Affairs Online
In: Africa Spectrum, Band 54, Heft 2, S. 106-126
ISSN: 1868-6869
World Affairs Online
In: South African journal of international affairs: journal of the South African Institute of International Affairs, Band 25, Heft 1, S. 1-19
ISSN: 1938-0275
In: African security, Band 10, Heft 3-4, S. 205-222
ISSN: 1939-2214
In: African affairs: the journal of the Royal African Society, Band 116, Heft 464, S. 539-543
ISSN: 1468-2621
In: African security, Band 10, Heft 3/4, S. 205-222
ISSN: 1939-2206
World Affairs Online
In: PRIF Blog
World Affairs Online
In: African security, Band 6, Heft 3-4, S. 257-275
ISSN: 1939-2214
In: The journal of modern African studies: a quarterly survey of politics, economics & related topics in contemporary Africa, Band 51, Heft 2, S. 359-360
ISSN: 1469-7777
In: African security, Band 6, Heft 3-4, S. 257-275
ISSN: 1939-2206
World Affairs Online