African Intervention Politics
The Research Group African Intervention Politics studies interventions by African regional organizations such as the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These organizations have become central actors in establishing and maintaining peace and security on the African continent. Due to predominantly institutionalist and top-down approaches in existing research, systematic knowledge about the practices and consequences of African interventions is still scarce. The Research Group addresses these knowledge gaps by adopting a “bottom-up” perspective that focuses on the lived realities as well as the politics of regional interventions.
![[Translate to Englisch:] [Translate to Englisch:]](/fileadmin/_processed_/0/b/csm_2960203940_364b1bab59_k_e1acc9fd9f.jpg)
In so doing, the Research Group concentrates on two thematic areas: On the one hand, we explore the knowledge orders and practices that underlie African interventions and with the help of which various actors in interventions try to establish peace and order. On the other hand, we investigate the effects of these interventions on the political and social order in affected countries and how different social groups experience and evaluate the interventions. Methodologically, we use focus group and interview research, survey research, and participant observation, among other methods. The various projects of the Research Group are carried out in close cooperation with African scholars based on the continent.
Image: SoulRider.222 / Eric Rider via flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0
Projects
PhD Projects
The vision of the African Union (AU) – “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens [...]” – and the mission statement of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – “From an ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of Peoples” – suggest inclusive development processes and goals of the two organizations. This is interpreted as an intention to align their policies with the norm of “people-centric governance.” As central actors in the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), both organizations can intervene for purposes of crisis prevention, conflict management, and post-conflict reconstruction and development. Scholarly engagements with military components of African conflict interventions have dominated the generation of knowledge about African intervention politics to date. Besides, through the “local turn”, a strand of research has emerged that critically examines liberal peacebuilding and foregrounds the actions of local peacebuilding. The dissertation project addresses the intertwining of the local and the international in African non-military interventions by elaborating how and why civil society actors are included or excluded as collaborators in AU and ECOWAS conflict interventions. Using practice-theoretical approaches, the study reconstructs the practices of inclusion and exclusion of civil society actors on the basis of the two case studies Mali and Guinea and contributes to further opening the “black box” of African non-military intervention politics.
This will first be realized through guideline-based interviews with relevant AU and ECOWAS actors through field research visits to Addis Ababa and Abuja, and illustrated through the case studies. In the latter, guided interviews with civilian non-state actors and participatory approaches with focus groups will be conducted. In addition to experiential knowledge on inclusion and exclusion mechanisms in AU and ECOWAS interventions, information to reconstruct the actor landscape will be obtained through social network analyses and “communities of practice”, which form the conceptual framework of the project, will be identified in the field of African regional conflict interventions.
In the past twenty years, the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have demonstrated considerable agency in providing peace and security on the continent thus shaping political orders and life worlds. The literature on intervention pictures those African interventions as less or even non-coercive, hence attest them being more legitimate compared to more contested ‘Western’ interventions.
This PhD project challenges this assumption by arguing that interventions are inherently coercive as they react to a normative crisis in an attempt of order-making. Preliminary field work suggests that coercion is much more ambiguous than its usual negative connotation and that perceptions of coercion do fall apart along parameters of space, positionality and time. In this, there is a flipping point between legitimate and illegitimate coercion that, in effect, shapes the legitimacy of the intervention and the attempt of regional order-making. Based on these assumptions, this PhD project asks: how coercive are African interventions? What constitutes coercion for whom? Why do perceptions fall apart and how does this impact regional order-making?
Drawing on ethnographic elements, such as observation, immersion, (non-)elite interview and focus group research in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, this PhD project (1) explores perceptions of coercion within those two case studies as a way to demonstrate how those affected by interventions perceive the interventions’ coercive nature and what constitutes coercion for them. In a most similar case design, this project (2) identifies causal factors why those perceptions fall apart and (3) how this shapes the attempt and legitimacy of regional order-making.
- How African Regional Interventions are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity
| 2024
Witt, Antonia; Bah, Omar M; Birchinger, Sophia; Jaw, Sait Matty; Schnabel, Simone (2024): How African Regional Interventions are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity, International Peacekeeping, 31: 1, 58–86. DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2023.2262922 - Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience
| 2023
Witt, Antonia (2023): Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience, Global Studies Quarterly, 3: 3, 1–12. DOI: 10.1093/isagsq/ksad052 - “Siding with the people” or “Occupying force”? Local perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia
| 2023
Birchinger, Sophia; Jaw, Sait Matty; Bah, Omar M; Witt, Antonia (2023): “Siding with the people” or “Occupying force”? Local perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia, PRIF Report, 3, Frankfurt/M. DOI: 10.48809/prifrep2303 - Beyond formal powers: Understanding the African Union's authority on the ground
| 2022
Witt, Antonia (2022): Beyond formal powers: Understanding the African Union's authority on the ground, Review of International Studies, 48: 4, 626–645. DOI: 10.1017/S0260210522000067 - The “Clubs of Heads of State” from Below
| 2022
Schnabel, Simone; Witt, Antonia; Konkobo, Adjara (2022): The “Clubs of Heads of State” from Below. Local perceptions of the African Union, ECOWAS and their 2014/15 interventions in Burkina Faso, PRIF Report, 14, Frankfurt/M. DOI: 10.48809/prifrep2214 - Taking Intervention Politics Seriously
| 2020
Witt, Antonia; Schnabel, Simone (2020): Taking Intervention Politics Seriously. Media Debates and the Contestation of African Regional Interventions ‘from Below’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 14: 2, 271-288. DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2020.1736415 - Studying African Interventions ‘from Below’
| 2018
Witt, Antonia (2018): Studying African Interventions ‘from Below’. Exploring Practices, Knowledges and Perceptions, South African Journal of International Affairs, Special Issue, 25: 1, 1–19. DOI: 10.1080/10220461.2018.1417904