References PRIF Spotlight 14/2025

Just Laypeople’s Views? Learning from citizen perspectives for people-centered peace and security governance

by Antonia Witt, Sophia Birchinger, Sait Matty Jaw, Amado Kaboré | To the publication

¹ https://www.ecowas.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Revised-treaty-1.pdf (last access 24 November 2025).

² https://www.ecowas.int/ecowas-commemorates-50th-anniversary-in-lagos-reaffirms-commitment-to-regional-cooperation/ (last access 26 November 2025).

³ https://ecowas.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vision2050_EN_Web.pdf (last access 24 November 2025).

⁴ The ‘Local Perceptions of Regional Interventions: AU and ECOWAS in Burkina Faso and The Gambia’ project, led by Dr. Antonia Witt, ran from 2020 until 2025 and was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Following a collaborative approach throughout, the case studies were carried out in research tandems: For Burkina Faso, the team comprised Dr. Amado Kaboré, Adjara Konkobo, and Dr. Simone Schnabel. For The Gambia, these were Omar M Bah, Sophia Birchinger, and Sait Matty Jaw.

⁵ Hartmann, Christof. ‘ECOWAS and the Restoration of Democracy in the Gambia’. Africa Spectrum 52, no. 1 (2017): 85–99.; Ateku, Abdul-Jalilu. ‘Regional Intervention in the Promotion of Democracy in West Africa: An Analysis of the Political Crisis in the Gambia and ECOWAS’ Coercive Diplomacy’. Conflict, Security & Development 20, no. 6 (2020): 677–96.

⁶ For more details, see Schnabel et al. 2022.

⁷ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhFJQ4h5Hm4 (last access 24 November 2025).

⁸ For more details, see Birchinger et al. 2023.

⁹ Witt, Antonia, Omar M. Bah, Sophia Birchinger, Sait Matty Jaw, and Simone Schnabel. ‘How African Regional Interventions Are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity’. International Peacekeeping 31, no. 1 (2024): 58–86. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13533312.2023.2262922

¹⁰ In 2008/2009, 36.5% of the respondents in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal said they do not know enough to assess whether ECOWAS has helped their country. In 2014/2015, the number dropped to 26.8%, now also including respondents from Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Togo. See: https://www.afrobarometer.org/online-data-analysis/. 

¹¹ For a more detailed discussion of the methodology, see Birchinger et al. 2023; Schnabel et al. 2022; and Witt 2021.

¹² https://africarenewal.un.org/en/magazine/ecowas-50-our-focus-remains-peace-security-and-prosperity (last access 24 November 2025).

¹³ https://www.ecowas.int/ecowas-commemorates-50th-anniversary-in-lagos-reaffirms-commitment-to-regional-cooperation/ (last access 26 November 2025).

Selected Project Publications

The forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding under the title ‘The Politics of African Interventionism: Use of Force and Local Perceptions’, edited by Antonia Witt, brings together contributions that discuss examples of African interventionism with a focus on local perceptions on the use of force, ranging from Mozambique over Somalia to Mali, among others. The ’African Intervention Politics’ Research Group features with two articles: 

In the introductory article entitled ‘Militarization and the Hopes for African Interventions: Exploring Societal Perspectives’, Antonia Witt discusses the changing faces of African interventionism and why it is important to study them through state-society relations. 

In the second article, entitled ‘Neighbours as Peacekeepers: Senegal and the Ambivalence of Proximity in African Regional Interventions’, Sophia Birchinger, Sait Matty Jaw, and Antonia Witt take The Gambia as an example of where proximate neighbours, such as Senegal, become peacekeepers and how that is framed and experienced on both sides.

In the open access article ‘How African Regional Interventions are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity’ (2024), the project team presents its main findings, demonstrating that (1) AU and ECOWAS interventions are locally more contested than often assumed, but that (2) local perceptions are at the same time multiplex. In both countries, the article finds (3) a marked difference between elite perceptions on the one hand and those of ‘everyday citizens’ on the other, which reflects variegated experiences with and exposures to the regional interventions resulting from different social, political, and spatial positionalities. >> How African Regional Interventions are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity

In the open access article ‘Taking Intervention Politics Seriously: Media Debates and the Contestation of African Regional Interventions “from Below”’ (2020), Antonia Witt and Simone Schnabel conducted a media analysis, showing that regional interventions are indeed contested locally, irrespective of the means of intervention applied. The analysis demonstrates how local elites use regional norms and policies in order to claim power and define what is going (wr)on(g). With this, we provide evidence for the (contested) local effects of APSA and for the relevance of media for researching such effects. >> Full article: Taking Intervention Politics Seriously: Media Debates and the Contestation of African Regional Interventions ‘from Below’

In the two PRIF Reports, the respective research tandems explore in empirical depth Burkinabè and Gambian citizens’ perceptions of the regional interventions. >> For Burkina Faso: The ‘Clubs of Heads of State’ from Below: Local perceptions of the African Union, ECOWAS and their 2014/15 interventions in Burkina Faso; >> For The Gambia: ‘Siding with the People’ or ‘Occupying Force’? Local Perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS Interventions in The Gambia

In her open access article ‘Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience’, Antonia Witt makes a case for the power of experience, by showing that it is concrete experience that shapes the way citizens relate to international organizations like the African Union. >> Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience | Global Studies Quarterly | Oxford Academic

In her book chapter ‘Societal Perspectives on African Interventions: Three Methodological Approaches’, Antonia Witt spells out a methodological research agenda, demonstrating the feasibility and value-added of understanding societal perspectives on African interventions. >> Chapter 4 Societal Perspectives on African Interventions in: Researching the Inner Life of the African Peace and Security Architecture