Africa in Global International Relations

Emerging approaches to theory and practice

Paul-Henri Bischoff, Kwesi Aning, Amitav Acharya, Paul-Henri Bischoff, Kwesi Aning, Amitav Acharya

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138909786
• eBook ISBN: 9781317437529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Recent scholarship in International Relations (IR) has started to study the meaning and implications of a non-Western world. With this comes the need for a new paradigm of IR theory that is more global, open, inclusive, and able to capture the voices and experiences of both Western and non-Western worlds.

This book investigates why Africa has been marginalised in IR discipline and theory and how this issue can be addressed in the context of the emerging Global IR paradigm. To have relevance for Africa, a new IR theory needs to be more inclusive, intellectually negotiated and holistically steeped in the African context. In this innovative volume, each author takes a critical look at existing IR paradigms and offers a unique perspective based on the African experience. Following on from Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan's work, Non-Western International Relations Theory, it develops and advances non-Western IR theory and the idea of Global IR.

This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics, international relations, IR theory and comparative politics.

1

AFRICA IN GLOBAL INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Emerging approaches to theory and practice, an introduction

Paul-Henri Bischoff, Kwesi Aning and Amitav Acharya

Of late, the field of International Relations (IR) has seen a growing awareness of, and dissatisfaction with, the narrow and Euro-American-centric framing of mainstream IR theories. To be sure, a minority of scholars ignore this trend and persist in the belief that the existing body of theoretical knowledge in IR can be extended with some minor tinkering to cover changes in the non-Western world, without any serious rethinking of their fundamental assumptions. But most IR scholars have come to recognise and even demand a more genuine broadening and deepening of the existing IR knowledge, including its theories, methods and empirical base. New theoretical perspectives, such as constructivism, the English School and what has been called ‘non-Western IR theory’ and ‘Global IR’, have encouraged the incorporation of the voices and writings from other regions into the discussions and debates in IR. Against this backdrop, this volume explores new and changing African contributions that have relevance for the project of redefining and broadening IR theory. Our goal is not merely to establish what is unique or distinct in the African context in these and other areas. This is important, but what is even more pressing is to find ways to link them and compare them with more general theoretical trends and explanations. Moreover, the goal here is not to engage in bland theory testing or to apply established concepts in mainstream IR about power, institutions and ideas, to an African context and make minor adjustments to make them fit better. The goal rather is rather to identify and conceptualise African ideas, voices and relationships on their own terms and assess their relationship with those we find in existing IR theory. The book especially highlights and discusses the growing possibility of an African agency, defined broadly to include both material and ideational elements, in regional and international relations, covering areas where Africa’s contributions are especially visible and relevant, such as regionalism, security management and Africa’s relations with the outside world. This is not about exclusively ‘African solutions to African problems’, but rather about contributions in which Africans define the terms for understanding the issues and set the terms for the nature and scope of outside involvement. At the same time, we recognise that African contributions to IR theory should not and need not be based exclusively on claims about African distinctiveness or African exceptionalism. We are not here to create an ‘African School of International Relations’. Rather, we believe African voices and contributions should have a global resonance and can be brought to the core of the discipline of IR.

From non-Western IR theory to Global IR: background

In a project on what they call ‘non-Western IR theory’, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan¹ argued that the main current theories of IR, especially realism, liberalism and to a lesser extent constructivism, are too deeply rooted in, and beholden to, the history, intellectual tradition and agency claims of the West to accord little more than a marginal place to those of the non-Western world. This creates a ‘disjuncture’, whereby these supposedly universal theories fail to capture and explain the key trends and puzzles of international relations in the non-Western world. In response, they call for the development of a new paradigm of IR theory (IRT) that is more global, open, inclusive and able to capture the voice and experiences of both Western and non-Western worlds and avoid the present disjunctures between theoretical tools and the ground realities of the world beyond the West.

The reasons for the underdevelopment of IRT outside the West are many, including cultural, political and institutional factors. These include the perception that Western IRTs might already have discovered the right path to knowledge; the ‘hegemonic’ status of Western IRTs whereby the key institutions, journals and conferences are either located in or controlled by the West; the possibility that indigenous IR theories may exist but remain hidden from public view due to language and other barriers; and finally that local conditions such as lack of institutional resources and the attractiveness of better paying policy-oriented expertise might distract IR scholars to the neglect of theory.

The concept of a non-Western IRT was met with criticism. Some would rather call the new project ‘post-Western’; with a more radical agenda to disavow and displace the existing ‘Western’ IR. Others criticise the category non-Western as divisive and outmoded in view of the blurring differences between the West and the Rest. This forms the core rationale for the idea of Global International Relations (the Global IR idea is outlined by Acharya).²

The purpose of Global IR is to go beyond the West versus the Rest divide and develop a broader and more inclusive agenda that truly reflects the growing diversity of the community of IR scholars around the world and the spectrum of their intellectual concerns. Two aspects of the Global IR framework are especially relevant to this book. The first is the need to recognise the importance of regions, regionalisms and regional orders in theorizing IR. Traditionally, IRT has been biased in favour of universalism. Theories that capture and explain regionally the specific patterns of interactions were often ignored or given a secondary space in theory-building relative to theories that claim to speak for the whole world. Yet local and regional diversity is a fact of life in world politics that cannot be ignored. Global IR calls for paying closer attention to such diversity, and the study of variations between global and regional patterns of interactions as well as variations between regions.

This leads to a second aspect of Global IR. This has to do with the importance of the study of regions, regionalisms and regional orders in developing a broader canvas of international relations theory. Global IR gives centre stage to regions. It does not argue that the world is being fragmented into regions. But it also does not assume that the world order is moving inexorably towards a seamless globality. Relatedly, Global IR does not view regions as fixed physical, cartographic or cultural entities. Instead, it views regions as politically and socially constructed through the dynamic interplay of interdependence, norms and power and other forces. Moreover, the study of regions should not just be inward looking to what happens within these regions, but also consider how regions manage their relationship with the outside world in shaping global order.

A third aspect of the Global IR paradigm calls for reorienting the dominant theories of IR to take great cognizance of the above-mentioned elements of diversity and regionalisation in world politics. While Global IR does not dismiss existing theories of IR, it challenges them to rethink their assumptions and broaden the scope of their investigation. For realism, the challenge is to look beyond conflicts induced by national interest and distribution of power, and acknowledge other sources of agency including culture, ideas and norms that make states, regions and civilisations not clash but embrace and learn from each other. For liberals, there is a similar challenge to look beyond American hegemony, as the starting point of investigating multilateralism and regionalism and their institutional forms. Liberalism also needs to acknowledge the significant variations in cooperative behaviour that do exist in different local contexts, such that no single model of integration or interactions can account for all or most of them. For constructivism, taking stock of different forms of agency in the creation and diffusion of ideas and norms remains a major challenge.

These reorientations and modifications in IRT lead to a fourth aspect of Global IR, one that calls for IRT to adopt a broader conception of agency. Mainstream IR theories often view the countries or regions of the Global South as marginal to international politics. Even some of the critical theories, such as post-colonialism and Marxism, often stress this presumed marginality and lack of agency as a basis for developing their own arguments. While criticising (rightly) the mainstream theories such as realism and liberalism for excluding the South, they have done little exploration of the alternative forms of agency in and from the South.

Global IR differs from the notion of agency in both mainstream and critical approaches to the study of international relations. While it rejects the emphasis on military and economic power as the basis of agency in realism and liberalism, it also highlights forms of agency that are often ignored or obscured by some of the critical theories of IR, including post-colonialism. For Global IR, agency is both material and ideational. It is not monopolised by the strong nations or actors. Materially weaker states, regional bodies and non-state actors can exercise forms of agency, often at local and regional levels that have important consequences for the development of regional and global orders. Taking multiple forms, agency can involve developing new rules and institutions at the local level to support and strengthen the global order against great power, hypocrisy and dominance. Agency can involve developing new pathways to development, security and environmental protection. Adopting such a broad view, one can see in the past that Africa has been not without agency. Through its participation in the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, Africa was able to advance decolonisation and the strengthening of the norms of universal sovereignty. Later, Africa created a form of regionalism to maintain post-colonial boundaries (which has since eroded, but whose importance in the earlier post-colonial stages of African international relations should not be forgotten). A more contemporary example of African agency is the principle of responsibility to protect. While many see this as a Western, or Canadian, notion the genesis of this idea cannot be understood without reference to the central role of the concept of ‘responsible sovereignty’ developed by a Brookings Institution project under an African expert, Francis Deng, who was generalising partly from his own African experience and context. Other African personalities, including diplomats such as former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Anan and Mohamed Sahnoun (who co-chaired and was a pivotal voice in the Canadian-sponsored International Commission for Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty) and political leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, played an important role in developing the idea of humanitarian intervention from an African context.³

Against this backdrop, in this book we set out to investigate broadly how Africa fits within the scope of the idea of Global IR. As part of this effort, we pay some attention to the reasons for Africa’s marginalisation in IR discipline and theory, and how this issue can be addressed. While this has to some extent already been studied, the new challenge is how to redress it. Using the Global IR paradigm we argue that, to have relevance for Africa, Global IR needs to be more authentically grounded in African history, rather than Western history, and the ideas, institutions, intellectual perspectives and practices of African states and societies. To this end, our approach identifies the following as the sources of an African contribution to IRT: history and culture, thoughts of revolutionary leaders, practices of statecraft, writings of contemporary IR scholars, and distinctive local and regional interaction patterns. Lived African realities on the ground mean that Africa can offer up local and regional interaction patterns to inform, enrich or transform contemporary IR studies. Too often, Africa has been the testing ground for outside concepts that have been experimental or had little durability. Not only is there, overall, a need for new IR theories but these also need to be more truly or holistically grounded in the lived world, in this case, in African history and the ideas, institutions, intellectual perspectives and practices of African states and societies. The new IRT therefore ought to look towards having existing theories take fuller cognizance of events in the developing world, as well as creating concepts and approaches from African and other developing world contexts. Concepts are needed that have local validity but do also have wider applicability to how the world works.

In calling for an African contribution to IRT, we recognise, consistent with the Global IR concept, the need for eschewing African exceptionalism. We realise the limitations of theory-building that relies exclusively on the unique historical and cultural matrix and behaviour patterns of Africa, its subregions and nations. Relatedly, we believe that the new IRT must develop concepts and approaches from African contexts that are valid locally but also have applicability to the wider world. Such an IRT cannot, and need not, supplant Western IRT but should aim to enrich Western IRT with the voices and experiences of Africa, including its claims to agency in global and regional orders. This is strengthened by our focus on African agency, again a key element of Global IR, that takes us beyond the marginalisation narrative found in most existing contributions to the literature on African IR. The issue of African agency is not only critical to addressing Africa’s marginalisation in IRT, it also helps to illustrate the new approach to the study of regions found in the ‘regional worlds’ perspective that goes beyond the traditional view of regions as self-contained entities and stresses how regions link with the global level and contribute to the world order at large.

Africa’s place in Global IR: structure of the volume

The volume is divided into two main parts. The first deals with theoretical arguments and pathways that help to position Africa in the Global IR paradigm with the help of case studies and empirical research. The second deals with the question of African agency, a vital ingredient of Global IR.

Theoretical arguments and pathways

Our starting point, as Ahmed Ali Salem points out, is that ‘theories and paradigms of international relations developed in the periphery, including Africa, are not central to the international relations theories defined in the core’ even though Africa can provide international relations with theoretical originality. The flipside of this is that African scholars have found that when testing general IR precepts and theories they find they do not work. IRT asserts universal validity but when testing its theory it is not applicable to at least one of five continents and at least 15 per cent of the world’s population. This speaks not so much to African exceptionalism as it does to the failure of the universalism espoused by mainstream IRT. Salem shows that on the African continent, some of which borders on the Arab peninsula, mainstream IR approaches do not fully explain events in Africa’s IR.

Theorists of IR provide different answers to the question of what the necessary conditions are in which international organisations act. Realism and constructivism offer up different answers. Realists argue that actions of international organisations are mere reflections of the imperatives of power politics and balances of power. However, constructivists contend that the actions of international organisations reflect not only power politics but norms and identity politics as well. Non-state-centric constructivists, in particular, argue that international organisations act as consensual communities and as bureaucracies.

Selecting collective security actions as the international organisations activity most appropriate for testing these propositions, Ahmed Salem tests these realist and constructivist propositions in the collective security actions among mostly African members that evidently planned or committed aggressions against other members in the League of Arab States (LAS). He examined LAS resolutions that invoked collective security measures to see whether these were coterminous with the position of its most powerful member or coalition and the position of an associated global ally, and also whether they were coterminous with the positions of all its members and the position of its general secretariat. The results were mixed, backing neither approach. He therefore suggests combining key variables of realism and constructivism or synthesising them carefully. Similarly, in looking at the relations between North African and sub-Saharan states, a realist reading contends that North African and sub-Saharan states act as minor states of an international system with global powers steering or directing outcomes. A constructivist reading, however, looks for states with similar ideologies, principles and norms of international behaviour to align together. In looking at these propositions, Salem considers the conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt regarding two bilateral conflicts on Egypt’s application for membership in the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and over the distribution of the Nile river water resources. While realism and constructivism separately provided reasonable explanations of the dynamics of relations between Egypt and Ethiopia during and after the Cold War, they failed to explain their alliance formations. From this and other examples, Salem contends that mainstream international relations theories suffer from severe conceptual problems that undermine their propositions and applications. They are constructed on poorly defined concepts that need to be revisited before they can plausibly be applied to African events or those elsewhere. Refining existing concepts or introducing new ones from ones tested in the periphery would seem to be key. Such an exercise, he demonstrates, ought (among other examples) to include a fuller reconceptualisation of power...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Africa in Global International Relations: emerging approaches to theory and practice, an introduction
• 2 A critique of failing International Relations theories in African tests, with emphasis on North African responses
• 3 Subversion of an ordinary kind: gender, security and everyday theory in Africa
• 4 Disciplining the developing world? Perspectives from a South African IR
• 5 African agency in international relations: challenging great power politics?
• 6 Africa in international relations: agent, bystander or victim?
• 7 An emerging, established or receding normative agent? Probing the African Union’s recent response to and intervention in Libya
• 8 Africanizing the international and internationalizing Africa: security, war on terror and Mali
• 9 Bridging the gap: the pan-African school and International Relations theory
• Index