This book studies relevant actors and practices of conflict intervention by African regional organizations and their intimate connection to space-making, addressing a major gap regarding what actually happens within and around these organizations. Based on extensive empirical research, it argues that those intervention practices are essentially spatializing practices, based on particular spatial imaginations, contributing to the continuous construction and formatting of regional spaces as well as to ordering relations between different regional spaces. Analyzing the field of developing practices of conflict intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU), the book contributes a new theory-oriented analytical approach to study African regional organizations (ROs) and the complex dynamics of African peace and security, based on insights from Critical Geography. As such, it helps to close an empirical gap with regard to the ‘internal’ modes of operation of African ROs as well as the lack of their theorization. It demonstrates that, contrary to most accounts, intervention practices of African ROs have been diverse and complexly interrelated, involving different actors within and around these organizations, and are essentially tied to the space-making. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of African Politics, Governance, Peace and Security Studies, International or Regional Organizations and more broadly to Comparative Regionalism, International Relations and International Studies.

As essential components of globalization, the study of practices and processes of space formation promotes a nuanced understanding of globalization. How do people create spaces for social action under the global condition, especially since the nineteenth century, when global interconnectedness increased rapidly? We explore the problem through specific case studies. Anthropologists, historians, geographers, sociologists, global studies scholars, and cultural studies scholars examine the agency of, e.g., members and staff of African regional organizations, Indian migrant workers, female GDR activists, Soviet planning experts, or US novelists. By studying elites as well as middle-class and micro-entrepreneurs – i.e. more and less influential actors – we encourage reflection on the relationship between power and space and examine how spatial entrepreneurs attempt to influence the shaping of space and their spatial literacy. The analysis aims at a better understanding of the different globalization projects, their crisis-like clashes, and the resulting conflictual development of spatial orders.

Based on intellectual openness and an interest in transdisciplinary perspectives, this edited volume introduces scholars of African Peace and Security to innovative methodological and conceptual approaches, offering new insights into the inner life of APSA.

Analyzes the politics around military deployments in the Sahel since 2012 from a critical geopolitics perspective.

This book focuses on the ECOWAS Commission, both as an autonomous actor, as well as a policy-making nexus for its member states and external actors. Drawing from a variety of never-before analyzed sources, unpublished internal documents and over 120 interviews with staff from the ECOWAS Commission, its member states, and external actors supporting the organization, this book presents a comprehensive portrait of ECOWAS’s institutional capabilities, challenges, and reforms. It utilizes a policy studies approach focusing on the areas of political affairs, peace, and regional security, as well as trade and customs to illustrate concrete cases of policy making. In doing so, the book provides practice-oriented insights into the policy-making agency within the organization, arguing for the significance of the ECOWAS Commission as an actor. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of West Africa and its international relations, comparative regionalism, international organization studies, development studies, policy-making, peace and conflict studies, governance and more broadly to African politics and international relations.

This book analyses the role of the African Union and regional economic communities in contributing to peacebuilding in Africa. Big and small conflicts rage across the African continent, and this book argues that the African Union and the five regional economic communities have the potential to greatly contribute to peace and peacebuilding In Africa. Looking across the African Union and the five regional economic communities (the AMU, ECCAS, ECOWAS, IGAD, and SADC), the book considers in detail the organizations’ programmes, engagement, endeavours, success and failure of activities of peacebuilding in their respective regions. Overall, the book argues that an institutionalised and formalised relationship between the African Union and the regional economic communities would not only be decisive for the prospects for peace in the region but would also serve to strengthen the continent’s role on the global stage through asserting its agency, owning its agenda, and designing its own solutions and mechanisms for addressing problems. Drawing together an international team of prominent experts, this book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, NGOs, activists, and regional and international actors working on African politics, security, governance, and economics.