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This book examines Africa's internal and external relations by focusing on three core concepts: orders, diplomacy and borderlands.
The contributors examine traditional and non-traditional diplomatic actors, and domestic, regional, continental, and global orders. They argue that African diplomats profoundly shape these orders by situating themselves within in-between-spaces of geographical and functional orders. It is in these borderlands that agency, despite all kinds of constraints, flourishes. Chapters in the book compare domestic orders to regional ones, and then continental African orders to global ones. They deal with a range of functional orders, including development, international trade, human rights, migration, nuclear arms control, peacekeeping, public administration, and territorial change. By focusing on these topics, the volume contributes to a better understanding of African international relations, sharpens analyses of ordering processes in world politics, and adds to our comprehension of how diplomacy shapes orders and vice versa. The studies collected here show a much more nuanced picture of African agency in African and international affairs and suggest that African diplomacy is far more extensive than is often assumed.
This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, African politics and International Relations.
List of contents
Introduction Katharina Coleman, Markus Kornprobst, and Annette Seegers 1. Where Local and Global Orders Interface: An Analysis of How Civil Society Actors Contextualise Human Rights Norms in South Africa Maxine Rubin and Masana Ndinga-Kanga 2. Human Rights in South Africa's Identity: The Interplay of International and Domestic Mechanisms in South Africa's Identity in Global Politics Annette Seegers 3. Zaire's Exile-Diplomats: African Agency in Overlapping Orders Colin Hendrickx 4. The Borderlands of Order in the Borderlands of Africa: Katanga and the Caprivi Strip Jan Erk 5. Establishment of a New Regional Order in the Horn of Africa Sonia Le Gouriellec 6. The ECOWAS Commission and the Making of Regional Order in West Africa: Intersecting Logics in International Public Administration Stefan Gänzle, Jarle Trondal, and Nadja Kühn 7. Overlaps and Distinctiveness: Africa's Nuclear Order Markus Kornprobst 8. African Diplomacy in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations Katharina P. Coleman 9. Non-Impunity, the International Criminal Court and the African Union: Exploring the Borderland of the International Orders Related to Non-Impunity Martin Welz 10. Stirring the Pot: The African Union and the International Order Thomas Kwasi Tieku 11. Africa in the Throes of Global Pushes and Pulls Eghosa E. Osaghae Conclusion Katharina Coleman, Markus Kornprobst, and Annette Seegers
About the author
Katharina P. Coleman is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Markus Kornprobst holds the Chair of Political Science and International Relations at the Vienna School of International Studies, Austria.
Annette Seegers is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Summary
This book examines Africa’s internal and external relations by focusing on three core concepts: orders, diplomacy and borderlands.
Report
"[This book] sets out to engage in an effort that is not only very laudable but also indeed essential, focusing on a variety of African actors and their agency in reading, interpreting, and shaping orders at different scales between the local and the global. "
-Jens Herpolsheimer, Yearbook on the African Union
