Antonia Witt - Böcker

International organizations like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, or the European Union are a defining feature of contemporary world politics. In recent years, many of them have also become heavily politicized. In this book, we examine how the norms and values that underpin the evaluations of international organizations have changed over the past 50 years. Looking at five organizations in depth, we observe two major trends. Taken together, both trends make the legitimation of international organizations more challenging today. First, people-based legitimacy standards are on the rise: international organizations are increasingly asked to demonstrate not only what they do for their member states, but also for the people living in these states. Second, procedural legitimacy standards gain ground: international organizations are increasingly evaluated not only based on what they accomplish, but also based on how they arrive at decisions, manage themselves, or coordinate with other organizations in the field. In sum, the study thus documents how the list of expectations international organizations need to fulfil to count as 'legitimate' has expanded over time. The sources of this expansion are manifold. Among others, they include the politicization of expanded international authority and the rise of non-state actors as new audiences from which international organizations seek legitimacy.

There is hardly any aspect of social, political, and economic life today that is not also governed internationally. Drawing on debates around hierarchy, hegemony, and authority in international politics, this volume takes the study of the international 'beyond anarchy' a step further by establishing the concept of rule as the defining feature of order in the international realm. The contributors argue that the manifold conceptual approaches to sub- and superordination in the international should be understood as rich conceptualizations of one concept: rule. Rule allows constellations of sub- and superordination in the international to be seen as multiplex, systemic, and normatively ambiguous phenomena that need to be studied in the context of their interplay and consequences. This volume draws on a variety of conceptualizations of rule, exploring, in particular, the practices of rule as well as the relational and dynamic characteristics of rule in international politics.

There is hardly any aspect of social, political, and economic life today that is not also governed internationally. Drawing on debates around hierarchy, hegemony, and authority in international politics, this volume takes the study of the international 'beyond anarchy' a step further by establishing the concept of rule as the defining feature of order in the international realm. The contributors argue that the manifold conceptual approaches to sub- and superordination in the international should be understood as rich conceptualizations of one concept: rule. Rule allows constellations of sub- and superordination in the international to be seen as multiplex, systemic, and normatively ambiguous phenomena that need to be studied in the context of their interplay and consequences. This volume draws on a variety of conceptualizations of rule, exploring, in particular, the practices of rule as well as the relational and dynamic characteristics of rule in international politics.

Ever since the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) was initiated in the early 2000s, political and research interest has tended to focus on its military components, rather than the more quantitatively important non-military interventions.This book scrutinizes the enactment and effects of African non-military conflict interventions from a range of different perspectives and contexts. Research suggests that non-military interventions through the African Union and Regional Economic Communities are highly impactful, despite being typically under-resourced and less institutionally embedded within APSA. This book provides a comprehensive empirical mapping of the many mostly informal practices of non-military interventions and the complex interfaces between the African Union and Regional Economic Communities, their external ‘partners’, and national and local actors. Covering various cross-cutting themes such as the involvement of civil society and the role of African special envoys in non-military interventions, the book considers the variation and dynamics of such practices across time and space, as well as their intended or unintended effects.This timely new assessment of African non-military conflict interventions will be an important read for peacebuilding practitioners and think tanks, as well as researchers working across African International Relations, peace, and conflict studies.

Since the beginnings of independence, a number of African nations have been plagued by repeated coup d'états. Within the African Union (AU), there has been a concerted effort to break this cycle through the official adoption of an ‘anti-coup norm’, by which the AU is mandated to suspend a member state and restore constitutional order following a coup. Supporters of this stance see it as strengthening democracy in Africa, while critics argue that it has served to prop up existing regimes. But there has been little analysis of what the AU’s attempts to ‘restore constitutional order’ have meant for individual African states.In this book, Antonia Witt looks at the legacy of the AU’s intervention in Madagascar following the 2009 ‘Malagasy crisis’, one of the increasingly relevant yet under-researched cases of non-Western intervention in Africa. The book looks at the ways in which international intervention reconfigured the political order in Madagascar, how it facilitated the power struggle within the Madagascan elite and prevented more profound political change. It also considers what the example set by the Madagascan intervention means for the wider international order in Africa and the powers attributed to African international actors such as the AU.