Africa and IR (Theory): Rediscovering Plurality

Abstract

For a long time, Africa’s position in international politics has been described as marginal and that of a passive bystander or ground for great power politics. Both intra-African relations and African agency in general had been widely neglected. This alleged passivity is also paralleled in the role Africa played in mainstream IR theoretical debates. Africa’s challenge to the idea of state sovereignty, it was argued, symbolised the continent’s non-conformity to the general worldviews of dominant IR schools of thought, neorealism in particular. The only viable consequence for a long time, it seemed, was conducting research on Africa’s international engagements from a theory-distant point of view. Both African passivity and theory-distance, however, become increasingly challenged in more recent times. There is a growing academic recognition of African agency and African contributions to creating and recreating the terms on which international engagement is possible. This observation on the one hand reflects that international politics in general have become a more and more crowded arena, particularly with the rise of new state-players as well as non-state actors. This opened ways for the creation of new political spaces and alternative modes of engagement that still require systematic reflection. On the other hand, intra-African relations have dramatically changed since the end of the Cold War, particularly with the growing importance of continental and regional organisations (AU, ECOWAS, etc.). Stressing African agency, however, does not mean everything is possible. It rather requires a critical reflection of the limits and constraints in the engagement and reproduction of the structural environment in which it takes place. As a reaction to this observed dynamism in international politics, IR theory too rediscovered plurality and today offers a multitude of alternative and innovative perspectives to rethink international relations. These two changes provide an opportunity to reconsider Africa’s contributions to an existing plurality of IR theories as well as to theorise African contributions to the conduct of international relations. Against this background, this panel seeks to bring together approaches that challenge both, African passivity in its engagement with the world as well as its silence on IR theoretical debates. Contributions may include critical reflections of African agency in international affairs (e.g. in trade or climate negotiations, peacekeeping, mediation, the UN system), and/or theoretical contributions offering a new reading of IR theory with African experiences.

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