Principal-agent relations and the Africa-EU partnership on peace and security: Politics of discretion in a least-likely case

The EU´s interregional relations constitute a main feature of its external policy. This is particularly evident for Africa-EU-relations. Cooperation within the partnership is often managed in informal networks involving multiple agents. Research on Africa-EU relations has produced rich findings across various contexts. However, its informal character and the substantive leeway agents might enjoy, has barely been investigated. Likewise, principal-agent research on the EU´s interregional relations is nascent. This paper seeks to fill these research gaps by applying a principal-agent framework to Africa-EU relations. As first research objective, it aims to identify acts of delegation between member states but also EU institutions as potential principals, and actors cooperating with African partners on the ground. Second, it seeks to analyse discretion, i.e. the room of manoeuvre agents enjoy. Pointing specifically to the EU-Africa partnership on peace and security as least-likely case since substantial control of EU member states as principals might be exerted in the security domain, the study investigates on the role of EU actors engaged in informal networks with African partners. Informed by interview data collected in Europe and Africa, preliminary results suggest that agents enjoy substantial discretion even in a policy field of high importance to the principals.