Introduction

In recent years peacekeeping has undergone dynamic changes.1 The deployment of peacekeepers reached new historical heights with the UN deploying more than 100,000 troops and regional IOs have been considerably more active in the last decade than ever before. In 2014 we counted 19 peace operations taking place on the African continent that are deployed by the AU (3), EU (8) and UN (9) (see Table 1.1).2 Nine of the 16 UN missions are deployed to Africa. Since 2003 the EU has deployed a total of 18 missions to Africa of which eight are currently operational (2015). In 2014 the AU was running three fairly large missions in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia and Darfur. The mission in Darfur is a joint AU/UN operation, the mission to the CAR was handed over to the UN in September 2014. While there is growing awareness of the importance of peacekeeping partnerships between IOs and the UN calling it a new paradigm,3 the current literature does not fully take into account its complexity and farreaching dimension.4 Most studies on peacekeeping in Africa are either focusing on the UN5 or have started exploring dyadic relations for example between the UN and AU,6 EU and UN7 or the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) and UN.8 Most of these studies have in common a strong focus on the UN as central actor and a fairly light theoretical underpinning. In contrast this book aims at making a contribution to the literature on peacekeeping in Africa by focusing on an increasingly important aspect, the dispersion of peacekeeping tasks and missions among different actors ranging from the UN to various African regional organisations and extra regional ones such as the EU and global or regional lead states. The main argument is that these actors are partially converging and forming a regime complex that is reaching beyond dyadic relations. In order to conceptualise the multiplex relations between these actors, dependency theory with its focus on resource exchange is transferred to peacekeeping. Given the dynamic changes in the security architecture in Africa with the setting up of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), the book also contributes to the literature on regional institution building in Africa which has developed very dynamically.9 However, most of this literature

is still occupied with a descriptive analysis of newly emerging institutions. Only in a few cases can we see an attempt to focus on operational outputs. If an operational focus is chosen, either there is still a tendency to focus on single IOs in peacekeeping in Africa,10 or if a regional focus on the APSA is chosen, it does not take into account extra regional relations. In this sense, the book is addressing an important gap in the literature that is visible on

the theoretical front, the under-theorised and under-researched inter-IO relations (especially in Africa) and the operational side, by placing single IOs in a network of relations that is conceptualised by regime complexity. Increasingly, actors active in the field of peacekeeping are overlapping and intersecting. Today Africa’s security hotspots are no longer the playground for individual actors be they the UN, African IOs or regional or global hegemons. In the overwhelming majority of cases security issues are engaged in a collective manner. The central thesis of the book is that security governance in Africa is characterised by regime complexity in which individual actors, mostly IOs, jointly manage security issues addressing a broad range of questions ranging for example from conflict management and mediation to peacekeeping or post-conflict peacebuilding activities. The boundaries of a regime complex are flexible in principle, encompassing all those who take action. Raustiala and Victor11 have described a regime complex as being constituted by a number of actors that are starkly interconnected and thus not fully decomposable to its component units. In other words, managing security matters has grown to such an extent that individual actors cannot or do not want to tackle them effectively on their own. Interdependencies between the regime units have developed in such a dimension that warrants speaking about the emergence of an African security regime complex in which actors are given room to converge but remain independent and might even compete.12 This book will focus predominantly on peacekeeping activities of the main players in the field as the most tangible element in security governance. Indeed, the field of security studies has continued to grow and expand to an extent that it has become impossible to explore the notion of security within the regime complex comprehensively; instead, this study opts for only exploring peacekeeping operations in three African countries that have been chosen carefully. The regime complex is by no means restricted to the selected cases – these have been chosen to represent a selection of relevant examples. The empirical focus of the book rests on organisational interaction in which African IOs play a prominent but not exclusive role. As it is the nature of regime complexes to have no physical headquarters and clear boundaries we have to explore complexity for each case selected. Analysing the African security regime complex is important for a number of reasons.13 First, the existence of overlapping and intersecting IOs has so far only been a niche topic for international relations scholarship. While this situation is changing and the number of published articles is steadily increasing there remains a profound lack of theoretical reasoning and empirical research which is mostly focused on actors of the Northern hemisphere, often not analysing security governance, or is preoccupied with the analysis of dyadic inter-institutional relations. However, especially for Africa, the analysis of overlapping and interacting IOs is of crucial importance. Africa is the continent in which we can observe intersecting IOs exemplarily providing rich empirical examples. It is the continent

hosting 55 states that have produced more than a dozen Regional Economic Communities (RECs) spanning boundaries across the region. It is in Africa that we observe a high density of organisations and interdependencies in the security and peacekeeping sector that warrants further exploration. Second, if security governance is also a matter of collective efforts and shared burdens, the performance of IOs is becoming increasingly dependent on external actors. Individual performance is not only dependent on external actors but also on the ability of actors to steer the regime complex. It is the ability to co-govern complex and interdependent relations who may decide about an actor’s success or failure in managing conflicts. While the advantages of burden sharing are tangible for example in the form of shared expertise, donor funding or co-deployment of peacekeepers, such a growing interdependence certainly also contributes to institutional autonomy losses and raises the question of how actors are arranging their position within a larger security regime complex? Third, currently we do not fully comprehend the consequences of dense institutional spaces such as regime complexes. On the one hand, there are good arguments for the assumption that shared resources will increase overall effectiveness because individual action often appears as less influential. This is particularly true for African IOs which on average are rather poorly resourced. Joining forces with other African or international partners thus makes a lot of sense considering existing resource constraints. However, at the same time the proliferation of IOs might equally fuel competition or tendencies of forum shopping that can lead to a regime complex becoming a problem of its own. At the centre of this book is the analysis of which factors are driving the regime complex and shaping its form, using the example of international peacekeeping. Conceptually the study links up with regime complexity scholarship but not regime theory which only explores the emergence of single coherent regimes and does not capture the nature of regime complexity very well. Instead the book connects regime complexity to a branch of organisation theory analysing inter-institutional relations in order to allow a more specific and tailor-made approach to exploring IO interaction. Here inter-institutional relations are conceptualised as acts of resource exchange following a rational/functionalist approach of demand and supply under the condition of resource scarcity.14 While resources can take many forms such as material kinds (funding, peacekeeping troops) or immaterial goods (expertise, legitimacy) there remains an open question: which conditions influence the flow of resources and their demand and supply between actors. Inductively the book aims at exploring these conditions. The study explores the phenomenon of regime complexity in three African regions which are Eastern, Central and Western Africa. With each region the study refers to conflicts that are not limited to a particular national border but have a trans-national or regional dimension. In fact,

most conflicts in Africa have a cross-border dimension and are developing within regions but not exclusively within the limits of national borders. Within each region a single conflict will be analysed in Eastern Africa – Somalia, in Central Africa – the CAR and in Western Africa – Mali. In all three regions we can identify such cross-border dynamics that certainly have contributed to the emergence of a cross-institutional reaction on the side of the international community. Finally, the study aims at connecting the empirical observation with a systematic conceptual framework (not necessarily a theory in its own right). What set of causal conditions guiding resource exchange between actors can we observe in each case? How interdependent are these conditions? Is there a hierarchy of them? To what extent are actors shaping or being shaped by the security regime complex? Are African IOs always the junior partners or have they transformed into drivers for peace? These are some of the questions the study wants to answer. The book is divided into five sections. The first part ‘The African security regime complex’ offers an introduction into the topic both empirically and theoretically. This introductory chapter provides an empirical overview of the phenomenon of actor density and their interdependence. Although the phenomenon is not entirely new it until recently did not receive much scholarly attention and the dimensions of overlap and intersection have not been comprehensively mapped so far. In the second chapter the book develops a theoretical framework for the analysis of IO and lead state interaction and regime complexity. For the exploration of interaction processes dependency theory has been chosen, which focuses on the exchange of resources between actors. The chapter develops a model for resource exchange that is built on six conditions: equitable resource exchange, the size of demand and supply of resources, actor autonomy, resource complementarity, compatibility of peacekeeping doctrines and initiative of lead states. The following empirical sections on the UN and regional IOs (Part II) as well as on lead states (Part III) are actor centred by explicitly focusing on individual peacekeeping properties and doctrines. In this regard the focus is less on the analysis of IO interplay and a straightforward application of the variables presented in the theoretical framework but more emphasis is placed on providing important background information essential for understanding processes of resource exchange. The same is true for Part IV of the book which explores three case studies, Somalia, the CAR and Mali. These chapters follow the idea of a case-oriented research design that in the first place describes what has happened before making an assessment of those six conditions shaping resource exchange in the concluding chapter. Accordingly, the second part of the book provides a comprehensive overview of the UN and regional IOs active in peacekeeping in Africa. The section provides extensive information on the institutional set up, peacekeeping doctrines and capacities. The focus is primarily on

institutional developments of the last ten years which is the time span in which regional organisations have excelled in crafting a new security architecture. This is particularly true for the African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) which have deployed a number of peacekeeping operations since 2003. The third part of the book is dedicated to lead states. The focus will be limited to the analysis of six key actors. At the centre of analysis are Africa’s political heavyweights, South Africa and Nigeria, followed by Europe’s most active foreign policy actors France and Britain. In the global sphere the permanent UN Security Council members China and the US complete the picture. As in the previous section, the empirical focus will be on peacekeeping strategies, capacities and action. In the fourth part, three cases studies are explored in depth; Somalia, CAR and Mali. These chapters form the core of the empirical body of this book, tracing the emergence and operations of IO interaction constituting country-specific regime complexes. The main focus will be on a thick empirical description and exploration of events. The case studies will be set in connection to the theoretical chapter with its specific conditions of resource exchange between IOs. Lastly, the concluding section reassesses the conceptual framework by contrasting it with the empirical chapters. Here the main question is, are those six conditions identified for resource exchange equally relevant in all cases or do we need to amend the proposed analytical framework? This last chapter is rather variable than case-oriented.