Rethinking regionalism and the politics of regionalisation: the performance of ECOWAS’s agency by Nigeria and the European Union

Lucia, Elisa Lopez

doi:10.1057/s41268-016-0079-4

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…ECOWAS is a case in point of this interpretation: thanks to conflict-management experience accumulated in the 1990s in Liberia and Sierra Leone, ECOWAS was internationally recognized as a reliable partner for peacekeeping. This camealbeit to a lesser extent than the AU thanks to the community levywith an increasing financial dependence vis-à-vis external partners, and particularly the EU, which had contributed to financing development of its security architecture (Lopez Lucia, 2018). When the crisis in Mali began in 2012, these persisting tensions resurfaced and complicated relations between ECOWAS and the AU.…”

Section: Changing the Governance Landscape: The Emergence Of The G5 S...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spaces of (in-)security and intervention: spatial competition and the politics of regional organizations in the Sahel

Baldaro

Lucia

2022

Territory, Politics, Governance

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This article investigates the interactions between three regional organizationsthe G5 Sahel, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Unionin the context of the Sahelian conflict. It argues that these organizations struggle for recognition by the international community and by their member states as the most legitimate regional security actor in the management of the conflict. By focusing on the politics driving these organizations' interactions, this article makes two contributions. First, it complements and expands the literature on regional security governance by showing how these regional organizations are driven by legitimation struggles framed through spatial imaginaries. Each organization delineates a specific space of interventionthe Sahel, West Africa, the Sahelo-Saharato present itself as the right scale of governance. Second, identifying these spatial imaginaries enables a better understanding of African responses to the conflict in the Sahel, and provides insights into the reordering of (West) African security governance and, more broadly, the emergence of new modalities of security governance.

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Section: Changing the Governance Landscape: The Emergence Of The G5 S...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…25). This role was particularly supported by the EU from the early 2000s through regular political dialogues, technical assistance and funding for the ECO-WAS security architecture (Lopez Lucia, 2018;Plank, 2021).…”

Section: Ecowas's West African Political Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spaces of (in-)security and intervention: spatial competition and the politics of regional organizations in the Sahel

Baldaro

Lucia

2022

Territory, Politics, Governance

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“…In (sometimes) socially constructed but durable and pre-defined regions, unified by history and culture, various types of security threat (external and transnational, fear for stability, fear of regional hegemons, and so on) provide a catalyst for states to strive towards regionalism (Adler and Barnett, 1998;Tavares, 2010;Kirchner and Dominguez, 2011). In this context, security regionalism becomes states' rational or functional answer to pressing traditional and non-traditional security threats (on this critique see Hameiri & Jones, 2015;Lopez Lucia, 2018). Such causal explanations raise two interlinked issues.…”

Section: Politics Of Regionalism Politics Of Security: Towards a Symmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The role acquired by ECOWAS as the legitimate regional security actor has been underpinned and made possible by an imaginary of the organisation as a regional political community founded on a set of norms and principles (Lopez Lucia, 2018). This regional imaginary has been articulated and performed by various region-builders as they sought to redefine the principles of sovereignty and non-interference in West Africa, and it has opened the way to a range of region-based security practices.…”

Section: A West African 8 Political Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many ways, the EU's political project 12 of turning ECOWAS into a political community has converged with the security agenda of the Nigerian government which sought to build a community that it could control and lead. Indeed, since the end of the Civil War in 1970, the Nigerian political and military elites have promoted a representation of Nigeria's security as being inseparable from West African security (Lopez Lucia, 2018;Osuntokun, 2008). The Civil War saw the French government using Nigeria's francophone neighbours such as Côte d'Ivoire to support the seceding Republic of Biafra (Aluko, 1971;Obi, 2008).…”

Section: A West African 8 Political Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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A tale of regional transformation: From political community to security regions the politics of security and regionalism in West Africa

Lopez-Lucia

2020

Political Geography

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This article draws attention to the intersection between the politics of regionalism and the politics of security by investigating the recent reorganisation of the West African space. It shows how international actors' reinvestment in West Africa is driven by their security priorities, and how these actions, in particular those of the European Union, are deconstructing West Africa into smaller security regions such as the Sahel. This transformation is legitimised through a regional imaginary depicting the Sahel as a fuzzy region constituted by fluctuating boundaries of networks of organised crime and terrorism. This imaginary strongly contrasts with an earlier one that conceived of West Africa as a regional political community. The tensions between these two imaginaries raises important questions about how these perceptions emerged, which agencies and interests have driven them, and what consequences this has for the reallocation of political authority and sovereignty practices in West Africa. Hence, drawing on International Political Sociology, Critical Geopolitics and Political Geography, this article symmetrically engages with the simultaneous processes of spatialisation of security and securitisation of space to understand the production and transformation of security regionalism in West Africa.

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Rethinking agency in International Relations: performativity, performances and actor-networks

2018

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Abstract:The academic discipline of International Relations (IR) has long pondered the questions of what it means to act in international politics and who can do so. However, the particular way in which IR has approached the problem of agency has somewhat masked important dynamics in international politics. By approaching the question of agency as an analytical problem that needs to be resolved before engaging with empirical material, IR has failed to see that who can act is often uncertain and contested. This special issue examines the emergence of international agency as an empirical phenomenon. Rather than analysing what given agents do, the contributions study how practices, performances and networks create and transform agency. In this introductory article, we prepare the ground for this distinct approach to studying international politics. We review how IR has addressed the problem of agency, and we discuss three social-theoretical traditions that see agency as an emergent phenomenon: poststructuralism, performance studies and actor-network theory. Finally, we highlight four insights that emerge from the contributions and challenge how IR has traditionally imagined agency.

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Rethinking regionalism and the politics of regionalisation: the performance of ECOWAS’s agency by Nigeria and the European Union

Cited by 9 publications

References 24 publications

Spaces of (in-)security and intervention: spatial competition and the politics of regional organizations in the Sahel

Spaces of (in-)security and intervention: spatial competition and the politics of regional organizations in the Sahel

A tale of regional transformation: From political community to security regions the politics of security and regionalism in West Africa

Rethinking agency in International Relations: performativity, performances and actor-networks

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