The efficacy of African Union multilateralism in governance : an institutional approach

Abstract

African Union (AU) multilateral efforts in governance flounder at the level of implementation and their substantive intervention worth do not accord with the aspirations embodied in adopted normative frameworks and instruments. The research served to uncover the policy and delivery challenges within the overall AU institutional system as a means of providing a perspective on the future of AU governance mechanisms and related intervention modalities. Detailed empirical engagement, through an institutional lens, with norm formation and implementation in accountability, the rule of law and state capacity, and related delivery practices, enabled the extraction of crucial efficacy challenges in the AU institutional system. The exploration, using evidence embodied in documents from the AU governance implementation system, served to confirm that the AU continues to struggle between the imperatives of integration through established shared values and the exercise of state sovereignty. Within the policy-delivery nexus, the research points to the importance of agency by AU institutions and how practices and incentives serve to pervert the aspiration for a multilateral value-adding system in governance. In addition to providing a comprehensive historical macro-overview of AU governance intervention and related implementation modalities, the research served to uncover the implementation ‘black-box’ through a careful and comprehensive study of practices in each of the governance intervention terrains. The institutional focus serves to affirm that answerability for performance in the use of public resource and the structuring of organisations, matter for delivery and the production of substantive regional integration value. The core efficacy challenges at the level of AU multilateral engagements and implementation, such as norm proliferation, the exercise of power and sovereignty, staffing and capacity gaps, point to the need for a substantive and strategic reorientation of the AU governance normative framework and related intervention modalities. As an outcome of the analysis and reflection, a ‘norm graduating model’ is proposed to accommodate contextual realities in AU Member States on the back of historically hard-fought-for shared values in governance. At the level of implementation modalities, efficacy challenges point to the importance of a more tempered and realistic delivery approach. The primary focus in the immediate term should be on building governance through a diffused peer-engagement strategy culminating in norm compliance and full adherence to the provisions of established AU governance instruments over the long-term.