Interregional cooperation in peace and security as key feature of the EU external relations is particularly relevant in Africa-EU relations. However, these efforts have not been systematically evaluated to date. Focusing specifically on interregional peace operations, this volume provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the Africa-EU Partnership on Peace and Security. It explains the effectiveness of interregional security cooperation across three cases: (1) the AU-EU response in the Central African Republic (2013) and (2) in Somalia (2007–2017), (3) and the ECOWAS-EU efforts in Mali (2012). The book makes a valuable empirical, theoretical, and methodological contribution to EU foreign policy, comparative regionalism, and conflict studies.

This timely book explores the current state of EU-Africa relations from a multidisciplinary perspective, placing emphasis on recent developments in five areas that are crucial for EU-Africa relations: development cooperation, trade, migration, security and democratization. It considers how Africa’s dependence on the EU has decreased due to the declining importance of development cooperation, and increasing cooperation with emerging powers, notably the BRIC nations.

This book offers a holistic and comprehensive assessment of the European Union's (EU) relations with Africa focusing on their historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural dimensions. In the high imperial period from the nineteenth century, some in Europe advocated the idea of EurafriqueA" - a formula for putting Africa's resources at the disposal of Europe's industries. After tracing Europe's historical attempts to remodel relations following African independence from the 1960s and Europe's own quest for unity, the book examines the current strategic dimensions of the relationship. Most especially, contributors examine the place of Africa in the EU's need for global partnerships. Key topics discussed include trade and investment, security and governance, migration and identity, and the historical legacy on the current relationship. The volume closely analyses the key European players in Africa - France, Britain, Portugal, and the Nordics - within the context of the EU. Finally, it examines Europe's controversial immigration policies and complex relations with the Maghreb and Mediterranean, as well as perceptions of past and current European identity. The study concludes that Africa and Europe still appear not to have escaped fully the burdens of history, and examines the feasibility of elaborating and practising, in future, an Afro-EuropaA": a new relationship defined by genuine equality, partnership, and mutual self-interest between both continents-and one that finally sheds the baggage of the EurafriqueA" past.

Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgencies to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU's African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework. The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways in which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved over the past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today.

"Partnership" is a key concept in contemporary international peace operations. There is no universal model of peace operations in contemporary international society. Ad hoc arrangements of "partnership" between the United Nations and various regional organizations are consequences of the complex circumstances of international security. The ways in which "partnerships" are organised differently in different regions reflect each region's distinctive security situation. The universal nature of "liberal peacebuilding" is thus maintained only by ad hoc arrangements. All the UN peacekeeping operations in Africa have some partnership linkages with regional or sub-regional organizations ranging from the African Union (AU) and regional mechanisms to the European Union (EU). What are the conditions and characteristics that enable or lead to partnership peacekeeping in Africa? How should we understand lower levels of partnership peacekeeping in other regions? By highlighting key characteristics of partnership peacekeeping, the book explores these issues and argues that partnership is a reflection of political circumstances. The book provides an unexplored but critical perspective to understand the contemporary world for those who study International Relations, Security Studies, International Organizations, and Peace Studies.

This volume collects and combines research on regional integration projects beyond Europe and in the Global South across a wide range of policy issues. Given the plurality and diversity of regional organisations, there is a growing need to systematically analyse, assess, and explain the performance of regionalism. Acknowledging the considerable differences in settings, institutional design, and politico-economic environment of regional organisations, the expert contributors move beyond EU-centric notions to offer a profound overview and propose new dimensions of innovative performance research. Systematic and in-depth research from Eurasia, Asia, Africa, and Latin America on organisations such as the Eurasian Economic Union, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Indian Ocean Commission, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, African Union, and the Organisation of American States, enables us to identify the conditions and determinants that shape performance across regions, actors, policy areas, and settings. The book provides readily accessible, important, and novel information to students and scholars of political science, international relations, EU and European studies, peace and conflict studies, comparative regionalism, interregional and inter-organizational studies, and area studies, and persons interested in specific policy fields such as trade, security, or development policy.

The African continent is plagued by some of the most brutal and violent conflicts in the world. At the same time that warfare is changing, so has the state’s capacity to provide security and political stability to its citizens. This book deals with the role of regional organizations in Africa’s security. It focuses on three basic—yet often overlooked—questions: (1) the advantages and disadvantages of African regional and sub-regional organizations vis-à-vis other security mechanisms, (2) the official and unofficial reasons to intervene, and (3) whether security is actually protected by the peace activities carried out by the regional organizations. The contributors to the book—all leading researchers in the field—systematically assess and compare the role of the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This book was based on a special issue of African Security.

This book explores the causes and implications of the Libyan crisis since the anti-Gaddafi uprisings of 2011 from the perspective of the EU and NATO. It asks the question of why those organizations failed to stabilize the country despite the serious challenges posed by the protracted crisis to European and transatlantic stakes in the region. This book argues that such failure originated in a twofold problem common to both organizations: their prioritization of legitimacy over strategy, and their path dependence – the insufficient degree of adaptation to meet the different needs of the crisis. Through a critical and integrated analysis of official sources and extensive interviews with EU, NATO, UN, and national government officials and militaries, as well as from NGO personnel, Libyan institutions and civil society, and media, the volume brings the perspective of both state and non-state actors to the fore. It reveals how wrong assumptions and centrifugal forces within the EU and NATO hampered initiatives, and how the inability to use hard power judiciously and effectively in an increasingly complex and multifaceted scenario worsened the crisis. This allowed for unprecedented influence of regional and global competitors such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey and Russia in the richest African country. This book will be of key interest for scholars and students of Libya and North Africa, NATO, the European Union, security and conflict studies, Middle East studies, migration, terrorism, peacebuilding and, more broadly, international relations.