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ОглавлениеAddis Ababa, 27 January 2014. The Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) gathers for its 415th meeting. The Council expresses its ‘appreciation to the Malagasy people, as well as to all political actors and institutions of the country, for the smooth and peaceful conduct of the elections and the completion of the transition process’ (AU PSC 2014a: 1). These words marked the end of almost five years of international efforts to re-establish ‘constitutional order’ in Madagascar. The reason for such an intervention was a political crisis that culminated in the ouster of President Marc Ravalomanana in early 2009. This intervention involved numerous rounds of negotiations held in Antananarivo, Maputo, Addis Ababa, Pretoria, and the Seychelles, several negotiated agreements, the deployment of special envoys from more than five international and regional organizations, an international contact group, targeted economic sanctions, capacity-building for local mediators, and more than 800 international election observers to accompany transitional elections. At its end, the PSC registered that ‘constitutional order’ was successfully restored. All this took place in the context of the AU’s anti-coup norm, which mandates the continental organization to condemn and ‘undo’ coups, called ‘unconstitutional changes of government’ in the AU’s language.
Antananarivo, around the same time. A group of Malagasy activists gathers on a weekend in one of the crowded quartiers of Madagascar’s capital. The group wants to collect signatures in support of the AU’s Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance so that the newly elected Malagasy president will finally sign and ratify it. In its preamble, the Charter is defined as an instrument to nurture, strengthen, and consolidate democracy on the African continent (AU 2007). It was adopted in 2007 in order to give the AU’s anti-coup norm legal clout. Asked how the campaign is going, the activists respond with frustration:
It is very tedious. Nobody wants to sign. The majority of the passers-by are very suspicious. They say that signing the Charter would mean that Malagasies will lose their right to stage a coup, to get rid of our government if we don’t want it anymore.1
What for some was the successful re-establishment of constitutional order and the result of Malagasies’ ownership for others felt like an external imposition that robbed Malagasy citizens of the opportunity to actually decide how and by whom they want to be governed, so they would rather avoid a similar experience in the future.
This book traces the rise and consequences of the AU’s anti-coup norm based on an in-depth reconstruction of the post-coup intervention in Madagascar. By answering the question of what it actually means to return a country to constitutional order, I show that African interventions to ‘undo’ coups are an effective form of transnational order-making that reconfigure power relations in and beyond the state concerned. This is not only relevant for scholars interested in understanding the domestic effects of the norms and policies of regional organizations, and those of the AU specifically; it also holds valuable insights for International Relations (IR) scholars more generally who are interested in the changing fabric of the international, in particular the rising authority of international organizations and how this affects politics within states.
Togo (2005), Mauritania (2005 and 2008), Guinea (2008), Niger (2010), Mali (2012), Guinea-Bissau (2012), Egypt (2013), the Central African Republic (2013), Burkina Faso (2014), The Gambia (2016), and the Sudan (2019). Madagascar is not the only country that experienced what the AU calls unconstitutional changes of government. Since its establishment in 2004, the AU PSC has condemned unconstitutional changes of government in all these countries, followed by concerted international efforts to re-establish constitutional order. As in Madagascar, reactions to these instances usually included public condemnations, the suspension of the respective country from the AU, special envoys, international contact groups to coordinate the various reactions, negotiations over power-sharing agreements and inclusive governments, sanctions against putschists, national dialogues with civil society groups, and financial and technical support to organize transitional elections (see Engel 2012a; Witt 2012a; Vandeginste 2013; Nathan 2017). Apart from the AU, such efforts involved donor countries and other international and African subregional organizations, such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the case of Madagascar. All these efforts are signs of the AU’s proclaimed ‘zero tolerance’ against unconstitutional changes of government (AU Assembly 2010a). They underline that the anti-coup norm is not merely a declaration on paper; rather, it has given rise to a variety of intervention practices that – as this book demonstrates – come with tangible consequences.
However, in contrast to this political and practical relevance, scholarship has until today paid little attention to these developments. And in the few existing studies, scholars have tended to view the continental outlawing of coups as an example of regional norm diffusion or democracy promotion by regional organizations such as the AU (Tieku 2009; Leininger 2014; Souaré 2014). This forms part of a more general and burgeoning research agenda on the role of regional organizations in promoting and diffusing norms and policies in their member states (see, for instance, Pevehouse 2005; Cooper & Legler 2006; Börzel & van Hüllen 2015). But so far, this scholarship has mainly been concerned with determining how consistently and effectively the AU has invoked its anti-coup norm – as seen from a top-down, institutionalist perspective. What has divided this nascent scholarship so far is the question of what effects these reactions have. ‘Afro-optimists’, on the one hand, see the regular application of the anti-coup norm as evidence for the AU’s functioning as a regional norm entrepreneur and the AU as playing an ever-greater role in the successful promotion of democratic norms in its member states (Souaré 2014; Tieku 2016: 138). To ‘Afro-pessimists’, on the other hand, these developments are mere window dressing, designed mainly to appease international donors. As far as they are concerned, therefore, all the AU will do is reinforce existing regimes and help tighten incumbent elites’ grip on power (Sturman 2008; Omorogbe 2011). At a more global level too, scholars see regional anti-coup norms either as an instrument for promoting democracy (Powell 2014: 223; Shannon et al. 2015) or as a measure to restore authoritarianism (Tansey 2017). Indeed, a brief look at those countries in which constitutional order has been restored under the AU’s anti-coup policy appears to suggest that the promised land of more democracy is yet to come. Madagascar, as will be elaborated in this book, at first sight seems to confirm this impression – as also reflected in the above short scenery from the streets of Antananarivo.
However, this book challenges both accounts, those of Afro-optimists and those of Afro-pessimists, and proposes an innovative perspective for understanding how AU norms are implemented and what they do on the ground, beyond the binary of success and failure. Instead of starting with predefined assumptions on what efforts to re-establish constitutional order ought – but often fail – to do, I suggest an open investigation of what such efforts actually do. This also requires taking a different perspective on what they are. The book therefore offers a thorough empirical reconstruction of the actual processes and practices involved in returning a country to constitutional order, but also proposes a more general shift in the conceptual vantage point from which to do so. In the conclusion, I also integrate the insights generated from the case of Madagascar into a bigger picture of post-coup interventions in Africa, arguing that there is indeed evidence for viewing the effects of post-coup intervention in Madagascar as reflecting a much broader pattern of transnational order-making through the AU’s anti-coup norm.
Return to what?
On 12 July 2000, African heads of state and government took a far-reaching decision. In Lomé, the 36th summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the AU’s predecessor, ended with the observation that ‘coups are sad and unacceptable developments in our Continent, coming at a time when our people have committed themselves to respect of the rule of law based on peoples [sic] will expressed through the ballot and not the bullet’ (OAU 2000a: 1).
The OAU Assembly decided to reject ‘any unconstitutional change as an unacceptable and anachronistic act, which is in contradiction of our commitment to promote democratic principles and conditions’ (OAU 2000a: 1). It was decided that governments that come to power through unconstitutional means shall not be recognized and shall therefore be suspended from participating in the continental organization. The following situations were defined as unconstitutional changes of government:
i) military coup d’etat against a democratically elected Government; ii) intervention by mercenaries to replace a democratically elected Government; iii) replacement of democratically elected Governments by armed dissident groups and rebel movements; iv) the refusal by an incumbent government to relinquish power to the winning party after free, fair and regular elections. (OAU 2000a: 3)
The definition of ‘unconstitutional changes of government’ thus explicitly referred only to acts committed against democratically elected governments. However, unlike their Latin American counterparts, African heads of state and government refrained from bindingly defining what ‘democratic’ means (Legler & Tieku 2010: 471). As a result, how to interpret this condition became a recurring topic in the ensuing debates about the adequacy and refinement of the African anti-coup norm, as Chapter 2 elaborates in more detail.
More crucially, however, the OAU Assembly also decided to mandate the organization to actively work for the respective country’s return to constitutional order. It established that:
[a] period of up to six months should be given to the perpetrators of the unconstitutional change to restore constitutional order. (…) The Secretary-General should, during this period gather facts relevant to the unconstitutional change of Government and establish appropriate contacts with the perpetrators with a view to ascertaining their intentions regarding the restoration of constitutional order in the country; the Secretary-General should seek the contribution of African leaders and personalities in the form of discreet moral pressure on the perpetrators of the unconstitutional change in order to get them to cooperate with the OAU and facilitate the restoration of constitutional order in the Member State concerned. (OAU 2000a: 3)
In this so-called Lomé Declaration, African leaders thus defined governments coming to power by unconstitutional means as deviance from the orderly norm, a path that has to be corrected. As observed by Stef Vandeginste (2013: 23), the continental organization thereby moved from being a mere ‘registrar’ to playing the role of a ‘judge’, setting terms and limits for what counts as legitimate authority and ‘good order’ within its member states. However, the mandate to facilitate the return to constitutional order also meant that beyond being a mere judge, the continental organization and those acting on its behalf in fact became active parties in re-establishing constitutional order.
Since this decision, the African continent has seen an unprecedented reinvention of regional and subregional organizations and the development of policy instruments to promote peace and security, democratic governance, and human rights in African states. After the transformation of the OAU into the AU in 2002, the organization’s mandate to address and prevent political crises in member states was gradually expanded and integrated into a more robust institutional framework, the so-called African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). The AU was given an explicit mandate to promote democracy, protect human rights, and suspend any government that comes to power unconstitutionally (OAU 2000e: Art. 30). The PSC was set up and mandated to institute sanctions against perpetrators of coups (AU 2002: Art. 7(1g)). With the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance of 2007, the anti-coup norm was even given a legally binding status (AU 2007: Art. 23). It was also decided to likewise outlaw constitutional manipulations, with the recognition that not only putschists, but also incumbents, can be a threat to the ideal of people’s right to political self-determination, as once declared in Lomé.
As will be elaborated in Chapter 2, the Lomé Declaration was meant to provide the OAU/AU with a clear manual on how to handle disruptions to what was defined as ‘normal’ and to avoid arbitrariness both in access to power in the organization’s member states and in international reactions thereto. It was an attempt to discipline both politics within the state and politics within the OAU/AU and the wider international community. In the imaginary of the Lomé Declaration, returning a country to constitutional order therefore follows a rather mechanistic and legalistic path: condemnation, facilitation, completion (see also Tieku 2009: 76).
However, contrary to the hopes at the time, neither more elaborate legal scripts nor continental institutions were able to eradicate the politics of defining what it means to restore constitutional order. The Lomé Declaration itself outlawed coups, but the above-quoted mandate to ‘facilitate the restoration of constitutional order’ (OAU 2000a: 4) left rather open what that entails. The anti-coup norm outlawed deviance from an assumed constitutional normalcy, yet without determining on what grounds, with whom, and for what purpose constitutionality is to be reinstated. Moreover, in this mandate, constitutional order should not only be ‘restored’, but should also prevent future crises. The Lomé Declaration therefore stipulated that ‘the strengthening of democratic institutions will considerably reduce the risks of unconstitutional change on our Continent’ (OAU 2000a: 2). The rationale of the Lomé Declaration thus entailed both a claim that the organization should and can ‘undo’ coups, as well as a promise that the new orders will be somewhat better than the preceding ones, that ‘undoing’ was not only temporal but sustainable.
What we know so far
Despite a growing academic interest in the AU, the African anti-coup norm and resulting efforts to re-establish constitutional order in African states have so far received little academic attention. Besides general overviews on African reactions to coups (Engel 2012a; Witt 2012a; Souaré 2014; Nathan 2017), there are only a few more detailed case studies, usually in the form of book chapters or policy briefs (Cawthra 2010; Yabi 2010; Asante-Darko 2012; Nathan 2013; Hartmann 2017). This relative indifference on the part of academia not only contradicts the political and practical importance attributed to the phenomenon; it also contrasts with how detailed other AU practices, military interventions in particular, have been studied so far (see, for instance, Söderbaum & Tavares 2011; Brosig 2015; de Coning et al. 2016). Overall, discussion of these engagements has been confined to area specialists or scholars interested in regionalism and regional organizations more specifically. Neither scholarship on international interventions nor that on IR more generally has adequately taken note of these developments. In general, interventions are still mainly considered as something Western states or global actors such as the UN do. Despite increasing efforts to decentre the study of interventions (see Schroeder 2018; Turner & Kühn 2019), the empirical relevance of non-Western, particularly African, interveners has so far not been adequately reflected in academic research. Moreover, a substantial part of the available literature on the AU’s reactions to coups stems from decidedly policy-oriented research. In fact, there is – in sharp contrast, for instance, to the Americas – a clear dearth of theory-driven and theory-generating perspectives on regional reactions to coups in Africa.2 Unsurprisingly, this lack of theory-informed empirical engagements with the AU’s anti-coup norm also affects how these developments have been analysed and what we know so far. On the one hand, the dominant policy orientation favoured a perspective on post-coup engagements ‘through the eyes’ of the AU, which paints a rather top-down and often apolitical image of what these engagements are about. On the other hand, this also meant that the effects of African reactions to coups have mainly been studied and evaluated based on the terms provided by the interveners themselves. In order to situate this book within the existing literature, I will first summarize how the latter has so far conceived of and analysed the processes of returning a country to constitutional order (i.e. what post-coup interventions are) before I turn to a discussion of the answers the existing literature provides on the aims and effects of post-coup interventions (i.e. what they do).
What post-coup interventions are: policy, mediation, or what?
Existing works on the AU’s post-coup interventions broadly conceive of these engagements in two ways: they analyse them either as diffusion and implementation of AU policies (Leininger 2014; Souaré 2014; Powell et al. 2016), or as AU-led mediation efforts, defined as impartial external assistance to parties in conflict (Engel 2012a; Nathan 2017; see generally Moore 2003: 15). Both perspectives, as will be elaborated over the course of this book, are inadequate lenses to grasp the processes and consequences of regional reactions to coups.
A key insight of several overviews on AU reactions to coups is that they follow dissonant paths and that the AU implements its norm inconsistently: what counts as a successful return to constitutional order is measured according to different standards. In some cases, for instance, putschists were allowed to stand in transitional elections, whereas others have been banned from doing so (Souaré 2009: 11; Engel 2012a: 80; Nathan 2017: 17–18). Also, some putschists were granted amnesty arrangements while others were not (Ndulo 2012: 267). Moreover, when and on what grounds countries have been readmitted to the AU has not been consistent (Nathan 2017: 14–15). In a similar vein, those analysing the AU’s reactions to coups through a mediation lens show, for instance, that the means invoked, such as sanctions or the convocation of an international contact group, differed from case to case (Engel 2012a: 73). Also, several works stress conflicts between mediators and the sending organization, the AU or the respective subregional organization, as well as rivalries between competing mediators and sending organizations (Witt 2013b; Nathan 2017: 17–18). Thus, contrary to the mechanistic manual, how constitutional orders have been re-established so far was not mechanistic and rule-governed at all (Witt 2012a).
These accounts of inconsistencies all point to the politics and complexities involved in efforts to undo coups. However, the dominant analytical perspective in this literature still looks at such efforts mainly as something the AU does (be it as policy implementation or mediation). This means that post-coup interventions tend to be narrated in the organization’s own terms, often based on publicly available documents. By way of consequence, apparent inconsistencies are considered as failures in the successful implementation of the script of the Lomé Declaration, a fact requiring correction.
In such a top-down perspective, the processes and consequences of these engagements that unfold ‘on the ground’ remain more or less invisible. What is missing is an understanding of the local dynamics, the struggles and contestations, triggered by the AU’s invocation of its anti-coup norm and the demand to re-establish constitutional order in a given country. If at all, these dynamics have so far been registered as a hindrance to successful norm implementation and as acts of spoilers (cf. Sampson 2012: 239). Moreover, while some of the above contributions are based on interview research, this rarely extends to the negotiating parties or other constituencies in the respective countries (exceptions are Cawthra 2010; Kotzé 2013a). As a consequence, the perspectives of those affected by the efforts to undo coups have been widely neglected. There is therefore fairly little understanding of both the local dynamics of post-coup interventions and the societal, political, and economic figurations that led to what then became labelled as an ‘unconstitutional change of government’ in the first place. Moreover, a top-down perspective also conceals how the various organizations, including the AU, actually act ‘on the ground’, which more often than not diverges from the self-descriptions in official documents. Making these processes and dynamics on the ground visible requires more empirical depth, but also another analytical lens for what efforts to re-establish constitutional order actually are.
What post-coup interventions do: democracy versus regime security – change versus status quo
The adoption of the African anti-coup norm has been widely hailed as a positive development and as a break with the continent’s past of shielding autocratic rule. As in other cases of norm change on the African continent, these developments are often interpreted and assessed in light of preceding experiences, in this case the OAU’s deplorable history of recognizing whoever was able to control the capitals of African states (Omorogbe 2011). Against this background, the African anti-coup norm has been predominantly discussed as an instrument to promote and defend democracy on the continent (Tieku 2009; Leininger 2014; Souaré 2014) and as a measure to prevent conflicts and build peace (Dersso 2017). For Issaka Souaré (2014), the decision to ban unconstitutional changes of government underlines the AU’s role as a continental norm entrepreneur, evidenced by a decreasing number of coups since the turn of the millennium (see also Powell et al. 2016). Others stress that the anti-coup norm even grants the AU the power to sanction member states that deviate from established political norms (Sturman 2008; Eriksson 2010). The various forms in which the AU became engaged in re-establishing constitutional order are subsequently referred to as ‘pro-democratic interventions’ (Levitt 2008; Edozie & Gottschalk 2014: 117). In large part, this reflects the liberal-constructivist perspective that dominated the debate on the AU’s so-called shift from a culture of non-interference to one of non-indifference, as well as the generally positive expectations of the AU’s capacity to affect politics in Africa that underpinned this perspective (Williams 2007; see also Witt 2013a).
Yet there has also been a more sceptical reading of these developments. Some authors challenge the uncritical pro-democratic lens through which this normative innovation was interpreted. They employ a more cautious language which points to the multiple and conflicting meanings that merged in the AU’s decision to ban unconstitutional changes of government. Kathryn Sturman (2008: 100), for instance, remarks that it was in fact Robert Mugabe who was one of the most fervent supporters of the anti-coup provision. Considering Mugabe’s track record in democratic governance, she concludes that in its current form, the anti-coup norm may ‘have more to do with entrenching the status quo for many AU member states than it has with fostering democracy’ (Sturman 2008: 105). In a similar vein, others note that while the Lomé Declaration rejected the unconstitutional acquisition of power, there was no intention to sanction or even assess the conduct of governance by incumbent governments (Souaré 2009: 11; Dersso 2017: 658). In fact, leaving out such a provision had been a conscious decision of the OAU Assembly (Ikome 2007: 33; see also Chapter 2). Even after the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, adopted in 2007, corrected some of these shortcomings, some analysts remain cautious vis-à-vis the actual commitment of member states to the ideals of democracy and good governance (Kotzé 2013b: 4; Engel 2019).
In a nutshell: while some champion the AU’s decision to ban unconstitutional changes of government as an expression of a liberal normative shift and a commitment to the defence of democratic governance on the continent, others remain sceptical as to how this promise shall be realized under the given political realities. The highly ambiguous democratic record of AU member states as well as the norm’s indecisiveness between being an instrument to defend regime security and serving to protect people’s right to democratic self-determination gave reason for a more sceptical view vis-à-vis the potentials of the AU’s official promises.
By reconstructing almost five years of re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar, this book seeks to provide a more nuanced answer to this debate: I show that post-coup interventions are indeed an effective way of reconfiguring power relations, but neither necessarily lay the foundations for more democracy nor merely work in the service of incumbent governments and regime security.
Introducing the case
For the AU PSC, the political crisis in Madagascar became the fourth situation that the Council treated as an unconstitutional change of government. It turned out to become the longest-lasting effort to re-establish constitutional order in an African country until today. However, what suddenly appeared on the PSC’s agenda in 2009 did not happen without warning signs.
Since the beginning of 2009, a broad popular protest movement had formed against the incumbent regime of President Marc Ravalomanana, holding regular demonstrations in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo. The protests were led by the mayor of Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, and supported by parts of the Malagasy military. Several attempts by the Malagasy churches to mediate between the protesters and the incumbent government, later supported by international and African diplomats, ended without result. On 17 March 2009, Marc Ravalomanana bowed to the public and intra-elite pressure, handed over power to a military directorate, and fled into exile to South Africa. The military directorate, in turn, installed Andry Rajoelina as President of the Transition. The AU, SADC, and most of Madagascar’s international donors condemned this act as an unconstitutional change of government and demanded the rapid restoration of constitutional order (AU PSC 2009b; SADC 2009b). They decided to suspend Madagascar’s membership and cut development funds. In the following weeks, several mediators and special envoys were sent to Antananarivo in order to engage Rajoelina and his High Authority of the Transition (Haute autorité de la transition, HAT) to relinquish power and organize elections. Despite varying international interpretations of what constituted ‘la crise malgache’ and how to end it, a consensus soon emerged around the demand for a ‘consensual and inclusive transitional period’ and an ‘inclusive, transparent and credible dialogue’ (AU PSC 2010b: 1; SADC 2010a: 3). It was decided that this ‘dialogue’ to effectuate the re-establishment of constitutional order should be held among the so-called quatre mouvances – the four movements – referring to the groupings around Rajoelina, Ravalomanana, and the two former presidents, Didier Ratsiraka and Albert Zafy. Several rounds of negotiations in Antananarivo, however, ended without result. In additional negotiations in Maputo and Addis Ababa in August and November 2009, respectively, under the auspices of SADC mediator Joaquim Chissano, the parties decided on a power-sharing agreement. But fundamental questions about the division of posts and the role of the two protagonists remained unsettled. In late 2009, Rajoelina therefore declared the negotiations suspended. In March 2010, the AU PSC applied targeted sanctions against 109 members of the HAT government and demanded implementation of the agreements mentioned above (AU PSC 2010a). Yet the sanctions did not have the expected effect. In September 2011, the so-called SADC Roadmap for Ending the Crisis (SADC 2011a) was signed by eight political parties and two of the former mouvances, paving the way for an ‘inclusive’ transition. It was also decided that neither Rajoelina nor Ravalomanana would run for office in transitional elections. After a tumultuous transition, presidential and legislative elections were held in December 2013 and were won by Hery Rajaonarimampianina, who had run as Rajoelina’s replacement. Following the inauguration of the newly elected president, the AU PSC in January 2014 officially declared that constitutional order had been successfully restored (AU PSC 2014a).
This book follows an inductive and exploratory approach. The selection of Madagascar as case study was therefore driven less by theoretical than by research-pragmatic criteria (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow 2012: 70). Nevertheless, this choice crucially influenced what kind of insights this book presents, and thus it requires transparency and reflection. Chapter 7 will discuss in more detail to what extent the case can be regarded at the same time as unique and as part of a larger pattern of post-coup interventions. There were three reasons that made studying the case of Madagascar particularly advantageous when I started researching for this book in 2011. First, the fairly long duration of re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar and the high number of international, regional, and national actors involved in this process meant that there was an abundance of empirical material to be gathered in textual form but also in the form of direct accounts of the protagonists involved. This made the case particularly suitable for single-case research. Madagascar is also one of the few cases that was dealt with twice under the AU’s anti-coup policy (in 2001/2002 and 2009), allowing for a historical comparison but also for reflection on how preceding experiences shape both interveners’ practices and perceptions and trust on the part of local parties, as I explain in Chapter 4 in more detail. Second, unlike some other countries that have experienced African regional post-coup interventions, in Madagascar there was neither a situation of violent conflict (as in Mali or the Central African Republic) nor was the country affected by the Ebola crisis (as Guinea later was). In short, not only the abundance, but also the accessibility, of empirical material was crucial. Third, and most importantly, the choice of Madagascar allowed for studying post-coup interventions synchronically (i.e. while the intervention happened). Concretely, this meant, for instance, that my field research in Madagascar (see further below) coincided with the official re-establishment of constitutional order, which made it possible to gather conclusive narratives about the parties’ experiences with and assessments of the almost five years of re-establishing constitutional order in the country. It also allowed me to participate in events such as press conferences of international election observers and the first meeting of the international contact group on Madagascar after the official return to constitutional order. These were events of collective interpretation and assessment of what had happened since March 2009, which also allowed for observing and encountering interveners on the ground. So, apart from availability and access, the expected quality and comprehensiveness of the empirical material also played a crucial role for choosing the case of Madagascar.
The argument in brief
This book offers an empirically rich and methodologically rigorous analysis of the effects of the African anti-coup norm, based on a reconstruction of the processes, protagonists, and rationalities that played a part in re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar (2009–2014). The book demonstrates that the post-coup intervention was a consequential moment of reordering both within the Malagasy polity and beyond. In Madagascar, what the intervention essentially served to do was to restore the ideal of a liberal polity, even though realities on the ground proved the opposite. Although it did not necessarily succeed in establishing a more democratic order, the intervention did (re)configure power relations. It did so by narrowing the re-establishment of constitutional order down to a technical transition based on default international peacebuilding cures such as power-sharing and elections. This approach was undoubtedly effective in depoliticizing the search for solutions and gradually excluding all actors and voices who believed more profound change was needed if ‘la crise malgache’, as it came to be known internationally, was to be resolved. At the same time, however, the intervention opened up opportunities for sections of the Malagasy elite to use the international demand for an ‘inclusive’ and ‘consensual’ solution in order to regain access to state institutions. By upholding the myth of the liberal polity, the intervention thus both re-legitimated old and established new power relations – belying both Afro-optimist and Afro-pessimist expectations. The reason for this lies in a merger between international norms on sovereignty and on popular legitimacy that underpin internationalized efforts to undo coups and by consequence heavily shape the realm of possible action for all those involved in this process.
Even more revolutionary were the order-constituting effects that the intervention had beyond Madagascar. Although the international interveners were in favour of the narrow, depoliticized, technical interpretation of transition, they also began to plan development programmes to tackle hitherto unaddressed ‘problems’ once constitutional order was restored. Many of the international and regional organizations involved in ‘assisting’ Madagascar’s return to constitutional order used this experience as an opportunity to experiment with new norms and practices, and thus to gradually extend their spheres of responsibility – a development of relevance well beyond the actual locus and time of the intervention. Crucially, the post-coup intervention in Madagascar thus also contributed to the creation and expansion of regional and international orders as it expanded the reach and changed the fabric of the international.
All this, the book shows, is not what the AU does. Also, it is neither mediation nor mere policy implementation. Rather, I use the conceptual lens of ‘transboundary formations’ (Latham et al. 2001: 5) in order to show that the re-establishment of constitutional order is in fact the result of a complex and contested interaction between a variety of international, regional, and national forces that all seek to define what re-establishing constitutional order ultimately entails. The AU and other internationals are neither merely assisting, nor are they bystanders to this process; they are active parties in negotiating and setting the terms for how constitutional order is restored. However, this transnational interaction would not have been possible if AU heads of state had not decided in Lomé that coups should be outlawed and constitutional order preserved. The various reconfigurations of power relations through almost five years of post-coup intervention in Madagascar are thus proof of the tangible effects of an AU norm and the emergence of an African international that affects politics and order in AU member states.
In developing this argument, my aims with this book are threefold. First, to the literature on AU and other regional organizations’ anti-coup policies I seek to contribute an in-depth case study on efforts to undo coups that adds a more nuanced account of the consequences of such policies. The particular perspective developed here pays attention to the politics and interactions of these engagements, which have hitherto remained largely ignored. This requires going beyond the ‘view from Addis’ and giving voice to those participating in and affected by these efforts. Focusing on different national and local actors, the book analyses the latter’s interactions with, and resistance to, the AU-led efforts to re-establish constitutional order. In so doing, the book garners first-hand empirical insights about how these efforts take place that often tell a different story from the one recounted in official policy documents.
Second, I integrate current developments on the African continent into theoretical debates, drawing on IR, African studies, and peace and conflict research literatures. I thereby seek to overcome the largely atheoretical way the AU and its practices and consequences have been treated so far (Edozie & Gottschalk 2014: xxix). On the one hand, drawing on these debates allows developing a different perspective on what the AU’s anti-coup norm and the resulting practices are – in short, theorizing them differently. On the other hand, I seek to show that current developments on the African continent do indeed bear insights that should be of relevance for a much broader audience than they currently seem to be, including for mainstream IR (see also Death 2013: 786). This links up with Amitav Acharya’s (2014) call for a global IR in which so far ignored non-Western experiences should serve to theorize a ‘multiplex world’.
Third, I seek to provide a reading of the consequences of post-coup interventions beyond the dominant binaries of failure/success or democracy promotion/regime protection. This will also offer another vantage point to articulate critique that is based neither on ideal policy statements nor on the analyst’s own implicit assumptions of what a ‘good order’ should look like. Rather, a critical interrogation of post-coup interventions, such as the one I demonstrate in this book, allows the consequences of AU norms and practices to be assessed not on the grounds of what they fail to do, but on the basis of what the intervention has actually done according to the narratives and experiences of those affected by it.
Methods and data
In order to develop a different account of what African post-coup interventions are and what they do, this book was based on a great variety of sources gathered in the course of multi-sited fieldwork between 2011 and 2014 in Madagascar, South Africa, at the SADC headquarters in Gaborone, Botswana, and at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (see generally Marcus 1995; Shore & Wright 1997: 15). This research strategy was underpinned by the principle of exposure – that is, the pool of empirical material evolved as part of the research and was assembled according to a logic favouring contradiction rather than convergence (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow 2012: 84). This followed the rationale that it is only through surprise and the ‘fine grain of empirical detail’ that new stories, including new theorizing, arise (Lobo-Guerrero 2013; Neal 2013: 43–44).
The empirical material consists of over 90 semi-structured interviews conducted (in French and English) with: international diplomats; officials from international and regional organizations; members of the mediators’ teams; Malagasy parties to the negotiations; representatives of Malagasy political parties, churches, civil society organizations, and the security forces; and Malagasy academics and journalists (Kvale 2011; Fujii 2018; see list of interviews in the annex). Where possible, the interviews were recorded and transcribed afterwards. In all cases, interviews were followed by thorough note-taking on the content, course, and context of the interview, which then also formed an important part of the data analysed. As the content of the interviews touched politically sensitive issues, all interviewees were guaranteed anonymity, so that when quoting from interviews, I use broad descriptions instead of the interviewees’ real names. Particularly during field research in Madagascar, accessing interviewees was fairly easy, and apart from one case interviewees were surprisingly open and willing to share their accounts of what happened in Madagascar in the aftermath of March 2009. The timing of most interviews – early 2014 – coincided with the official re-establishment of constitutional order, which was an opportune moment for many people involved and affected to reflect on how and to what extent ‘la crise malgache’ was resolved. As I elaborate in Chapter 6, this moment also brought up many of the contradictions that had shaped the process of re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar, which once again underlined to what extent this process had been infused with politics. I therefore felt a certain eagerness on the part of many of my interviewees to share their experiences and evaluations of the processes concerned, often paired with a certain curiosity and appreciation that such knowledge now enters academic research and writing. While this situation translated into a great wealth of data, it also challenged me to constantly communicate and explain my position as a neutral researcher who tries to understand all sides but does not explicitly take sides with any of those involved in re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar (see also Ansoms 2013).
The information culled from these interviews was complemented by data from primary documents such as letters, minutes of meetings, strategy papers, and internal reports – notably from the Malagasy parties to the negotiations and the international mediators. All these primary sources were augmented by and checked against media articles from three French-language Malagasy newspapers (Midi Madagasikara, L’Express de Madagascar, and Madagascar Tribune). In addition, this study also draws on primary documents on the historical evolution and institutionalization of the African anti-coup norm gathered at the OAU/AU archives in Addis Ababa.
Apart from bringing unique empirical material to the debate, the book thus demonstrates that research into the impact of AU norms and policies without solely relying on official documents and narratives is both feasible and instructive. However, the effort to base this book on a set of sources as diverse and comprehensive as possible does not eliminate a certain degree of selectivity. In fact, moving beyond a narrative of post-coup interventions merely based on official policy documents also requires acknowledging and indeed appreciating the specific circumstances and sense-making practices that shaped how this particular narrative came into being (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow 2012: 2). First, despite thorough planning and conscious strategies for how to select and contact interviewees, encounters during field research still also follow their own rules: who has how much time, who knows whom, who is willing to share personal diaries, and so on usually lies far beyond what is plannable and steerable, and yet this can have a profound effect on whose and what kind of stories become heard (Fujii 2018: Chapter 3). For instance, the great number of internal memoirs and letters between the mediators and the Malagasy negotiating parties that I received from interviewees opened entirely new perspectives to me on the processes that happened at and beyond the negotiating table; they also added a depth to my analysis that interviews as such would not have permitted. For me, to receive these documents was pure luck, and for this book it was crucial. However, it also meant that my knowledge about, for instance, the four mouvances – the main Malagasy parties negotiating the return to constitutional order – was not equal for each mouvance, since not all of them produced internal memoires or shared them with me.
Second, positionality obviously matters (Kvale 2011: 14; Fujii 2018: Chapter 2). As a white female researcher, my own background shaped the relationship to my interviewees and affected to whom I was able to talk and how. Language skills, for instance, played a crucial role both enabling and constraining what kinds of stories ended up in this book. On the one hand, many of my Malagasy interlocutors immediately noted that French was not my native language. In several instances, this encouraged interviewees to spontaneously express solidarity, stressing that we share a certain fate of having to operate with a (colonial) language that isn’t really ours (see generally Jackson 2013: 126). In some instances, this was also accompanied by very explicit statements of relief that I was not of French nationality, but from a country whose relationship to Madagascar is usually seen as positive and as serving the interests of the island. This gave the interview situation a sense of trust that shaped interviewees’ willingness to tell their account of what happened in Madagascar post-March 2009. However, it also reflects how present global power hierarchies are in a postcolonial setting such as Madagascar and to what extent they infuse the everyday possibilities of doing field research. On the other hand, my lack of Malagasy language skills also constrained the pool of interviewees, newspaper articles, and online discussions whose narratives finally entered this book, which would certainly have been different if such voices could have been considered. In this sense, there surely remains a certain elite bias in the accounts provided. However, since I started this research by following (and interviewing) those involved in re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar, the analytical elite bias also bears an important insight: it only echoes the actual elite bias of these efforts in the first place.
Third, the final narrative presented in this book stems as much from the various sources consulted as it is of my own making. The explicitly iterative approach with which I analysed the data required a constant navigation between the puzzles currently debated in existing academic literature and the story that stems from the material itself (see Schwartz-Shea & Yanow 2012: 27). The ensuing chapters therefore necessarily deviate from my interviewees’ own stories, as they bridge and translate these stories into an academic discourse that has its own meanings, rules, and priorities. The result is hence a, not the, story of post-coup intervention in Madagascar. Yet it is a story that is based on a comprehensive set of consciously selected and diverse sources, triangulated and critically checked against existing accounts. So, this is not a plea for arbitrariness; quite the opposite. It is rather meant as an instruction to read the following chapters as an account that is as much assembled and subjective as it is reliable and comprehensive.
Outline of the book
This book is divided into seven chapters. Combining literature from IR, African studies, and peace and conflict research, Chapter 1 discusses how to think of the links between international standards of legitimate authority and the constitution of orders. From this, it develops two ‘conceptual resources’ (Howarth 2009: 311) for this book. First, inspired by the works of Michel Foucault (1982; 2004) and related contributions to IR, the chapter elaborates a perspective in which international organizations (IOs) such as the AU are conceived of as sites where principles defining what counts as legitimate order within states are formulated and institutionalized. This allows one to plot the emergence of particular knowledge regimes that determine what counts as legitimate order, and to see how these change over time, how they become institutionalized, and how they are enacted in specific IO practices such as mediation or election monitoring. This permits seeing the AU’s anti-coup norm as part of a much broader phenomenon and contributing to its theorization. The second conceptual resource developed in this chapter allows interventions to be construed as concrete instances of the enactment of the knowledge regimes in question. However, in line with critical peacebuilding and intervention research, interventions are conceptualized not as top-down enactments of a ‘pre-written script’, but as a ‘transboundary formation’ (Latham et al. 2001: 5), a transnational interactive space in which a variety of actors vie with one another to determine the ‘rules of the game’ – and thus also the outcome of the intervention. While itself drawing on key IR and peace and conflict literature, the chapter points out that both areas of study have largely ignored developments on the African continent, particularly those at regional level – an issue taken up again in the concluding chapter.
Chapter 2 reconstructs the contested making of the African anti-coup norm, from the preparatory work on the Lomé Declaration of 2000 to the negotiation of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, and beyond. By reconstructing developments over more than two decades, the chapter shows that the continental outlawing of coups was an incremental though contested expansion of the scope of ideas that define ‘good’ political order and their legalization (i.e. enshrinement in continental law). Moreover, the chapter also demonstrates that the idea to outlaw coups was intimately tied to a process of authorization (i.e. attributing a particular responsibility to the AU). Over time, I argue, this process in fact subverted a deeper engagement with the more general dilemmas and contradictions involved in the idea to prescribe and defend standards of legitimate authority through a continental organization.
Chapter 3 provides context for the events of March 2009, which led to the ouster of Madagascar’s President Ravalomanana. For this purpose, the chapter reconstructs the multiplicity of conflicts as experienced and expressed by various Malagasy social and political actors from both rural and urban settings, and shows that ‘la crise malgache’ was in fact a multifaceted and deep-rooted phenomenon occurring at a time when the legitimacy of the order then in place was very much in question. The chapter also acts as a foil against which the limitations of the international solutions ultimately proposed, and the parties and issues they excluded, are made visible.
Working on the assumption that interventions are a transnational space in which international, regional, national, and local actors come together to negotiate an outcome, Chapter 4 provides a detailed analysis of the protagonists of the post-coup intervention in Madagascar. On the one hand, the chapter scrutinizes the aims and strategies of key Malagasy players invited to take part in the re-establishment of constitutional order and shows how they came about as a result of the intervention. On the other hand, the chapter explores the various international and regional bodies that became involved in supporting Madagascar’s return to constitutional order. It analyses their mandates and interests, as well as how they organized their respective involvement in re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar. A closer look is also taken at the individuals dispatched as mediators or special envoys to Madagascar. The chapter shows that at various levels, the intervention, rather than resolving conflict, in fact itself created conflicts, which meant that resolution became more elusive. Apart from conflicts among the various international actors – which other studies on the case of Madagascar have already stressed – the chapter specifically identifies conflicts between the Malagasy negotiating parties, on the one hand, and the various international actors, on the other, and shows the crucial (physical, institutional, and ideational) disconnect of the latter from what happened on the ground.
Chapter 5 reconstructs the logic underpinning the re-establishment of constitutional order in Madagascar, which ultimately shaped how and what kind of order was to emerge from almost five years of post-coup intervention. It does so in relation to: (1) the objects of intervention (i.e. the problems and issues considered relevant to resolve ‘la crise malgache’); and (2) the subjects of intervention (i.e. those actors given a particular role for resolving the crisis). The chapter’s detailed reconstruction of the logic of intervention sheds light on a gradual depoliticization of what it meant to re-establish constitutional order and resolve the crisis, ending in a technical transition driven by the president whose sole purpose was the holding of transitional elections. Although many more Malagasy political actors became included in this transition than initially planned, inclusion was based on rather arbitrary terms. Moreover, the chapter also demonstrates that this depoliticized solution was not a coincidence, but that it was sustained by a particular mode in which the various international actors approached the situation on the ground.
Following on from the analysis of the logic of intervention, Chapter 6 looks at the order-constituting effects of almost five years of post-coup intervention in Madagascar. It does so by tracing how the intervention reconfigured power relations both in and beyond Madagascar. With regard to the first, the chapter shows how the five years spent in re-establishing constitutional order served primarily to re-legitimate old power relations and the ideal of a liberal polity – however much at odds the latter was with the realities on the ground. Yet at the same time, the re-establishment of constitutional order also deepened the spaces for international intervention: problems identified but not addressed during the post-coup intervention were translated into development programmes and thus became the subject of new international aid and capacity-building projects. More revolutionary, however, were the changes that took place internationally. Citing the examples of, inter alia, the AU, SADC, and the Indian Ocean Commission (Commission de l’Océan Indien, COI), the chapter shows that the process of re-establishing constitutional order in Madagascar offered these organizations an opportunity to explore and institutionalize new norms and practices, which in many regards expanded their hitherto limited radius of responsibility and action. The chapter thus demonstrates that post-coup interventions are consequential and have order-constituting effects, in that they (re)produce power relations and (re-)establish order both within and beyond the actual site of intervention.
The concluding chapter summarizes the book’s main argument. It integrates the findings on post-coup intervention in Madagascar into a discussion of other cases of post-coup intervention in Africa. From this, a pattern emerges in the logic and approaches employed by African regional interveners to address (very different) post-coup situations. On this basis, the chapter argues that it is reasonable to assume similar ordering effects in other affected countries, caused by the AU’s anti-coup norm and its enactment in practice. The chapter discusses the implications of the book’s findings for the study of the AU and other regional organizations, as well as for IR and its agenda to take non-Western worlds more seriously.
