Description
African regional organizations like the African Union (AU) and ECOWAS are regularly intervening in their member states in order to build peace and enforce political norms. Although these interventions have tangible effects on politics and order in African states, we know little about how people living in the countries concerned experience and evaluate these interventions. The widespread assumption in the literature is that African interventions are per se perceived as legitimate and locally adapted due to the interveners’ proximity to the contexts of intervention. Based on interview and focus group research, this paper presents first-hand and systematically generated empirical data on local perceptions of AU and ECOWAS interventions in two African states: Burkina Faso (2014/15) and The Gambia (2016/17). Against the assumption in the literature, we demonstrate that (1) African interventions are locally more contested than often assumed, that (2) local perceptions of AU and ECOWAS interventions are complex and multiple, and that (3) everyday experiences as well as socio-economic and political positionality crucially shape how different people perceive African interventions. These findings extend existing research on local perceptions of interventions by a perspective on non-Western interveners; and they have important implications for understanding both the legitimacy and effectiveness of African regional interventions.
