Description
The partnership between the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) is arguably the most institutionalised case of strategic cooperation for contemporary international peacekeeping. While built upon the pursuit of complementarity, the AU-UN partnership often presents conflict. This article examines this conflictual dynamic through a less explored legitimacy perspective and argues that the inter-institutional conflict stems from legitimation struggles of the peacekeeping agents. By doing so, the article departs from studies analysing the partnership as an operational tactic for effectiveness and situates it within the broader normative context of contemporary multi-agent peacekeeping. Through discourse analysis of strategic documents, it identifies three main areas where legitimacy claims lead to conflict: normative grounds for authority; institutional capacity; and peacekeeping principles. The article additionally highlights the complexity of legitimation struggles in a peacekeeping partnership that involves an interplay of self-legitimation, mutual legitimation, and de-legitimation.
