AFRICA’S PEACEKEEPING AND REGIONAL AUTONOMY: RETHINKING COLLECTIVE SECURITY IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD ORDER

Research Problem: The regional peacekeeping efforts in Africa are often couched within the language of dependence, fragility, and control. This is actually a way of concealing an important puzzle: Whether or not regional interventions, especially those conducted by ECOWAS, reproduce global dependency, or are practices through which African institutions constitute autonomy, legitimacy, and sovereignty in the world. Methodology: The research framework is constructivist institutionalism, and the study follows a mixed-methods design. Discourse analysis of the ECOWAS communiqué, peacekeeping mandates, and summit statements is done, and data from Afrobarometer, SIPRI, and the ECOWAS financial statements is used and validated. The analysis is done for the states of Liberia, The Gambia, Mali, and the contribution of Nigeria, referred to as the anchor state. Results: The results show the ECOWAS peacekeeping role not only as a reaction to crisis management but also as a performative act of autonomy, which symbolically asserts sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy by the regional entities. From the unmandated operation in Liberia to the democratic enforcement mission in The Gambia, the ECOWAS operation displays institutional creativity in the assertion of normative autonomy even as it remains materially dependent on others. The effect of the emergence of multipolarity upon the continent of Africa is to increase the options of the continent even as it also generates more weaknesses. Conclusion: ECOWAS peacekeeping practices demonstrate the constant paradox of autonomy where sovereignty is expressed both in discourse and performance, despite the continuation of structural dependence. This means that regional peacekeeping is a transitional instance where Africa practices group sovereignty with limitations posed by global asymmetry and where intervention is transformed into legitimacy-building and not just coercion. Key Contribution to Knowledge: This research reconceptualizes African peacekeeping efforts from being derivative within the security sphere to being the process through which sovereignty is made, thereby contributing to the furtherance of constructivist institutionalism by showing the possibilities for the performance of autonomy even when dependence is at play. This research is relevant in the sense that it helps in the exploration of African agency. Recommendation: For performative autonomy to grow into structural autonomy, ECOWAS must therefore build upon its indigenous sources of financing, professionalize command structures, and strengthen its partnerships with a view to taking advantage of multipolarity to match its normative power with material capacity.