
Thomas Kwasi TiekuKing's, The University of Western Ontario · Political Science
Thomas Kwasi Tieku
PhD
About
75
Publications
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Introduction
I am an African-Canadian international relations and negotiation expert and an Associate Professor of Political Science at King's University College at The University of Western Ontario in Canada. My research focuses on informal international politics, international organizations, mediation, and African politics.
Additional affiliations
July 2014 - September 2020
July 2009 - June 2012
October 2010 - June 2012
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Position
- Lead Researcher
Education
September 2001 - June 2006
Publications
Publications (75)
The article explores how and why communities of practice (CoPs) of international organizations (IOs) work together effectively despite the rigid formal bureaucratic and institutional borders they inhabit. The manuscript explains how four informal mechanisms combined to enable CoPs embedded in the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West A...
The article critically explores the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) from an informality perspective. The informality perspective sees unofficial rules, norms, practices, processes, actors, and decision-making structures as driving forces of the social world. They are ontologically prior to and building blocks of their formal counterpar...
The growing importance of executive authority at the international level has fuelled scholarly debate about the level of autonomy enjoyed by international public administration (IPA), that is, the executive arms of international organisations. Insights from IPAs in the West or Global North, such as the European Union, have largely shaped these deba...
Although international organisations (IOs) are created by governments, their international public administrations (IPAs) have succeeded in ring-fencing their resources, and policymaking from direct intervention by member states. Research shows that international civil servants are best able to protect their autonomy when embedded in large and well-...
The article takes stock of the eclectic Africa’s International Relations (AIR) scholarship with a view to setting a new research agenda for this vibrant subfield of International Relations (IR). It argues that the AIR community has taken a defensive approach to knowledge production and dissemination. It calls on AIR scholars to shift the emphasis f...
This article explores the working relationship between the United Nations (UN), African Union ( AU ), and the Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS ) in mediating conflicts in West Africa and the Sahel regions. We argue that through the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel ( UNOWAS ), the UN, ECOWAS and the AU are workin...
There has been a proliferation of works on informal dimensions of international relations. Putting the scholarship under the banner of informal international relations (IIR), [A1] the value preposition of research and publications on informal aspects of international political life is critically explored in order to chart promising pathways to furt...
The article explores the Legon School of International Relations (LSIR) which is the research, teaching, and academic programming of International Relations (IR) at the University of Ghana, Legon. The LSIR came out of attempts to decolonise knowledge production, dissemination, and academic programing in Ghana in early 1960s. The article shows that...
Conventional narratives suggest that the African Union Commission (AUC), like most international public administrations and international organisations (IOs) housed in the less materially endowed regions of the world, exercises no meaningful agency on international issues. This article however seeks to show that the AUC is neither a glorified messe...
A new spirit of pan-Africanism guided the continent’s response to the pandemic. Led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the African Union provided multilateral coordination and worked with external partners to obtain support, while the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention organized the pandemic responses of national public heal...
This study contributes to the field of International Public Administration (IPA) and the emerging area of Informal International Relations (IIR) by examining the politics of staffing and recruitment of the African Union Commission (AUC). Although the AUC has become a major political player in international affairs, there is a dearth of knowledge ab...
The African Union (AU), an international organization comprising all 54 independent states in Africa and Western Sahara, was established in May 2001 to, among other things, promote regional integration, interstate solidarity, peace, good governance and to enhance the African voice in the global system. Pan-African organization is like the proverbia...
Informality is a fact of international life. Plethora of unwritten rules, unofficial
processes, informal meetings, unconventional practices, and ad hoc bodies govern the international system. Interviews, memoirs, narratives, and other forms of communication by seasoned diplomats all point to the fact that decisions that have consequential impacts o...
What impact have African actors had on perceptions of and responses to current international security challenges? Are there international peace and security norms with African roots? How can actors that lack the power and financial resources of Western states help shape prevailing conceptions of appropriate behavior in international politics?
Addr...
What impact have African actors had on perceptions of and responses to current international security challenges? Are there international peace and security norms with African roots? How can actors that lack the power and financial resources of Western states help to shape prevailing conceptions of appropriate behavior in international politics?
Ad...
This special issue of African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review (ACPR) is devoted to the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). It aims, among other things, at providing a critical analysis of the nature and impact of APSA, contributing to existing debates around APSA’s effectiveness, as well as helping to develop paradigms for studying th...
This article conceptualizes the working relationship between the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN). The depth of the AU-UN partnership is unparalleled in terms of the UN’s relations with other regional security institutions in the world and it even transcends the traditional classification of the UN’s relations with regional organizati...
This article joins an emerging body of studies that explore factors and conditions that enable African governments to exercise agency. It does so by showing that formalised African multilateral institutions such as the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the African Union (AU) enabled African governments to exercise agency in the resolution of...
The rapid creation of the African Union (AU) has been described as one of the most puzzling events in interstate co-operation in contemporary Africa. While studies published so far on the subject express surprise at the AU’s speedy creation, none makes any attempt to explain the clash of interests and ideas of the key actors and how they were accom...
The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) of the African Union (AU) has been widely and highly praised for normative and institutional transformation in the areas of peace and security and for enhancing the agency of African governments to deal with external partners. Yet, the consensus emerging in both policy and academic circles is that...
This chapter examines the African Union (AU) peace and security institutions. It shows that they are among the most ambitious and novel continent-wide security governance mechanisms to emerge in the world since the end of the Cold War. They are drawn from collectivist security ideas, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework and the human secur...
This monograph argues that the President is maintaining the substance of post-Cold War U.S.-Africa relations but changing the style of U.S. engagement, adopting what the author calls cosmopolitan realism. Obama's rhetoric on Africa, according to the author, mixes Clinton's liberal cosmopolitan views with Bush's compassionate realist narrative. Unli...
This chapter unpacks individualist and collectivist worldviews in social science scholarship to show that many scholars in the English-speaking international relations (IR) community look at the world through the prism of individualism, which usually renders unheard the international experiences and voices of people in the global South. The neglect...
Regional multilateral regimes have become important instruments for promoting and defending democracy around the world. The novel nature of these regional instruments has generated a cottage industry in social science scholarship. Yet, none of these works compare the democracy promotion and defence regimes of the Organization of American States (OA...
The use of multilateral institutions to promote and defend democracy is one of the most remarkable recent trends in politics. The novelty of the approach has generated enormous interest among social science scholars. Yet, none of the major studies on the subject explores the origins, nature, and performance of mutilateralization of democracy promot...
This paper explores the contribution of the African Union (AU) to human security promotion in Africa. It contends that human security concerns informed the formation of the AU. Through the efforts of the AU Commission, the African ruling elite and policy-makers have become aware of human security doctrines. Human security ideas have been integrated...
The rapid creation of the African Union (AU) has been described as one of the most puzzling events in interstate co-operation in contemporary Africa. While studies published so far on the subject express surprise at the AU's speedy creation, none makes any attempt to explain the clash of interests and ideas of the key actors and how they were accom...
The recently established African Union mandates the creation of an African Standby Force. This policy paper reviews the current engagement by other Western nations with the new African Union and its Peace and Security Council to address challenges to security in Africa through the African Standby Force, its accompanying early warning system, and ci...