Multilateralization of Democracy Promotion and Defense in Africa

Abstract

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 promotion and defence in Africa. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining the democracy promotion and defence activities of the African Union. It argues that the African Union's record on democracy promotion and defence in Africa is decidedly mixed. While the Pan-African organization has dealt with coup makers decisively, it has been far less successful in dealing with authoritarian backsliding. Despite the enormous diplomatic toolkit at its disposal, the African Union has been unequivocally effective only at 'firefighting' authoritarianism, and its record at preventing misrule is at best questionable.

Full text

Despite the remarkable
diplomatic toolkits and
innovative democracy-
promotion and defense
regimes at its disposal, the
AU has been effective only
at “reghting,” respond-
ing to extreme forms of
bad governance, and not
so successful at preventing
authoritarian tendencies
among its member-states.

Multilateralization of Democracy
Promotion and Defense in Africa
Thomas Kwasi Tieku
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 perfor-
mance of the mutilateralization of democracy promotion and
defense in Africa. This article seeks to ll this gap by examin-
ing how the African Union promotes and defends democracy
in Africa. Examination shows that the record is mixed: the
African Union has dealt decisively with coup-makers, but
it has been far less successful in dealing with democratic
backsliding. Despite the diplomatic toolkit at its disposal, its
record at preventing misrule is at best questionable.
Introduction
Multilateral organizations have taken central positions in democracy promo-
tion and defense around the world. Major regional organizations, such as the
European Union (EU), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Carib-
bean Community, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
have adopted multilateral frameworks to strengthen democracy and human-
rights norms and practices in their member states (Cameron 2003; Cooper
& Legler 2006; Legler & Tieku 2008; McMahon 2007; Pevehouse 2005). The
Inter-American Democratic Charter, adopted by the OAS on 11 September
2001, enhanced the organization’s capacity to promote and defend democracy
in the Americas (Boniface 2007; Cooper 2004; McCoy 2006). The Amsterdam
Treaty, which entered into force in May 1999, empowered EU institutions to
promote democracy in Europe and in the global south. The ASEAN took an
important step toward constructing a new regional multilateral democracy-
promotion regime with the signing, on 20 November 2007, of a new ASEAN
charter that included the creation of a new ASEAN human-rights body.
The African Union (AU) took the multilateral approach to democracy
promotion and defense to a new level when African leaders adopted the
African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance (the African

MU LTIL ATER ALIZ ATIO N OF DE MOCR ACY PRO MOT ION AND DEF ENSE IN AFRI CA76africaTODAY 562
Democracy Charter) on 30 January 2007 during the AU summit in Addis
Ababa. The African Democracy Charter presents ambitious benchmarks
for, and legal principles to support, the promotion of a democratic ethos, as
well as peer-review mechanisms for measuring democratic performance in
fty-two states in Africa and Western Sahara. It contains unprecedentedly
detailed denitions of democracy, elaborate, and in some cases innovative,
instruments for responding to coups d’état and democratic backsliding, and
provisions for international election monitoring (Eborah 2007; Legler &
Tieku 2008; McMahon 2007; Saungweme 2007; Wodzicki 2007).
Some of the instruments in the African Democracy Charter are found
in other multilateral democracy charters, such as the Inter-American Demo-
cratic Charter and EU’s democracy-promotion instruments. It is, however, a
mistake to assume or suggest that the AU is merely trying to “localize” dem-
ocratic ideas that originated in the Americas, or in Europe for that matter.1
There is little doubt that the drafters of the African Democracy Charter
gained valuable insights from their European and American counterparts,
but the AU’s democracy-promotion and defense norms are homegrown proj-
ects, developed to deal with distinct African regional problems. The creation
of many of the ideas in the charter predates the Inter-American Democratic
Charter. The democratic norms embedded in the African Democracy Charter
have peppered resolutions, decisions, and declarations of the Organization
of African Unity (OAU), now the AU (henceforth O/AU), since at least July
1989.2 They were at the heart of the African Charter for Popular Participa-
tion in Development, adopted by African leaders during the OAU summit
in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in July 1990.
The move to create a regional charter that contains all the democracy-
promotion instruments of the AU is recent. These instruments originated
in the work of transnational knowledge networks in Africa. The knowledge
networks were made up of policy think tanks in South Africa and Africrats
(i.e., bureaucrats of the O/AU). The transnational knowledge networks have
a “common frame” (Finnemore & Sikkink 1998:7)—that African govern-
ments share responsibility for the development of policies supporting a lib-
eral ethos, such as representative democracy, good governance, and human
rights, in every African state. The experts embedded in these knowledge
networks teamed up to develop the instruments to bind member govern-
ments of the AU, including the illiberal ones, to a set of liberal democratic
and good-governance principles, thereby compelling them to defend and
promote democracy in every African state. The expert-driven process of the
AU’s democracy promotion and defense construction has fostered a legalistic
approach to implementing the democracy-promotion and defense norms in
Africa.
In addition, I offer an assessment of the performance of AU democ-
racy promotion and defense, arguing that the overall record of the AU on
democracy promotion and defense in Africa is mixed. The AU has dealt with
coup-makers decisively, but it has been far less successful in dealing with
democratic backsliding. Despite the remarkable diplomatic toolkits and

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU77africaTODAY 562
innovative democracy-promotion and defense regimes at its disposal, the
AU has been effective only at “reghting,” responding to extreme forms of
bad governance, and not so successful at preventing authoritarian tendencies
among its member-states.
I demonstrate the above-outlined insights in three sections. First, I
place the democracy-promotion and defense regimes of the AU within the
institutional architecture of the continental organization.3 I outline the key
elements of AU democratic promotion and defense instruments in section
two. In the third section, I examine the AU’s record on democracy promotion
and defense. I conclude the article by summarizing the core arguments.
The African Union
To gain a deeper understanding of AU democracy promotion and defense
requires an examination of the African Union. African leaders created it
on 26 May 2001 to reect a shift in the focus of the Pan-African project.4
Pan-Africanism as practiced within the institutional framework of the
Organization of African Unity (OAU) had focused on legitimizing and insti-
tutionalizing statehood in Africa. Protection of states and governments in
Africa became its referent. One of several efforts to protect and consolidate
African states, the Charter of the OAU committed African governments to
a treaty that contained some of the “purest statements [that defend and hold
together the rings] ... of elements of juridical sovereignty ever to be embod-
ied in any international organization” (Clapham 1996). The charter put in
place institutions, rules, and administrative mechanisms that strengthened
sovereign prerogatives and the territorial integrity of African states. Many
institutional restrictions were imposed on the OAU secretariat to prevent
its becoming a supranational entity.
The institutionalization of the state across the African continent
meant that Pan-Africanism needed a new focus and meaning. A new genera-
tion of Pan-Africanists, led by the eminent South African Nelson Mandela
and the shrewd Tanzanian diplomat Ahmed Salim Ahmed, made conscious
efforts in the 1990s to give a new meaning to Pan-Africanism. They felt that
Pan-Africanism needed to deal with challenges facing ordinary Africans,
rather than those encountered by broader entities, such as states and govern-
ments (Mandela 1994; Salim 1990). They identied three main challenges:
security threats and bad governance, underdevelopment, and the impact
of international political economic forces (Salim 1995). These challenges
informed the creation of the AU and the drafting of its legal text, called the
Constitutive Act of the African Union (CA). As part of the effort to promote
peace across the African continent, the CA explicitly enjoins state parties to
promote and defend democracy across the African continent. Member-states
of the AU are required to respect human rights, develop democratic institu-
tions and culture, and ensure good governance and the rule of law (African
Union 2001 and 2005). On 30 January 2007, member-states of the AU

MU LTIL ATER ALIZ ATIO N OF DE MOCR ACY PRO MOT ION AND DEF ENSE IN AFRI CA78africaTODAY 562
adopted the African Democratic Charter to give institutional mechanisms
to a third party, primarily AU institutions, to operationalize and enforce the
democracy-promotion and defense regimes embedded in the CA. While the
African Democratic Charter and democracy instruments in the CA have
enhanced the AU’s capacity in the area of democracy promotion and defense,
the democracy instruments in the AU’s arsenal go beyond the democracy-
institutional mechanisms in these documents. More broadly, the democratic
regimes in the AU’s arsenal stand on four key pillars.5
The AU Democracy Promotion and Defense Regimes
First, they make democracy promotion and defense an explicit purpose of
the organization. The African Charter for Popular Participation in Develop-
ment made the promotion and consolidation of representative democracy
an explicit purpose of the O/AU. Salim Ahmed Salim, the secretary general
of the OAU, who developed the charter, felt that OAU promotion of democ-
racy “would ensure the involvement of all including in particular women
and youth in the development efforts” of African states (OAU 1990a). It was
reinforced by Decision CM/Dec.357 (LXVI), which African leaders adopted
during the meeting of the Council of Ministers in Harare in Zimbabwe on
28 May 1997. Decision CM/Dec.357 (LXVI) committed African governments
to concrete steps to “work towards the establishment and consolidation
of effective democratic systems, ensure respect for human rights and ght
impunity” in Africa.6 The CA, which replaced the OAU Charter, built on
these instruments by enjoining African governments to develop democratic
institutions and culture, and to ensure good governance and the rule of law
(African Union 2001 and 2005).
Second, the democratic regimes of the AU are grounded in a strong
anticoup norm. In 1998, AHG/DECL.1 (XXXIV) created an automatic and
rapid response mechanism for the AU in the event of a coup d’état against
a member state. The declaration stipulated measures that the AU could
adopt to combat unconstitutional seizures of power. The anticoup regime
emerged out of the measures that the AU developed to restore constitutional
governments in Sierra Leone in 1997. In response to a military overthrow
of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah’s civilian government in Sierra Leone on 25 May
1997, Salim introduced to the OAU Council of Ministers meeting in Harare
in Zimbabwe on 28 May 1997 specic measures designed to restore con-
stitutional order in Sierra Leone. The measures included a request to “all
African countries, and the International Community at large, to refrain from
recognizing the new regime and lending support in any form whatsoever
to the perpetrators of the coup d’état” (OAU 1997). As a follow-up, Salim
proposed to the OAU leadership to exclude from participating in OAU activi-
ties “states whose Governments came to power through unconstitutional
means” (OAU 1998). The proposal was accepted as a declaration during the
thirty-fourth OAU summit, held in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in June

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU79africaTODAY 562
1998. A revised version of the proposal, which included additional prodemo-
cracy measures, was submitted to the thirty-fth summit, held in Algiers
in Algeria in July 1999 (OAU 1999). The new proposal required that states
“whose Governments came to power through unconstitutional means after
the Harare Summit [i.e., May 1997] restore constitutional legality before
the next Summit.” It mandated the OAU secretary general to “assist in pro-
grammes intended to return such countries to constitutional and democratic
governments.” The CA added these measures to its binding rules.
Third, the democratic regime of the AU has strong sanctions against
coup-makers. The O/AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government
decided during the thirty-sixth OAU summit, held in Lome, Togo, in July
2000, that a fairly comprehensive sanction regime should be applied by the
OAU in cases of unconstitutional changes of governments in African states
(OAU 2000). Unconstitutional changes of governments were dened in the
proposal as the replacement of democratically elected governments through
a military coup d’état, mercenary intervention, armed rebellion, and the
refusal by an incumbent government to relinquish power to the winning
party after free, fair, and regular elections. The proposal, adopted as Decla-
ration AHG/Decl.5 (XXXVI) during the thirty-sixth OAU summit, held in
Lome in Togo in July 2000, conferred on the OAU chair and secretary general
the responsibility to condemn any military takeover in Africa immediately
and demand a speedy return to constitutional order. The country in ques-
tion, according to Declaration AHG/Decl.5 (XXXVI), would be automatically
suspended from participating in the activities of the OAU and given six
months to restore constitutional rule (OAU 2000). Said Djinnit, the OAU
Undersecretary General for Political Affairs, and Ben Kioko, the Acting OAU
Legal Counselor, integrated the core prodemocracy ideas in Declaration
AHG/Decl.5 (XXXVI) into the draft CA.
Fourth, the AU attempted to commit its members to uphold democ-
racy via democratic charters. Its democratic regime tried to move African
governments away from the traditional idea that every state in Africa has
“the right ... to determine ... the system of democracy on the basis of their
socio-cultural values” (OAU 1990a). To commit the leadership of the OAU
to a specic set of democratic principles, Salim forged a partnership with
a group of civil-society organizations that had started a campaign to make
the OAU focus on humanitarian issues and to demand certain “standards of
behaviour ... from every government [in Africa] in the interest of common
humanity” (Zartman & Deng 2002; Obasanjo & Mosha, 1992:260).7 Salim,
with civil-society groups, pushed the OAU leadership to bind their states
in July 1999 to a decision that dened democracy as representative and
stable government and indicated that “the principles of good governance,
transparency and human rights are essential elements for building” such a
government (OAU 1999).
Following criticisms by civil-society groups that the OAU’s stand on
democracy was vague, Africrats developed “a set of principles on democratic
governance to be adhered to by all Member States of the OAU” (OAU 2000).

MU LTIL ATER ALIZ ATIO N OF DE MOCR ACY PRO MOT ION AND DEF ENSE IN AFRI CA80africaTODAY 562
The principles were adopted as Declaration AHG/Decl.5 (XXXVI) during the
thirty-sixth summit. The principles encouraged OAU members to adopt a
“Democratic Constitution” whose “preparation, content and method of
revision . . . conform with generally acceptable principles of democracy”
and which guarantees and promotes human rights. In addition, Declara-
tion AHG/Decl.5 (XXXVI) required that OAU member-states respect their
constitutions, the provisions of the law, and other legislation adopted by
the parliament of their states. Member-governments would be required to
adhere to the principle of separation of powers, respect for the independence
of the judiciary, and respect for the role of opposition and the principle of
democratic change, in addition to requiring OAU member-states to promote
political pluralism through the organization of free and regular elections,
respect for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and fundamental
rights and freedoms. Declaration AHG/Decl.5 (XXXVI) appealed to African
governments to ensure gender balance and involvement of African civil
society in the political process.
The African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance seeks
to bind African states to this conventional understanding of democracy. It
stipulates that parties to the charter will adhere to “universal values and prin-
ciples of democracy,” which include respect for human rights, representative
government, the rule of law, supremacy of constitutions and constitutional
orders, free and fair elections, and independence of the judiciary (African
Union 2007:5).
8
It is signicant that the African Democratic Charter provides
a common frame of reference for democracy though the denition of democ-
racy is part of the aspirational principles.
9
The common frame of reference is
likely to minimize the potential for conicts over the meaning of democracy
in African contexts; more importantly, it undercuts African governments’
tendencies to adopt context-specic interpretations of democracy.
An important element of the African Democratic Charter is the elabo-
rate rules it provides for democracy activists and promoters to defend exist-
ing democracies in Africa. Chapter eight provides useful legal instruments
to promote both vertical and horizontal accountability. Four of the ve
clauses of article 23 seek to strengthen vertical accountability by stipulating
a series of sanctions for illegal access and maintenance of power. Though
article 23 places emphasis on vertical accountability, it does not in any way
erode horizontal accountability, as article 23(5) makes it illegal for incum-
bent governments to manipulate national constitutions to prolong their
term in office. It is illegal under the charter for an incumbent government
to refuse to concede defeat after a free and fair election. The AU is given the
responsibility of imposing sanctions on governments that refuse to hand over
power after free and fair elections and those that manipulate their national
laws to prolong their stay in office. The great virtue of the charter is that
it provides precise rules, imposes strong obligations on the signatories, and
has strong third-party oversight for dealing with critical problems, such as
civil–military relations, authoritarian tendencies of civilian governments,
and human-rights abuse.10

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU81africaTODAY 562
The Performance of AU Democracy and Defense Regimes
The AU democracy and defense regimes have been tested repeatedly. Chal-
lenges have come from military coups in the Central African Republic
(2003), Guinea-Bissau (2003), São Tome and Principe (2003), Mauritania
(2005, 2008), Togo (2005), Guinea (2008), and the populist removal of a
democratically elected government in Madagascar (2008). The regimes have
been tested by questionable electoral victories in Nigeria (2007), the Central
African Republic (2009), and Mauritania (2009), and by the behavior and
political maneuvering of longstanding autocrats in Chad, Equatorial Guinea,
Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, and Western Sahara. Examinations of AU’s commit-
ment to democracy-promotion and defense have emerged from pseudomili-
tary governments in Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and a failed govern-
ment in Somalia. The manipulation of a constitution in Togo (2005), the
changing of term limits in Gabon (2003) and Cameroon (2007), democratic
backsliding in Zimbabwe (2000–2009), human-rights abuses in a majority of
African states but especially in Burundi (2007–2008), and the postelection
controversy in Kenya (2008) have provided stiff tests to the AU’s resolve to
promote and defend democracy. The AU responded to the challenges posed
by the coups relatively well, but failed to deal with authoritarian tendencies
in any meaningful way.
Since the adoption of the anticoup norm, the AU has suspended all
countries where coups have taken place, and has put pressure on military
juntas to return the suspended states to civilian rule. In contrast with
regional organizations, such as the OAS and ASEAN, which do not use dip-
lomatic suspension, the AU suspended all member-states that experienced
unconstitutional changes of governments since it adopted the anticoup
norm. The states involved were asked to return to civilian rule within
a specic time. The anticoup regime requires that additional sanctions,
including travel bans and checks on bank accounts of members of the junta,
are imposed if they fail to meet the deadline. The imposition of sanctions,
including the denial of visas, travel restrictions, and the freezing of assets of
General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz (who overthrew Mauritania’s rst demo-
cratically elected president in August 2008 and members of the government
he installed in February 2009), forced him to organize elections in July 2009.
Similarly, the AU used sanctions to pressure Togo to hold elections in
2005. The AU’s response to the leadership succession in Togo in 2005 was a
landmark move, as it was not a classic military takeover. Faure Gnassingbe
was installed as the head of state by the Togolese army after the death of his
father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, in February 2005. Immediately following the
installation, Alpha Oumar Konaré, chair of the AU Commission, released
a statement describing the changeover as an unconstitutional seizure of
power, and called on the new government to return Togo to constitutional
legality. The AU Peace and Security Council upheld his stand, and excluded
Togo from AU activities. The AU’s delegitimation of Faure Gnassingbe’s
government, together with sustained international pressure, forced him to

MU LTIL ATER ALIZ ATIO N OF DE MOCR ACY PRO MOT ION AND DEF ENSE IN AFRI CA82africaTODAY 562
resign. Though he ended up winning the next election (under dubious cir-
cumstances), and the AU readmitted Togo into the Pan-African club later in
2005 without questioning the process that had brought him to power, the
Togo case is a key precedent.11
The AU took the usual stand of supporting military intervention to
promote and defend democracy and territorial integrity in a member-state.
It mobilized 1500 troops from Libya, Senegal, Sudan, and Tanzania to invade
and drive away an unconstitutional government in the Comoros island of
Anjouan in 2008. As for the classic military juntas that emerged after the
AU took a rm stand against coups, almost all of them have not been able
to normalize and prolong their power. Without the AU’s stand, the juntas
would likely have followed the traditional practice of nding a way to make
their governments acceptable to the international community and remain in
office as long as possible. More coups would likely have occurred in Africa
during the period. Informed observers of the behavior of African militaries
believe that the AU anticoup measures have deterred “African militaries
from plotting and attempting coups” (McGowan 2006: 242).
The AU has emerged as a key validator of electoral results in Africa.
In addition to setting rules for determining free and fair elections, such
as requiring member-states to provide free access to information, ensure
freedom of movement of the mission, and cooperate with the mission, it
obligates parties to inform the AU Commission of any scheduled elections
and to invite the AU Electoral Assistant Unit to send observers. The AU
Commission electoral observation played a central role in the legitimization
of major election results in Ghana in 2004, 2008, and 2009, Zanzibar in 2003
and 2005, Zimbabwe in 2000, Kenya in 2002 and 2007, Nigeria in 2003 and
2007, Swaziland in 2003, Mozambique in 2003 and 2004, Sierra Leone in
2004 and 2007, Malawi in 2004, Cameroon in 2004, Lesotho in 2005, Zambia,
in 2006, Gambia in 2006, Seychelles in 2006, and Uganda in 2006. Though
the AU observers’ penchant for presenting electoral problems in attering
diplomatic language and the observers’ unwillingness to highlight abuses of
incumbencies during electioneering campaigns have undermined the AU’s
credibility in the area of external election validation, the electoral observa-
tions by the AU have contributed to making parties accept the outcome of
election results. This has in a major way helped some African states avoid
postelection disputes and conicts similar to the one witnessed in Kenya
after the December 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The AU has used mediation to prevent and resolve electoral-related
conicts. AU mediation work has produced many successes, including help-
ing avoid a major political crisis in São Tome and Principe, and Burundi in
2003. A more recent AU mediation effort that produced meaningful politi-
cal settlement and helped stop violence is the AU meditation mission that
resolved the election dispute between Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic
Movement (ODM) and Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) after
the December 2007 Kenyan elections. After Mwai Kibaki had been declared
the winner of the election, protests and violence ensued. The AU chair,

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU83africaTODAY 562
Ghanaian President John Kufuor, led a mediation mission to Kenya in Janu-
ary 2008. When he failed to broker a peace agreement between Raila Odinga’s
ODM and Mwai Kibaki’s PNU, the AU appointed a team of mediators that
included former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and Madame Graça
Machel and was headed by the former U.N. Secretary General Ko Annan,
with the goal of resolving the electoral impasse. With the support of the
diplomatic machinery of leading Western states, such as the United States
of America, Annan’s team helped the PNU and ODM agree to share power
and form a coalition government. Though mainstream media and some
analysts have tried to distance the AU from the resolution of the postelec-
tion conict in Kenya, it remains one of the AU’s greatest achievements.12
Despite the signicant successes the AU has recorded in the area of media-
tion, AU’s mediation efforts remains largely unknown, underappreciated,
and undocumented.13 The lack of meaningful study of AU’s work in the area
of mediation is unfortunate, as useful intellectual and policy insights can be
gleaned from the meditation process.
On the negative side, the AU has been far less able to deal with
democractic backsliding—elected officials who undermine their countries’
democratic constitutional orders. It has been unable to keep elected officials
from abusing their office, as the ongoing Zimbabwe crisis demonstrates.
Its ineffectiveness in this regard is a major worry, as studies suggest that
authoritarian tendencies are creeping into the administrations of some of
the African states that embraced democracy in the early 1990s (Bratton,
Mattes, & Gyimah-Boadi 2005; Bratton & van de Walle 1997). The AU has
failed to condemn governments that have manipulated their constitutions
to prolong their term in office. It did virtually nothing to keep governments,
such as those of Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, Omar Bongo of Gabon,
and Idriss Deby of Chad, from manipulating their national constitutions
to extend their stay in office. More curiously, it said nothing while Camer-
oonian President Paul Biya, who has been in power for twenty-six years, in
April 2008 scrapped the presidential term limits stated in the Cameroonian
national constitution. The move will allow him to run in the presidential
election scheduled for 2011, and to stay in power until 2018, when he will
be 85 years of age. AU leaders’ failure to condemn his blatant desire to stay
in office at all costs makes a mockery of the AU’s democracy and defense
aspirations.
Equally damaging to the AU’s desire to spread genuine democracy
across the African continent is its inability—or, rather, unwillingness—to
pressure military rulers, such as Muammar Gadda of Libya, who were
in power before May 1997 (when the OAU decided not to admit military
governments into the Pan-African organization), to establish constitutional
order in their states. While the leadership of the AU Commission claims that
the African Democracy Charter is designed to deal with these challenges,
it is doubtful whether the entry into force of the African Democracy Char-
ter would be enough to compel illiberal governments, such as Muammar
Gadda’s, to liberalize.

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Despite the impressive diplomatic toolkit at its disposal, including
the many seasoned diplomats outside of the AU system upon whom the
organization can call to engage in preventive diplomacy, the AU has been
more effective at “reghting” (Acevedo and Grossman 1996), responding
to crises in full process, than at preventing them. It remained largely silent
and disengaged while Robert Mugabe systematically dismantled democratic
arrangements and measures in his state. It failed openly to criticize authori-
tarian tendencies, ignoring Mugabe’s massive violations of human rights
in Zimbabwe. It refused to discuss the issue in a meaningful way. In 2004,
Africrats issued a comprehensive report, which strongly criticized Mugabe’s
human-rights record. The report contains allegations of government com-
plicity in a wide range of rights abuses, including “the torture and arbitrary
arrests of opposition members of parliament and human rights lawyers.”14
Though the report was discussed by the AU Permanent Representative
Council and the Peace and Security Council, it was kept off the agenda
of heads of state and government because Zimbabwe’s foreign minister
questioned the AU’s legal right to discuss the issue.
Explanation for the AU’s Mixed Performance
The mixed performance of the AU on the question of democracy begs
explanation. Many factors, including institutional permeability, capacity
deciencies of the AU Commission, political context, and political will
have inuenced the performance of the regimes. The anticoup regimes have
worked relatively well so far, in large part because of the mechanical and
legalistic manner in which its sanctions have been applied. Unlike the usual
international organizational practice of exhausting all possible nonconfron-
tational diplomatic measures before suspending a member state, a coup
automatically triggers suspension from the AU. The affected state cannot
rejoin the AU club until elections have been organized and constitutional
order restored. The mechanical operation of this regime has made it less
prone to political manipulation. Its drafters—Africrats with strong techni-
cal and analytical support from the Executive Director of the South African
Institute for Security Studies Jackie Cilliers—felt it would not work well if
its application were left to political leaders. They made a conscious effort to
distance its operation from O/AU political leadership.
The empowerment of the AU Commission to conduct fact-nding
missions without the express consent of member-states has enhanced the
AU’s ability to engage in mediation and electoral observations. The decision
to abandon the by-invitation-only principle meant that target states have
little room to manipulate the composition of missions and their terms of
references. The AU has sent numerous fact-nding missions to crisis states
in Africa without having received an official invitation. It has intervened in
postelection crises without formal invitation by the parties. A prominent
case is the way the AU got involved in the resolution of the 2007 postelection

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU85africaTODAY 562
crisis in Kenya. It appointed the former U.N. Secretary General to help the
feuding parties resolve their differences without the explicit consent of the
ODM and the PNU. The absence of a by-invitation-only norm in Africa is
signicant, as its presence in the other regions, such as the OAS, undermines
mediation efforts (Legler and Tieku 2008).
Similarly, the absence of the by-invitation-only principle has enhanced
the AU Commission’s ability to monitor elections in a relatively impartial
manner. The commission was the sole agency that selected the election-
monitoring teams deployed in Zanzibar in (2005), Lesotho (2005), Zambia,
(2006), Gambia (2006), Seychelles (2006), Uganda (2006), Kenya (2007), and
Ghana (2008 and 2009). The sole discretion the AU had in selecting the
monitors meant that the commission did not have to negotiate the terms of
its mission with any incumbent government. Incumbent governments have
often used the by-invitation principle to determine when observers should be
deployed, who should be included as observers, and when the mission will
have access to electoral institutions. The actors who developed the measures
and pushed for their adoption by the AU accounted for the the depoliticiza-
tion of the process. The specic instruments were developed by Africrats
in political affairs and legal affairs departments, with technical support
from civil-society actors, such as Khabele Matlosa, Research Director of the
Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA).15
The introduction of of the democracy-promotion and defense ideas
into African multilateralism, however, can be traced to the 1960s, when
African jurists demanded an African multilateral instrument to promote
and defend human rights and democracy in Africa during the rst meeting of
the International Commission of Jurists, held in Lagos, Nigeria, from 3 to 7
January 1961 (Umozurike 1983). Similar demands were made at the meeting
of the African Bar Association and the French-speaking African jurists in the
latter half of the 1960s (Nkulu 1997). The new African knowledge networks
such as the EISA and the ISI picked up the issues raised by the African Bar
Association and the Association of African Jurists in the 1990s and pushed
African leaders to adopt them as guiding principle of the OAU. The AU,
which replaced the OAU, adopted them as part of its guiding principles.
Last, the AU has been ineffective in dealing with democratic back-
sliders. The factors that accounted for the poor performance of the AU in
this area are many, but they broadly reect the AU’s technical, political,
and nancial capacities.16 First, the Department of Political Affairs of the
AU Commission (DPA) which is supposed to monitor, report, and ensure
that member states comply with AU democracy commitments, has seri-
ous capacity deciencies. It has neither the required number of staff to do
the job, nor the necessary expertise to measure and assess the level of state
compliance. Only ve full-time professionals at the AU headquarters are
tasked with the responsibility of monitoring the compliance of all fty-
three African states (and Western Sahara). They are required to deal with
all the governance, electoral, and human-rights issues on the second largest
continent in the world. This workload is too much for ve people, however

MU LTIL ATER ALIZ ATIO N OF DE MOCR ACY PRO MOT ION AND DEF ENSE IN AFRI CA86africaTODAY 562
competent they might be, and there is little evidence that the ve people
are necessarily the ttest for the job, with requisite technical skills to opera-
tionalize, concretize, and implement pertinent democracy-promotion and
defense instruments.
The capacity decit has made it difficult for the DPA to develop
benchmarks for measuring member-state compliance. The only major work
it has done since the African Democracy Charter was adopted is to organize
regional conferences on the broader theme of popularizing the charter. These
conferences are largely attended by senior diplomats and government offi-
cials, carefully screened media personalities, academics, and a few high-pro-
le people in the NGO and think-tank communities. Broader civil-society
groups, such as student and trade-union movements, and the larger body
of African citizens, who are supposedly the target of these popularization
conferences, are mostly ignored.
The list of attendees at these conferences points to another reason
why the AU has had difficulty enforcing key aspects of the democracy-
promotion and defense regimes. The DPA, much like the larger AU, is an
elitist organization: it provides little room for ordinary and younger Africans
to participate in its activities and decisions. Only those with lofty titles,
usually people over forty years of age, can have meaningful access to the
organization. In contrast, the more active democracy and human-rights
campaign groups in Africa are dominated by young, energetic people, who
lack the kinds of titles that will make the DPA and the AU work with them.
The leadership of the DPA conveniently blames nancial limitations
for its inability to build broad-based coalition with key stakeholders to
prevent democracy backsliding. There is some validity to this claim, as the
DPA is one of the most nancially challenged units of the AU Commission.
It is a mystery why the department has been unable to attract donor support
to develop institutional capacity to implement what promises to be a more
cost-effective way of promoting democracy in Africa, given Africa donors’
obsessive xation with democracy and its willingness to spend money on
mundane things in various African states in the name of democracy promo-
tion. While the DPA clearly needs nancial support if it were to implement
the AU’s regimes in any meaningful way, its failure to deal with democratic
backsliding goes beyond money. No amount of money can compensate
for the absence of strong leadership at the political level to promote the
democracy-promotion and defense instruments.
The unwillingness of democratic states such as South Africa, Ghana,
and Mali to take the lead role in pushing the Assembly, the Council, and
the PRC to implement the AU democracy provisions, protocols, resolutions,
and agreements has allowed a group of AU political leaders to frustrate
Africrats’ attempts to hold elected officials who are abusing their powers
accountable. The group, whose members include long-serving authoritarian
leaders, such as Gadda of Libya, Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea,
and Bashir of Sudan, have been acting as gatekeepers, undermining Afri-
crats’ attempts to put human-rights violations and abuse of powers on the

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU87africaTODAY 562
agendas of AU summits. They have resisted attempts to introduce liberal
ideas and discourse into Pan-Africanism, claiming that they would deprive
Africans of the chance to develop organic political institutions and under-
mine African cultures. In private, it is not uncommon to hear members of
the group accuse the prodemocracy campaigners of being agents of the West
and neocolonialism. These states’ foreign ministers and ambassadors rallied
behind President Mugabe during the discussion of the report on Zimbabwe.
Some criticized Africrats and, in particular, the Chair of the Commission for
overstepping their powers by compiling the report and submitting it for the
consideration of AU organs. They lobbied the Assembly not to discuss the
2004 report on the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe.
Conclusion
I have examined the origins, nature, and performance of AU democracy
promotion and defense in Africa. I have offered explanations for the AU’s
mixed record on democracy promotion and defense. I have shown that
the AU’s efforts in that sphere have a longer history than those who have
written on the subject have indicated. It is therefore incorrect to suggest
that the AU’s democracy promotion and defense are mere vestiges of the
localization of international norms that originated in the Americas. The
African democracy-promotion and defense regimes are homegrown projects
developed to address distinct African problems. The main drivers of the AU’s
democracy promotion and defense in Africa are transnational knowledge
networks made up of policy think tanks in South Africa and Africrats. The
expert-driven process of AU democracy regime construction has compelled
the organization to take a more legalistic, even constitutionalist, path to
promote and defend democracies in Africa.
The unevenness of the AU’s record includes success in dealing with
coup-makers, and it is even believed that the AU has deterred some army
officers in Africa from overthrowing their governments. The AU has used
mediation and observer missions to defuse preelection tensions and resolve
postelection disputes in many states. However, it has failed to deal with
the authoritarian tendencies of some of its member-states. It has a particu-
larly bad record in preventing elected heads of state of its member states
from abusing their powers. It has been unable to pressure military govern-
ments that existed before the anticoup norm emerged into liberalizing their
political systems. Its poor performance with respect to elected officials who
undermine their countries’ democratic constitutional orders is related to the
dynamics of its membership. The often tense relationship between African
authoritarian leaders, on one hand, and new African democratic states (such
as South Africa, Mali, Ghana, and Cape Verde) and Africrats on the other, is a
major contributing factor to its inability to deal with democratic backsliders.
Long standing military governments such as Libya’s Gadda have become
gatekeepers preventing Africrats and liberal-minded experts embedded in

MU LTIL ATER ALIZ ATIO N OF DE MOCR ACY PRO MOT ION AND DEF ENSE IN AFRI CA88africaTODAY 562
African knowledge networks from promoting and defending democracies
as well as preventing human-rights violations and abuse of powers in AU
member-states.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Dickson Eyoh, Antoinette Handley, Bathseba Opini, Ato Quayson, and reviewers
for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would like to thank Tom Legler for his
collaboration on related work and Winta Tesfai for her research assistance. The usual disclaimers
apply.
NOTES
1. The term localize belongs to Acharya 2004. For those who claim that the OAS inuenced
African leaders to develop and adopt the African Democracy Charter, see Eborah (2007),
McMahon, (2007), and Saungweme (2007).
2. I use O/AU when talking about both the OAU and the AU.
3.
I employ a conventional international relations denition of regimes: sets of implicit or explicit
principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations
converge in a given issue-area. See Krasner (1983) for detailed discussion of regimes.
4. May 26, 2001 is recognized as the ocial date that the AU came into existence because it was
the date that the Constitutive Act of the African Union entered into force. It was exactly thirty
days after the deposit of the instrument of ratication by two-thirds of the member states of
the AU, as provided for in Article 28 of the Constitutive Act.
5.
Regimes are sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures
around which actors’ expectations converge in a given issue-area (Krasner 1983).
6. AHG/DECL.1 (XXXIV).
7. The major conference of the group was organized between 19 and 20 May 1991 in Kampala,
Uganda. It was attended by more than 500 people, including representatives of African
intellectual communities and former African heads of state. It developed continent wide
principles and benchmarks designed to demand certain “standards of behaviour ... from every
government [in Africa] in the interest of common humanity.”
8. Article 2, articles 3 through 6.
9.
Aspirational principles are dicult to enforce. This is why all aspirational principles lack strong
sanction regimes.
10. For discussion of the various elements of the African Democratic Char ter, see Eborah 2007;
McMahon 2007; Saungweme 2007; and Wodzicki 2007.
11. I characterized the electoral victory of Faure Gnassingbe as dubious because most keen
observers of African politics felt that the opposition claims of election irregularities and the
stealing of ballot boxes by the Togolese army in the southern parts of Togo were credible. The
African Union observers who are specialists in phrasing electoral malpractices in nice diplo-
matic jargon characterized it as “reasonably fair,” suggesting that they had serious reservations

TH OMA S KW ASI TIE KU89africaTODAY 562
about the electoral process. The European Union made its position clear by suspending aid to
Togo in support of the opposition.
12. There have been passing references to and few discussions of AU mediation work in writings
of people who study AU security, but proper and detailed analysis of AU mediations and their
complexities are yet to emerge. A good study of this will not only tell us a lot about contempo-
rary African politics, but enhance our understanding of the role of international organization
as third-party mediators.
13. I thank Larry Diamond for pointing out this to me in San Francisco on 29 March 2008.
14. There have been passing references to and few discussions of AU mediation work in writings
of people who study AU security, but proper and detailed analysis of AU mediation and their
complexities are yet to emerge. A good study of this will not only tell us a lot about contempo-
rary African politics, but enhance our understanding of the role of international organization
as third-party mediators.
15.
See http://www.afrol.com/articles/13595; http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=
50560, accessed on 4 April 2008.
16. See decisions EX.CL/DEC.31(III); EX.CL/124(V).
17. I thank one of the reviewers for his or her suggestions.
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Contributors
PETER ARTHUR is associate professor of political science at Dalhousie
University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Queen’s
University, Canada, in 2001. He has published on issues relating to the place
of multilateral trading systems in socioeconomic development, the role and
contribution of small-scale enterprise, and the promotion of good governance
in Africa. He may be contacted by e-mail at: Peter.Arthur@dal.ca.
UWAFIOKUN IDEMUDIA received his Ph.D. from Lancaster University.
He is the coordinator of the African Studies Programme and assistant pro-
fessor of international development and African studies at York University,
Toronto, Canada. His research interests include the political economy of
natural-resource conict and corporate social responsibility in Africa. He
may be contacted by e-mail at: idemudia@yorku.ca.
JEREMY M. RICH is Associate Professor of History at Middle Tennessee
State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He received his Ph.D. in His-
tory from Indiana University in 2002. He is the author of A Workman is
Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary (Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 2002). He co-edited with Carina Ray Navigating Afri-
can Maritime History in the Research in Maritime Studies series published
by Memorial University of Newfoundland Press. He is presently preparing
a book manuscript, Appalachian Ambitions and African Apes: A Mountain
South Intellectual in the Gabonese Rainforest, 1892–1919, a monograph on
the southern autodidact Richard Lynch Garner’s life in southern Gabon and
his rocky career in becoming a well-known expert on Africa in the United
States through becoming a major supplier of primates to museums and zoos.
He may be contacted by e-mail at: jrich@mtsu.edu.
THOMAS KWASI TIEKU teaches international relations and directs the
African Studies Program at the University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D.
from the University of Toronto and won the 2008/9 Ranjini Ghosh Award
for excellence in teaching. His recent works can be found in African Affairs,
African Security Review, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, and Interna-
tional Journal. He has consulted for development organizations, including
the World Bank Group and government agencies. He may be contacted by
e-mail at: tom.tieku@utoronto.ca.

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