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Africa's Evolving Security Architecture and the Concept of Multilayered Security Communities

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Case Postale 36, Rue de Lausanne 132, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland, b.f.franke{at}gmail.com

Following decades of feeble attempts, Africa's states have recently made great strides in establishing an elaborate security architecture to tackle the continent's many perils. I argue that the emergence and particular structure of this architecture and its institutional layers are best described by the constructivist concept of multilayered security communities. While this concept is based on the original idea of security communities by Karl Deutsch and its later adaptation by Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, it recognizes the increasing prominence of elaborate multi-level security cooperation in the developing world and the difficulties of the original theoretical framework to account therefor. Consequently, it combines security community terminology with notions such as organized complementarity and multi-level governance to do conceptual justice to systems like Africa's decentralized collective security arrangement.

Key Words: African Union (AU) • Southern African Development Community (SADC) • Security Architecture • Security Communities

Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 43, No. 3, 313-340 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0010836708092839


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