Partant du constat de l’attention croissante et appuyée des organisations internationales aux thématiques « femmes, paix et sécurité », cette recherche vise à mieux comprendre les modalités concrètes des interventions sur cette thématique ainsi que leurs effets sur les dynamiques sociales et politiques de mobilisation des femmes en contexte d’entre-guerres. La thèse discute la perspective à la fois critique et experte des effets des programmes internationaux en proposant une sociologie des interventions déployées sur la thématique du « genre » au Burundi (1993-2014). En s’appuyant sur une enquête documentaire et de terrain menée au Burundi entre 2012 et 2014, elle contextualise dans une première partie la construction des interventions du point de vue des normes, des pratiques et des relations entre les acteurs. Elle étudie dans une deuxième partie la socialisation des acteurs individuels participant aux interventions aux savoirs diffusés par les programmes internationaux. Dans une troisième partie, elle analyse les processus de politisation dont certains enjeux, pratiques et sujets de l’action collective des femmes font l’objet. La thèse défend une interprétation dynamique du processus de politisation. De par leurs effets problématiques sur la socialisation des acteurs, les interventions déployées sur le genre participent à la politisation de l’action collective des femmes. Cette politisation place les organisations internationales face à une impasse car ces tendances échappent au cadre d’intervention qu’elles peuvent effectivement porter. Paradoxalement, cette impasse entretient plutôt qu’elle n’altère la politisation en cours. / International organisations (IOs) have displayed a growing interests in matters related to “women, peace and security”. This thesis permits to better understand the concrete realities of IOs’ interventions in this domain and their effects on the social and political dynamics of women’s mobilisations in interwar contexts. The thesis uses a sociological lens to approach gender-related interventions taking place in Burundi (1993-2015). In doing so, it goes beyond the critical and expert perspectives of the effects of international programmes. This work is based on a study of official documents and, more importantly, field research carried out in Burundi between 2012 and 2014. The first section of the thesis addresses the construction of gender-related interventions from a normative, practical and relational point of view. The second section studies the ways in which multiple individual intervening actors become socialised with international standards and practices on gender and women’s issues. Finally, the third section analyses the processes of politicisation of certain issues, practices and subjects of women’s collective action. The thesis defends a dynamic interpretation of processes of politicization and argues that, because of problematic effects on the socialisation of actors, interventions on gender contributes to politicise women’s collective action. This politicisation places IOs in a delicate position, as these tendencies are beyond the scope of their intervention. Paradoxically, this position maintains rather than alters the current politicisation.

This thesis addresses the question of who votes in Africa and why. It uses three sets of quantitative data at three different levels to test its claims: an original compilation of national level institutional and socioeconomic indicators for over 700 elections from independence until 2006 compiled by the author; the Afrobarometer survey of almost 50 000 voters in 17 multiparty African regimes; and the first ever purpose-built survey aimed at testing rational choice turnout models in an African case study, which was designed, administered and analysed by the author in 2005 in Durban, South Africa. It uses a mixture of statistical methods to test comprehensively the determinants of voting in pooled and multilevel, logistic and linear, individual and national level models. It finds that the central claims of the rational choice model do not generally apply in African elections. Both the closeness of the election and the costs of participation are not found to be central to the voting calculus of African voters. Instead those citizens who face the highest barriers to participation in the West: the rural, poor and minimally educated, are the citizens who vote most in Africa. The thesis argues that this is because turnout in Africa is mobilised turnout and these are the groups of people targeted by mobilising agents. It further finds that three central institutions of African politics; ethnicity, clientelism and regime type further structure patterns of mobilisation in ways that have been entirely neglected in studies of turnout until now. Finally, it confirms that voting is habitual and that voters are socialised by formative experiences in their youth, especially the nature of the regime that they grow up in and how democratic they think the country is.

La République Centrafricaine, 622 984 km2 pour 4,525 millions d’habitants en 2012, est une ancienne colonie française, indépendante le 13 août 1960. Durant les premières décennies post-indépendance, un État faiblement structuré a été mis en place. Au moment où les efforts conjugués des bailleurs de fonds commençaient à inscrire une nouvelle dynamique de stabilité, la rébellion de la Séléka conduite par Michel Djotodia, a pris le pouvoir le 24 mars 2013. Depuis lors, le pays est confronté à l’une de ses crises majeures, caractérisée par l’intermittence de la violence, la pluralité des acteurs et la complexité des facteurs belligènes. Le défi de sécurité étant un déterminant incompressible, ce travail est construit autour de l’impact irréversiblement positif de la refonte des Forces de défense et de sécurité dans la construction de la paix, de la stabilité et du développement. / The Central African Republic, 622,984 km2 area for 4.525 million inhabitants in 2012, is a former French colony that became independent on August 13, 1960. During the first decades of post-independence, a weakly structured state was established. At the time when the combined efforts of the donors were beginning to introduce a new dynamic of stability, the Séléka rebellion led by Michel Djotodia took power on March 24, 2013. Since then, the country has faced one of its major crisis, characterized by the intermittent violence, the plurality of actors and the complexity of the belligerent factors. The security challenge is an incompressible means, this academic work is built around the positive irreversibly impact of the armed forces and security in the building of peace, stability and development in Central African Republic.