The relation between the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU) is the most institutionalised interregional relationship in the world. The EU, being a crucial external agent in African regional integration, exports open regionalism as a political norm through different mechanisms to the AU. Based on a qualitative research design with a constructivist theoretical viewpoint that regards regional organisations as interdependent political authorities, the dissertation examines the AU's receptivity to the EU's attempted norm diffusion and explores genuine AU norm import of European promoted regional integration. A document analysis of official EU and AU declarations and legislation in combination with primary data collected via semi-structured interviews with officials at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa offers further insights into the African perspective on regional integration. Out of a variety of EU norm export channels, the study identifies capacity-building in the form of technical and financial assistance as most influential in promoting African regional integration processes. While coercion and political dialogue respectively lead to AU resistance and decoupling alias theatre regionalism, capacity-building and positive conditionality result in institutional incorporation and policy changes. A choice-oriented approach traces this genuine norm import in response to civilian norm diffusion mechanisms back to the external agency of the EU, despite major constraints like the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU and alternative interregional options within the alliance of emerging market economies. Yet, the limited traceable AU institutional and policy reforms reveal the agency of the AU. Norm import cannot be taken for granted; it only occurs when sufficient incentives are offered to the receiving side. Political dialogue is inspirational, but needs to be supplemented with financial and technical assistance to yield genuine norm import. These findings contribute to a better understanding of prospective EU-AU relations and can be used by policy-makers to adjust interregional negotiations like the on-going post-Cotonou consultations.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-61). / From as early as the 15th century when European explorers rounded the tip of Africa in search of trade routes to the East, until the early twentieth century, the West, through the territorial expansion of empire, established itself as the dominant authority within the global political order. Ideologically inspired conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century, Cold War tensions and the process of decolonization, however, resulted in a fundamental change in the nature of this power and global influence, and led to the construction of a new global order that had never existed before. After centuries of being structured around the power of a few European countries with colonial subjects, the post-colonial order was based on formal equality between states, where the notion of territorial expansion and paternal rule were no longer accepted practices. Instead, power within the international system was determined by economic competition and the notion of 'civilization' was replaced by the ideal of economic development, predominantly through the forces of the international capitalist system. The aim of the following chapters is to highlight the dominant discourse of the AngloAmerican liberal tradition within the context of the changing global order, and argue, more specifically, that the process of decolonization can be used as a lens through which changes reflecting how the 'liberal task' was conceived within Anglo-American political thought, can be traced. Furthermore, it aims to show that Anglo-American political philosophy in the postcolonial era can understood as a part of a larger historical process. dating back to the work John Stuart Mill in the early nineteenth century. By contrasting the liberalisms of Mill, the British Idealists and Isaiah Berlin, and their responses to the question of colonial rule, this history sheds light on the fundamental impulses of the liberal tradition between the colonial and post-colonial periods. It is widely known that Mill was employed by the East India Company and that the subject of colonial rule, to some extent, informed his liberalism.

Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis critically analyses the state of regional higher education cooperation with the goal of extrapolating lessons from Europe through the Bologna Process and South America through the MERCOSUR-Educativo project for future regional higher education arrangements broadly and southern Africa specifically. In approaching the issue of regionalisation of higher education, the thesis explores the relationship between regionalisation and globalisation and their respective influences on regional higher education arrangements. International trends, pressures, and tensions in higher education are discussed including scholarship and analysis from diverse sources in order to provide a foundation for the case studies investigated in the research. The discussion includes the tensions between competition and cooperation, centralisation and autonomy, concepts of governance and legitimacy, and the trends of the growing knowledge economy. The thesis also uses regional theory to understand and explain the attempts to develop cooperation in higher education within each region.

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Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-84).

More than ten years after the deployment of the first African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops to Mogadishu, it is imperative that an in-depth analysis is conducted to examine whether the troops have reduced the threat of al-Shabaab in Somalia and the region. This analysis is especially important since AMSIOM is the latest attempt to create a stable and strong central government in Somalia since the fall of Said Barre’s regime in 1991. The extremist group, al-Shabaab, has evolved to become the strongest opponent and obstacle to the creation of the Federal Government of Somalia. The main objective of this dissertation is to challenge the definition of success advocated by AMISOM and its allies regarding their progress in Somalia. This study also aims to analyse the effectiveness of the counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN) operations employed by AMISOM to reduce the threat of al-Shabaab. To analyse the effectiveness of the CT and COIN operations utilised between 2007 and 2016, this paper will contextualise the body-count approach using data collected from African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) reports and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) by the University of Maryland. This study concludes that the weak mandate, which prevented the troops from conducting military offensives, and inadequate troop strength during the first phase of the mission (2007-July 2010), provided al-Shabaab with the right environment to evolve from a terrorist group into an insurgency by securing their support both their domestic and international support. Also, AMISOM’s failure to change their tactics and strategy to account for modifications adapted by al-Shabaab during the second and third phases (July 2010 – May 2012 and June 2012 – December 2016) has contributed to their limited success in Somalia. Although the scope of this study does not discuss all possible reasons for the limited success by AMISOM, it contributes to the larger discussion.

This dissertation presents a case study of the Zambian government's decision to reintroduce planning in 2002, after having abandoned it a decade prior. African countries, and most developing countries, share similar experiences in development planning - something Chimhowu, Hulme, and Munro refer to as the 'rise, fall, and return of planning'. The authors refer to the most recent period in the history of development planning - which became evident in most emerging countries in the late-2000s or 2010s - as the rise of the 'new' development planning. On a broad level, the catalyst for the reintroduction of planning in Zambia was an aid harmonisation process that saw multilateral and bilateral agencies attempt to streamline aid inflows into recipient countries, reduce the associated administrative costs for local officials, and generally improve aid efficacy. More specifically, the case study finds that a particular confluence of economic ideas and political interests left the government of Levy Mwanawasa favourably disposed to the reintroduction of planning. In this sense, the reintroduction of development planning formed part of Mwanawasa's attempts to shore up his legitimacy among the electorate and to build a political coalition to withstand a powerful faction within his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) led by former president Frederick Chiluba. This paper finds that Zambia's Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) 2006-2010 - the first development plan to be implemented since planning was abandoned in 1991 - was heavily influenced by the Poverty Reduction and Strategy Paper (PRSP) that preceded it. The PRSP was completed as a condition of the multilateral debt relief programme in which Zambia was participating at the time. Significantly, the FNDP did not represent a return to the developmentalism that characterised the post-independence era of development planning. Rather, the FNDP represented a continuation of the 'neoliberal populism' introduced with the PRSP. In practice, this resulted in failed attempts to alleviate some of the costs of adjustment - such as poverty and unemployment - through increased social sector spending. In short, the rise of the 'new' development planning in Zambia was not accompanied by a corresponding return of any sort of 'new' developmentalism.

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