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

Date01 September 2008
Published date01 September 2008
DOI10.1177/0010836708092839
AuthorBenedikt Franke
Subject MatterArticles
Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association
Vol.43(3): 313–340. © NISA 2008 www.nisanet.org
SAGE Publications,Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
www.sagepublications.com
0010-8367. DOI: 10.1177/0010836708092839
Africa’s Evolving Security Architecture
and the Concept of Multilayered
Security Communities
BENEDIKT FRANKE
ABSTRACT
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 par-
ticular structure of this architecture and its institutional layers are best
described by the constructivist concept of multilayered security com-
munities. 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.
Keywords: African Union (AU); Southern African Development
Community (SADC); Security Architecture;Security Communities
Introduction
Much has been written about collective and cooperative security arrange-
ments since the end of the Cold War. However, most of this literature has
focused on the developed world and its institutions, such as the European
Union or NATO, at the expense of less-developed regions like Africa.
While one reason for this neglect may certainly be that, with the possible
exception of West African efforts in the early 1990s, there was hardly any-
thing worthwhile to report on African security cooperation until a few years
ago, another reason may be that the continent’s emerging patterns of
cooperation fall outside the standard theoretical frameworks.With this art-
icle, I argue that the constructivist concept of multilayered security com-
munities provides a useful lens through which to examine and explore these
patterns and their institutional manifestations. In doing so, I rely on the
works of Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (on security communities)
and Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver (on security complexes), but move
beyond the scope of their concepts by assessing the hitherto largely ignored
potential for cooperation between distinct security communities as well as
the possibility for states to be considered members of more than one secu-
rity community at the same time.
To this purpose, the paper is divided into five parts: The first introduces
the reader to the concept of security communities as formulated by Karl
Deutsch and later adapted by Adler and Barnett. The second part briefly
discusses the history of security cooperation in Africa until the early 1990s
and then points out the catalysts of change that subsequently generated
a renewed search for security through cooperation and integration and thus
led to the present institutional architecture. The third part applies the con-
cept of pluralistic security communities to the continental and regional
levels of this institutional architecture, separately examining the African
Union (for the continental level) and the Southern African Development
Community (for the regional level). The final part discusses the interplay of
these two levels, particularly with respect to common projects such as the
African Standby Force (ASF) or the Continental Early Warning System
(CEWS), and deduces the concept of multilayered security communities.
I conclude by arguing that this concept serves well in explaining the evolu-
tion and structure of Africa’s particular form of interstate security cooper-
ation and, in light of the increasing regionalization of security cooperation
across the globe, may well have applicability beyond the continent.
Security Communities — Theories and Concepts
A security community is generally defined as a group of states integrated to
the point where people have dependable expectations of peaceful change.
Initially proposed by Richard van Wagenen in 1952, it was with the seminal
1957 study by Karl Deutsch and his associates that this concept received its
first in-depth theoretical and empirical treatment. By that time,however, the
systemic theorizing emanating from the Realpolitik of the Cold War had
already come to dominate the academic discourse to such an extent that few
scholars felt attracted to Deutsch’s decidedly sociological concept. Following
the end of the Cold War, Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett resuscitated
the latter, hoping to benefit from the best of Deutsch’s conceptualization
and aiming to correct for its shortcomings by borrowing from four decades
of additional theoretical insights (Adler and Barnett, 1996: 63–98;1998).
Contrary to an alliance, a pluralistic security community is held together
by the notion of collective identity and, more specifically, by shared values
and meanings rather than merely the perceived need to balance a common
threat.According to Deutsch, a transnational or collective identity develops
in the course of sustained interaction between states and, through the
development of dependable behaviour and common norms, eventually
leads to the emergence of a transnational community characterized by
mutual trust and a sense of affiliation. By arguing that a process of inter-
state communication and social learning underpins the pacific relations of
314 COOPERATION AND CONFLICT 43(3)

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