This is an indispensable book, thoroughly researched, boldly argued, and written with the clarity, sobriety, and refinement of an aesthete. Daniel Bach is equally adept as storyteller and political investigator or strategy analyst. He charts decades of regionalism in Africa while keeping a perceptive eye on all sorts of foreign influences, and weaves with ease throughout several overlapping and conflicting narratives. Whether he recounts the intersecting histories of colonial politics and postcolonial policies or whether he uncovers the hidden rationales of the various stakeholders, Bach chronicles the hijacking and failure of Africas most daring slogan, shedding unpleasant lights on the genesis and the perversion of ideals.
Clestin Monga, Managing Director,
United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO)
Daniel Bach has long been one of the most original thinkers on Africas international relations. This book is particularly timely in exploring sympathetically, yet with a keen analytical perspective, the various strands of African regionalism and how governments are using them to transform their integration in the global economy.
John Ravenhill, Director, Balsillie School of International Affairs,
Waterloo, Canada
This study combines analytical sophistication with superb empirical knowledge of both the history and contemporary practices of regionalism in Africa. It draws together the many different dimensions of regionalism, from the power of colonial legacies and the ambiguous implications of dense cross-border transactions to the importance of club diplomacy and regime survival. It is the most important study of regionalism in Africa to have appeared in the past decade.
Andrew Hurrell, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations,
Oxford University
Regionalism remains a dominant trend in African international relations even though regional institutions are plagued by severe political and institutional strains. Yet beyond the quest for functional organizations which furnish order, security, and prosperity, there are many other forms of interactions across Africa that analysts and policymakers seldom give serious attention. Daniel Bachs Regionalism in Africa succinctly captures these two competing dimensions in Africas search for cooperative arrangements. The book provides a magisterial account of the travails and triumphs of integration from the colonial period to the present. It is a critical addition to studies of regional integration in Africa and informs comparative analysis of regionalism elsewhere.
Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations,
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Regionalism in Africa
Africa, which was not long ago discarded as a hopeless and irrelevant region, has become a new frontier for global trade, investment and the conduct of international relations.
This book surveys the socio-economic, intellectual and security-related dimensions of African regionalisms since the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that the continent deserves to be considered as a crucible for conceptualising and contextualising the ongoing influence of colonial policies, the emergence of specific integration and security cultures, the spread of cross-border regionalisation processes at the expense of region building, the interplay between territory, space and trans-state networks, and the intrinsic ambivalence of global frontier narratives. This is emphasised through the identification of distinctive threads of regionalism that, by focusing on genealogies, trajectories and ideals, transcend the binary divide between old and new regionalisms. In doing so, the book opens new perspectives not only on Africa in international relations, but also Africas own international relations.
This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of African politics, African history, regionalism, comparative regionalism, and more broadly to international political economy, international relations and global and regional governance.
Daniel C. Bach is CNRS Director of Research at the Emile Durkheim Centre for Comparative Policy and Sociology, Sciences Po Bordeaux.
Routledge studies in African politics and international relations
Edited by Daniel C. Bach, Emile Durkheim Centre for Comparative Politics and Sociology, Sciences Po Bordeaux
1. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond
Edited by Daniel Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo
2. African Agency in International Politics
Edited by William Brown and Sophie Harman
3. The Politics of Elite Corruption in Africa
Roger Tangri and Andrew M. Mwenda
4. Reconstructing the Authoritarian State in Africa
George Klay Kieh, Jr. and Pita Ogaba Agbese
5. Critical Perspectives on African Politics
Liberal interventions, state-building and civil society
Edited by Clive Gabay and Carl Death
6. Homegrown Development in Africa
Reality or illusion?
Chukwumerije Okereke and Patricia Agupusi
7. Real Governance and Practical Norms in Sub-Saharan Africa
The game of the rules
Edited by Tom de Herdt and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
8. African Migrants and Europe
Managing the ultimate frontier
Lorenzo Rinelli
9. Africa in Global International Relations
Emerging approaches to theory and practice
Edited by Paul-Henri Bischoff, Kwesi Aning and Amitav Acharya
10. Regionalism in Africa
Genealogies, institutions and trans-state networks
Daniel C. Bach
Regionalism in Africa
Genealogies, institutions and trans-state networks
Daniel C. Bach
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2016 Daniel C. Bach
The right of Daniel C. Bach to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bach, Daniel, author.
Regionalism in Africa : genealogies, institutions and trans-state networks / Daniel C. Bach.
pages cm. -- (Routledge studies in African politics and international relations)
1. Regionalism--Africa. 2. Africa--Politics and government. I. Title.
JQ1873.5.R43B33 2016
327.6--dc23
2015026428
ISBN: 978-1-138-83988-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73318-0 (ebk)
To Catherine, Emilie and Jrme
