Local perceptions of regional interventions: AU and ECOWAS in Burkina Faso and The Gambia

非洲区域组织，如非洲联盟（AU）或西非国家经济共同体（ECOWAS）越来越多地干预成员国内部，以解决冲突和执行区域政治规范。通过这种方式，他们决定性地塑造了非洲国家的政治秩序，从而塑造了许多非洲人今天的生活条件。随着所谓的“地方转向”，和平建设和干预研究强调了了解当地对国际干预的看法的相关性。然而，到目前为止，这些文献在很大程度上忽略了非洲区域组织进行的干预。拟议的研究项目旨在通过审查非洲区域干预措施的当地看法，为研究这些干预措施建立一种新的分析视角。通过两个案例研究，该项目分析了生活在受非洲区域干预影响的社会中的人们如何理解、解释和评估这些干预措施的总体目标、具体实施和结果，以及人们对负责组织的一般知识和期望。这些问题的答案将产生关于非洲区域干预的有效性和合法性的新知识，这些干预应该是重要的，这在学术上和从业者中都是相关的。该项目在三个方面扩展了当前的艺术状态。从概念上讲，它打破了迄今为止对非洲区域组织及其干预政策的自上而下的主导观点，调查了它们的地方、社会观念和经验。从经验上看，该项目侧重于非洲干预者，因此通过增加对非西方区域干预者的观点，扩展了关于当地干预观念的现有文献。在方法上，该项目将政治科学研究问题与民族志启发的多地点实地调查联系起来。在这方面，特别是计划中的合作实地研究以及与初级的布基纳法索/冈比亚学者联合出版研究成果是创新的。

African regional organizations such as the African Union (AU) or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) increasingly intervene within member states in order to resolve conflicts and enforce regional political norms. In this way, they decisively shape the political order in African states and thus the conditions under which many Africans live today. With the so-called ‘local turn’, peacebuilding and intervention research has emphasized the relevance of understanding local perceptions of international interventions. Yet so far this literature has largely ignored those interventions conducted by African regional organizations.The proposed research project aims at establishing a new analytical perspective for studying African regional interventions by scrutinizing their local perceptions. Drawing on two case studies, the project analyses how people living in societies affected by African regional interventions understand, interpret, and evaluate the general aims, concrete implementation and outcomes of these interventions, as well as what kind of general knowledge and expectations people have about the organization(s) responsible. Answers to these questions will generate new knowledge on the effectiveness and legitimacy of African regional interventions where they are supposed to matter, which is of relevance both academically as well as for practitioners. The project extends the current state of the art in three respects. Conceptually, it breaks with the hitherto dominant top-down perspective on African regional organizations and their intervention policies by investigating their local, societal perceptions and experiences. Empirically, the project focuses on African interveners and thus extends the existing literature on local perceptions of interventions by adding a perspective on non-Western, regional interveners. Methodologically, the project links a political science research question with ethnographically inspired multi-sited fieldwork. In this regard, especially the planned cooperative field research as well as the joint publication of research outputs with junior Burkinabe/Gambian academics is innovative.