The design of the African Union, and the rapidity with which it is being set up, reflect the tremendous urge towards unity present across Africa. Unity is a faith in Africa, ingrained in popular mythology. There is no other continent in which the popular impulse towards common identification is so strong. For that reason, the architects of the African Union have sought a blueprint inspired by the strongest and most effective model of
The EU is the most successful instance of regional political and economic integration in modern times, and its successes deserve study and, where possible, emulation. But it is worth considering the factors that led to Europe’s success. The EU took half a century to emerge, based upon a major investment of resources by industrialised nations. A substantial part of its political motivation was to guard against the excesses of totalitarianism, which had rampaged over national frontiers in the 1930s and ‘40s: it emerged from member states that were anxious to pool their sovereignty in order to safeguard their freedoms. As industrial nations they also sought bigger markets, and recognised the economic and political disasters that had followed from the protectionist exercises of the 1920s and ‘30s. Of all the exercises in regional integration, the European case is the most ambitious, demanding an extremely expensive bureaucracy, thousands of highly-skilled personnel. Ensuring that the different institutions of the Union work together, co-operating not only with the governments of the member states but also with a range of overlapping institutions such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Western European Union, is a major challenge.
One of the EU’s most onerous requirements is the convergence of the national laws, regulations and financial systems of all its member countries, with complex mechanisms for enforcement and sanctioning of the rules of the Union.
One aspect of the EU model that has not been followed in Africa is the centrality of elections and democratic referenda to approve countries’ accession to the Union and its key components. In all cases in which European countries joined the EU and its precursors, or adopted the single currency, the issue was either a major theme of a democratic multi-party election, or a referendum, or both. The weakness of this democratic component in the AU process is an important issue that warrants careful attention.
Africa had other potential models to follow, from across the globe. These vary from the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is a common security pact, to MERCOSUR in the southern cone of Latin America, which focuses on subregional economic integration including infrastructure. But perhaps the most relevant example is the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has sought subregional integration along a rather different path to the European experience.
ASEAN was created in 1967 and has achieved the elimination of armed conflict between its member states, alongside a convergence of economic policies based on open capitalist economies. Its model is based on state-to-state relations, focusing on security and stability, emphasising non-interference and sovereignty, excluding reference to human rights, democracy and civil society. The basic motivation was that these countries, each of which felt their sovereignty imperilled by either the Communist threat, or secessionist tendencies, or both, would cooperate for mutual interest. The institutional apparatus of ASEAN is far more limited than the ambitious mechanisms established in Europe, with much resting on the personal interaction of heads of states and senior government officials from the member states. As with Europe, ASEAN began with like-minded states, but included a mandate that allowed it to incorporate others over time. In contrast to the European model, the democratic component has been weak, and in some cases non-existent.
The European and south-east Asian models have several elements in common. They were driven by strong interests, political, economic or both. Even without the formal treaties, secretariats and commissions, the countries of the regions would have been drawn closer together out of self-interest. Usually, the formal agreements and commissions have been running behind the political and economic dynamics. The institutional architecture is the icing on a cake that has already been baked.
The African Union, while on paper resembling the EU, is politically more sympathetic to the ASEAN model. It is based on governments whose immediate priority is to preserve their national sovereignty, not to pool it. However, lacking the strong state structures, common security interests, and dynamic economies of south-east Asia, we have to ask whether the ASEAN model is also easily transferable.
In fact, the African Union is an experiment in a wholly new kind of regional union. We might call this an ‘aspirational union’. It is an expression of an end-point, a culmination of a process, rather than a stepping stone.
How might an ‘aspirational blueprint’ work? There is a model and a parallel. The model is a regional union, such as the EU or indeed ASEAN, seen from the viewpoint of its successful completion. Under this model, the importance of the blueprint in the AU Constitutive Act is that it specifies the final destination. But the main challenge is the roadmap.
The parallel is an international human rights convention, which, unlike a trade organisation or a regional union, has weak enforcement mechanisms or none at all. Examples are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These conventions have been signed and ratified by the great majority of the world’s states, but are very rarely respected in full. They cannot be enforced. At most, there are United Nations committees and independent CSO’s that monitor compliance. States can violate them with impunity, but this does not make them useless exercises. Over time, the values and standards expressed in the conventions are ‘domesticated’, as a new generation of citizens (and public servants and political leaders) grow up who believe that they should guide public policy. In short, over decades or generations, they shape new moral thinking. This ‘domestication’ process works through education, monitoring, peer review and civil society activism.
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