Mapping Agency : Comparing Regionalisms in Africa

Mapping Agency provides an empirically rich ’African perspective’ on regionalisms in Sub-Saharan Africa. It adopts an actor-centred approach but departs from a rather simplified understanding of agency as exerting power and instead scrutinizes to what extent actors actually participate in or are excluded from processes of regionalism. The value of this volume derives from the inclusion of historical dimensions, its open multi-actor approach to both formal and informal processes and its comparative perspective within but also beyond Sub-Saharan Africa.

Despite regionalism having developed into a global phenomenon, the European Union (EU) is still more often than not presented as the ’role-model of regionalism’ whose institutional designs and norms are adopted by other regional actors and organizations as part of a rather passive ’downloading process’. Reaching beyond such a Eurocentric perception, Mapping Agency provides an empirically rich ’African perspective’ on regionalisms in Sub-Saharan Africa. It adopts an actor-centred approach but departs from a rather simplified understanding of agency as exerting power and instead scrutinizes to what extent actors actually participate in or are excluded from processes of regionalism. The value of this volume derives from the inclusion of historical dimensions, its open multi-actor approach to both formal and informal processes and its comparative perspective within but also beyond Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters offer a multifaceted picture of agency beyond disciplinary divides where the EU is one actor amongst many and where local, national, regional and global state and non-state actors shape - and sometimes break - processes of regionalisms in Sub-Saharan Africa.