Warner: The African Union and Article 4(h): Understanding Changing Norms of Sovereignty and Intervention in Africa Through an Integrated Levels-of-Analysis Approach

Jason Warner (U.S. Military Academy - Department of Social Sciences and Combating Terrorism Center) has published The African Union and Article 4(h): Understanding Changing Norms of Sovereignty and Intervention in Africa Through an Integrated Levels-of-Analysis Approach (in Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Politics in Africa: Historical Contexts, Developments, and Dilemmas, Eunice N. Sahle ed., 2017). Here's the abstract:

The emergence of the African Union (AU) in 2002 was notable for a number of reasons, especially its inclusion of Article 4(h)—which explicitly allows for the AU to intervene in member states’ affairs—in its Constitutive Act. What caused the inclusion of the highly progressive Article 4(h), especially given the states’ historical commitments to a norm of non-intervention? This chapter suggests that to understand the normative shifts leading to the inclusion of Article (h) in the AU’s Constitutive Act, one must employ an explicitly multi-causal, integrated levels-of-analysis approach, taking into account inputs that informed Article 4(h)’s development at the systemic, pan-African, regional, statist, and leadership levels of analysis.