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Accepted Paper:

Collapsing models, shifting interventions, competing experts: the international government of Mali after March 2012  
Isaline Bergamaschi (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Paper short abstract:

This article analyses the continuity and transformations of the “international government” in Mali following the coup d’Etat of March 2012.

Paper long abstract:

This article analyses the continuity and transformations of the "international government" in Mali in the past years, with a focus on the period following the coup d'Etat in March 2012. It argues that, despite the current focus on its regionalist, criminal and religious dimensions, the crisis can also be understood, adopting through a political economy lens, as a crisis of the international aid governance implemented in the 2002s.

Previous aid and development-oriented models, norms, practices (aid efficiency, the Millenium Development Goals, etc.) and professionals are being challenged by the latest events, and the international focus has shifted from poverty reduction to security, military and humanitarian concerns, especially after the occupation of Northern parts and, since January 2013, the French military intervention. In brief, the international government of Mali continues but is under deep transformation.

The article focuses on three main trends of this transformation: first, the adaptation strategies (suspension of aid, change in its modalities, purposes and executing agents) provided by « traditional » donors since the coup ; secondly, the new competition between the latter and rapidly-coming humanitarians (UN agencies and international agencies), which reactivates a divide between experts (aid/development professionals vs emergency workers) but is also leading to a division of labour between them; and finally, the debates and postures in the Malian public space adopted around the meaning and desirability of foreign - French, regional or multilateral - « intervention ».

Panel P070
African experts in the international government of Africa
  Session 1