Short Abstract

This panel will consider how the shifting contemporary international order is reshaping political settlements, peace agreements and other externally-backed interventions in Africa’s conflict affected states – and how African states are responding in pursuit of their own visions of order.

Long Abstract

How are states being re-made in Africa’s conflict zones in 2027 and beyond?

The 1990s and early 2000s were the heyday of Western interventionism in Africa. Western states and multilateral institutions were the dominant external interveners in Africa’s conflict-affected states, ostensibly in pursuit of a liberal vision of order. However, since the 2010s a more diverse set of non-Western actors have gained increasing prominence in many of the same conflicts.

Through this panel we seek to consider how the shifting contemporary international order is reshaping political settlements, peace agreements and other externally-backed interventions in Africa. We especially invite papers focusing on empirical case studies in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, where both foreign interventions and domestic politics are changing dramatically. We want to explore how, looking forward, external interventions are theorised and enacted in practice, and what this means for state-making, sovereignty and visions of ‘order’ being pursued in these states. Equally, we are interested in how these external interventions are being appropriated by African states and actors in pursuit of their own political visions.

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