Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

African foreign policies form a part of the foreign policies of Southern states and are to be seen on their own terms. This, in a context, where an unproblematic acceptance of the models developed for and out of the experiences of Western states has been the norm. Theory developed for a particular historical and developmental context in Europe or America cannot automatically translate into generalisations for regions of the South. Knowledge needs rather to contribute to a global understanding of a multiplex world of international relations. With an IR often shaped by Western and US concerns, an interpretive approach can help explain how, beyond the West, at a local level, foreign policy agency happens. Apart from considering its own material conditions, the individual African state actor makes foreign policy by drawing on norm promoting agents in specific and generalised policy-making environments. This paper explores norm promoting agents situated within social, political, bureaucratic, intellectual, security and business contexts found at various levels of organised society and that of the ‘peri-state’, the state itself, the formal and informal region, as well as the international.