In July 2017, the journal Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Politics in Africa published “The African Union and Article 4(h): Understanding Changing Norms of Sovereignty and Intervention in Africa Through an Integrated Levels-of-Analysis Approach,” an article authored by Dr. Jason Warner.
Click here to learn more about the article, or read the abstract below.
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.
