Undoing Coups. Antonia Witt

       Introduction

      Addis Ababa, 27 January 2014. The Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) gathers for its 415th meeting. The Council expresses its ‘appreciation to the Malagasy people, as well as to all political actors and institutions of the country, for the smooth and peaceful conduct of the elections and the completion of the transition process’ (AU PSC 2014a: 1). These words marked the end of almost five years of international efforts to re-establish ‘constitutional order’ in Madagascar. The reason for such an intervention was a political crisis that culminated in the ouster of President Marc Ravalomanana in early 2009. This intervention involved numerous rounds of negotiations held in Antananarivo, Maputo, Addis Ababa, Pretoria, and the Seychelles, several negotiated agreements, the deployment of special envoys from more than five international and regional organizations, an international contact group, targeted economic sanctions, capacity-building for local mediators, and more than 800 international election observers to accompany transitional elections. At its end, the PSC registered that ‘constitutional order’ was successfully restored. All this took place in the context of the AU’s anti-coup norm, which mandates the continental organization to condemn and ‘undo’ coups, called ‘unconstitutional changes of government’ in the AU’s language.

      Antananarivo, around the same time. A group of Malagasy activists gathers on a weekend in one of the crowded quartiers of Madagascar’s capital. The group wants to collect signatures in support of the AU’s Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance so that the newly elected Malagasy president will finally sign and ratify it. In its preamble, the Charter is defined as an instrument to nurture, strengthen, and consolidate democracy on the African continent (AU 2007). It was adopted in 2007 in order to give the AU’s anti-coup norm legal clout. Asked how the campaign is going, the activists respond with frustration:

      It is very tedious. Nobody wants to sign. The majority of the passers-by are very suspicious. They say that signing the Charter would mean that Malagasies will lose their right to stage a coup, to get rid of our government if we don’t want it anymore.¹

      What for some was the successful re-establishment of constitutional order and the result of Malagasies’ ownership for others felt like an external imposition that robbed Malagasy citizens of the opportunity to actually decide how and by whom they want to be governed, so they would rather avoid a similar experience in the future.

      This book traces the rise and consequences of the AU’s anti-coup norm based on an in-depth reconstruction of the post-coup intervention in Madagascar. By answering the question of what it actually means to return a country to constitutional order, I show that African interventions to ‘undo’ coups are an effective form of transnational order-making that reconfigure power relations in and beyond the state concerned. This is not only relevant for scholars interested in understanding the domestic effects of the norms and policies of regional organizations, and those of the AU specifically; it also holds valuable insights for International Relations (IR) scholars more generally who are interested in the changing fabric of the international, in particular the rising authority of international organizations and how this affects politics within states.

      Togo (2005), Mauritania (2005 and 2008), Guinea (2008), Niger (2010), Mali (2012), Guinea-Bissau (2012), Egypt (2013), the Central African Republic (2013), Burkina Faso (2014), The Gambia (2016), and the Sudan (2019). Madagascar is not the only country that experienced what the AU calls unconstitutional changes of government. Since its establishment in 2004, the AU PSC has condemned unconstitutional changes of government in all these countries, followed by concerted international efforts to re-establish constitutional order. As in Madagascar, reactions to these instances usually included public condemnations, the suspension of the respective country from the AU, special envoys, international contact groups to coordinate the various reactions, negotiations over power-sharing agreements and inclusive governments, sanctions against putschists, national dialogues with civil society groups, and financial and technical support to organize transitional elections (see Engel 2012a; Witt 2012a; Vandeginste 2013; Nathan 2017). Apart from the AU, such efforts involved donor countries and other international and African subregional organizations, such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the case of Madagascar. All these efforts are signs of the AU’s proclaimed ‘zero tolerance’ against unconstitutional changes of government (AU Assembly 2010a). They underline that the anti-coup norm is not merely a declaration on paper; rather, it has given rise to a variety of intervention practices that – as this book demonstrates – come with tangible consequences.

      However, in contrast to this political and practical relevance, scholarship has until today paid little attention to these developments. And in the few existing studies, scholars have tended to view the continental outlawing of coups as an example of regional norm diffusion or democracy promotion by regional organizations such as the AU (Tieku 2009; Leininger 2014; Souaré 2014). This forms part of a more general and burgeoning research agenda on the role of regional organizations in promoting and diffusing norms and policies in their member states (see, for instance, Pevehouse 2005; Cooper & Legler 2006; Börzel & van Hüllen 2015). But so far, this scholarship has mainly been concerned with determining how consistently and effectively the AU has invoked its anti-coup norm – as seen from a top-down, institutionalist perspective. What has divided this nascent scholarship so far is the question of what effects these reactions have. ‘Afro-optimists’, on the one hand, see the regular application of the anti-coup norm as evidence for the AU’s functioning as a regional norm entrepreneur and the AU as playing an ever-greater role in the successful promotion of democratic norms in its member states (Souaré 2014; Tieku 2016: 138). To ‘Afro-pessimists’, on the other hand, these developments are mere window dressing, designed mainly to appease international donors. As far as they are concerned, therefore, all the AU will do is reinforce existing regimes and help tighten incumbent elites’ grip on power (Sturman 2008; Omorogbe 2011). At a more global level too, scholars see regional anti-coup norms either as an instrument for promoting democracy (Powell 2014: 223; Shannon et al. 2015) or as a measure to restore authoritarianism (Tansey 2017). Indeed, a brief look at those countries in which constitutional order has been restored under the AU’s anti-coup policy appears to suggest that the promised land of more democracy is yet to come. Madagascar, as will be elaborated in this book, at first sight seems to confirm this impression – as also reflected in the above short scenery from the streets of Antananarivo.

      However, this book challenges both accounts, those of Afro-optimists and those of Afro-pessimists, and proposes an innovative perspective for understanding how AU norms are implemented and what they do on the ground, beyond the binary of success and failure. Instead of starting with predefined assumptions on what efforts to re-establish constitutional order ought – but often fail – to do, I suggest an open investigation of what such efforts actually do. This also requires taking a different perspective on what they are. The book therefore offers a thorough empirical reconstruction of the actual processes and practices involved in returning a country to constitutional order, but also proposes a more general shift in the conceptual vantage point from which to do so. In the conclusion, I also integrate the insights generated from the case of Madagascar into a bigger picture of post-coup interventions in Africa, arguing that there is indeed evidence for viewing the effects of post-coup intervention in Madagascar as reflecting a much broader pattern of transnational order-making through the AU’s anti-coup norm.

      Return to what?

      On 12 July 2000, African heads of state and government took a far-reaching decision. In Lomé, the 36th summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the AU’s predecessor, ended with the observation that ‘coups