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Legitimacy and Authority in the Oau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

W. Scott Thompson  and
Richard Bissell
W. Scott Thompson
Affiliation:
International Development Studies, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
Richard Bissell
Affiliation:
International Development Studies, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
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Extract

The notion of a subordinate African international system is widely posited and accepted. Political scientists have debated the means to, requirements for, and amount of political development in African states but have left largely unstudied the question of whether or not the African international system is developing--by which we mean developing a capacity to cope, by adapting to internal and external challenges. Our purpose in this essay is to study the development of the African system by examining the Organization of African Unity (OAU), with particular reference to its early years.

The focus on the OAU is easily justified. As the sole continental body to which each black African state belongs, its own development is a necessary, and almost sufficient, precondition of the system's development, if this system is also to be construed as subordinate in world politics. The possibility that an African system could develop through the creation of some other body seems remote, although it is not logically precluded. One could, of course, argue that an African system would be developing, were the states to continue the present trend of advancing their interests through more or less cohesive subregional or subpolitical groupings, such as the East African community or OCAM; but it would not be an African international system that was developing.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , April 1972 , pp. 17 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1972

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References

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