Choosing Who Intervenes: Regional Organizations in the Global South

• In Event: Regional Organizations: Causes and Consequences

Abstract

The Cold War era saw a dramatic increase in the creation of new regional organizations. During this period, regional organizations in the global south and their member states were among the strongest proponents of a strict interpretation of norms of sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs. However, over the course of several decades, many of these same regional organizations dropped their strict non-intervention stance and became heavily involved in their own member’s internal affairs. Prominent examples include the expansion of the Organization of American States (OAS) into domestic human rights promotion and election monitoring and the Organization of African Unity’s (OAU) codification of a peacekeeping role in civil conflict and later, under a reconstituted African Union (AU), a right for the organization to intervene in member states under “grave circumstances.” Why did states make this dramatic change in their ideas about sovereignty and intervention? Why did they delegate authority to intervene in their own domestic affairs to their regional organizations?

I argue that this delegation of authority by states in the global south, in areas such as human rights, democracy, or civil conflict, does not necessarily reflect acceptance by states in the global south of changes in the nature of sovereignty or the right of the international community to intervene in certain instances. Rather, this delegation reflects a change in strategy in pursuit of the same over-arching goal of limiting intervention. So long as strict norms of sovereignty and non-interference prevailed in the international system, states in the global south used their own regional organizations to advocate for a strict interpretation of this norm and to police and call out violations. However, once shifts in ideas about sovereignty made intervention in certain cases permissible, the decision-making calculus of states changed from whether intervention was acceptable to who was the legitimate and acceptable actor to intervene. States, feeling pressure to consent to international intervention, viewed regional organizations as more legitimate, more accountable, and easier to control than other actors.

In my paper, I examine the expansion of regional organizations of the global south into one area of international interference in domestic affairs: human rights promotion. I use an original dataset on human rights activities by regional organizations in the global south to analyze the broad changes in these organizations. I also use primary sources to produce historical case studies of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African Union (AU). These case studies allow me to establish the causal link between pressure from international actors (the United Nations, powerful Western states, and international NGOs) and the specific decisions on the part of elite policy makers to delegate authority for intervention to their own regional organizations. Rather than an acceptance of international human rights norms, delegating to their own regional organization represented attempts to maintain control over and to protect themselves from international intervention.

Author

• Katherine M Beall, University of California, Berkeley