African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on March 12, 2007
African Affairs 2007 106(423):253-279; doi:10.1093/afraf/adm001
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From non-intervention to non-indifference: the origins and development of the African Union's security culture
Paul D. Williams (pauldw{at}gwu.edu) is associate professor at the University of Warwick and visiting associate professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
This article employs the concepts of security culture and norm localization to explore some of the cultural dimensions of the African Union's (AU) security policies. After providing an overview of constructivist accounts of norm socialization in international relations, I use these insights to analyse the origins and development of the AU's security culture. The final two sections explore the ongoing process of norm localization in relation to the two most recent tenets of the AU's security culture: intolerance of unconstitutional changes of government and the responsibility to protect principle. An awareness of the uneven and contested nature of this process helps account for the fact that although these two transnational norms have been institutionalized in the AU Charter and endorsed by the United Nations, they have been internalized unevenly by the AU's member states. External advocates of these two norms would thus do well to help the continent's norm entrepreneurs build congruence between these norms and the AU's security culture.