How Do People on the Ground Perceive Interventions?

In conversation with Antonia Witt and Sophia Birchinger

Antonia Witt

Dr. Antonia Witt is Head of the Research Group African Intervention Politics at PRIF’s Research Department Glocal Junctions.

Sophia Birchinger

Sophia Birchinger is a Researcher and Doctoral Candidate in the Research Department Glocal Junctions and the Research Group African Intervention Politics.

1. In your project you examined local perceptions of the AU and ECOWAS interventions in Burkina Faso and The Gambia. Both organizations strive to act in a people-centered manner. For example, both try to ensure that there is local ownership of the interventions and that the latter are inclusive. Are the organizations successful in meeting this objective?

   Antonia Witt: In this form, they do not succeed. We have seen that research participants perceive AU and ECOWAS as organizations that are very strongly oriented towards the interests of heads of state. In francophone West Africa, the term “syndicats des chefs d’État” – meaning the unions of the heads of state – is very widespread. This dominant image of the organizations has not changed much as a result of the intervention experiences.

2. And why is that?

   Sophia Birchinger: To begin with, people experience the interventions as being very far removed from their everyday lives and associate them primarily with negotiations between presidents or attempts at mediation at a political level. However, it is also true that locally there is an appreciation for the fact that the organizations intervene in crisis situations and restore “normal life,” as it is often called.

   Antonia Witt: The primary goals of the interventions are focused on restoring the constitutional order. Accordingly, the interveners’ practices are also geared towards balancing power between the countries’ elites. But we can show in our research that the interventions can still have very positive effects on the lives of those not directly involved. That is what this appreciation is based on.

3. How did you come to investigate local perceptions of these interventions by African actors? What was the research gap here?

   Antonia Witt: The background is, first of all, that African regional organizations such as the AU and ECOWAS are increasingly sending peace missions to their member states. This reflects global power shifts and the increasingly important role of regional organizations in international peacekeeping.

   However, intervention research continues to focus heavily on the United Nations or Western interveners. This is particularly visible in research on the local effects and societal reactions in countries where interventions take place. There is a large strand of research on this. But this question has not been asked for African interventions. The reason for this is a mostly implicit but very widespread assumption that African interveners have legitimacy per se, simply because they are African, and that certain legitimacy problems of interventions do not even arise. This idea paints a problematic picture that depoliticizes African interventions and African actors as a whole. That is why we wanted to investigate this question more closely.

4. How did you go about doing this?

   Antonia Witt: We investigated two cases in which AU and ECOWAS intervened in reaction to political crises: in Burkina Faso 2014/15 and in The Gambia 2016/17. In Burkina Faso only non-military means were used, such as mediations, negotiations, and also the threat of sanctions. In Gambia these non-military means were supplemented by a military mission that is still stationed in the country today. The selection of these two cases also allowed us to capture the range of different tools that African interveners use to respond to such situations.

   „This collaborative approach was particularly important to bring together different perspectives in the research team, to ask different questions, and to see more aspects of the complex interventions and their local attribution of meaning.“

   Sophia Birchinger

   Sophia Birchinger: In both countries, we followed an ethnographic approach, which means longer research phases with participant observation. We conducted 21 focus groups and around 150 interviews. We spoke not only with elite actors but also with ordinary citizens, including those from marginalized districts and rural areas. We also followed a collaborative research approach, carrying out the entire research process together in an international team with researchers from both countries. This collaboration developed everything, from the operationalization of the research question and the approach to the specific case, through to the implementation of focus groups and interviews, through to data analysis. This also resulted in joint publications. This collaborative approach was particularly important to bring together different perspectives in the research team, to ask different questions, and to see more aspects of the complex interventions and their local attribution of meaning.

5. Part of your collaborative approach also included joint events to discuss your findings with various stakeholders in the countries you researched. What role does this form of knowledge transfer play for you?

   Antonia Witt: This research is very much based on the interpretations and experiences of the research participants. We explicitly did not want to work with an extractivist approach that “sucks out” knowledge and processes it solely for academic purposes. On the contrary, it was important to us to share back the interpretation we draw from what was shared with us, because it is also part of the societal processing that takes place in the countries. Moreover, the research participants themselves have repeatedly asked us to come back so that they can learn about the results, and they have explicitly requested that we also talk about them with AU and ECOWAS actors. Last summer, we therefore held various consultation and exchange events with ECOWAS officials and other political actors in Abuja: e.g. representatives of international donors, ECOWAS partners, civil society actors and young leaders. We are therefore talking about two very different formats of knowledge transfer: on the one hand, discussions with the research participants and passing back our interpretations, and on the other hand, the targeted communication of recommendations for action to political decision-makers. In addition to the actors in the region, this also included ministries in Germany.

   Sophia Birchinger: The discussion of the results with the research participants was particularly valuable and an important part of the research process, because the observations from these events could also be taken into account in later publications.

6. What were your experiences at these events when you presented your research findings? What were the differences between the events with research participants and those with organizational representatives?

   Sophia Birchinger: Firstly, all participants in the discussion, whether citizens or decision-makers, confirmed the relevance of our research, because on the one hand it made intervention experiences, perspectives, and conflicts more visible, while on the other hand generated recommendations for action on how these conflicts can at least be kept to a minimum in the future.

   „We explicitly did not want to work with an extractivist approach that “sucks out” knowledge and processes it solely for academic purposes.“

   Antonia Witt

   Antonia Witt: The discussions confirmed what we have already seen in our research, namely that there are very far-reaching expectations of what ECOWAS should do. On the other hand, we see that ECOWAS is increasingly recognizing the need to open up to people and societal attitudes. But at the same time, there is a much stronger emphasis on the limits of what the organization can actually do, due to its mandate and intergovernmental nature. This is a much more pragmatic view and is precisely at the core of what we are investigating. Societally, there are very high expectations for fundamental transformations and simply a better life. The regional organizations promise to deliver, but are only able to do so to a limited extent. Interestingly, we also play different roles in the events. In knowledge transfer with research participants, we tend to be the ones who observe, while with the decision-makers we take on the role of spokespeople. This is where our collaborative approach comes into play again: our diverse research team made it feel much more legitimate to take on this spokesperson role, because together we can always bring in different perspectives at the same time.

7. Were you also able to take away new ideas for your research?

   Antonia Witt: Actually, it is a sort of research cycle. Both from the discussions with political decisionmakers and from the ones with research participants, we identify new questions for subsequent research projects.

   Sophia Birchinger: For example, my doctoral project on perceptions of coercion in interventions, on which I am currently working, is based on impulses that we received during the exchange on site.

   Antonia Witt: A lot has happened in the region since our research began: the coups in West Africa, including in Burkina Faso, the societal backlash experienced by ECOWAS in particular, and the withdrawal of the French-led Operation Barkhane and the UN mission from the Sahel region. As a result, the importance of local perceptions has once again become much more present. It would now be interesting to see how certain narratives have become established, including the question of the role played by external actors. These too are questions that we took away from the discussions of the results, because they took place at a time when both a new crisis and a new ECOWAS intervention were already taking place.

   Another starting point for future research is the role of the local representations of the AU and ECOWAS. Strengthening them was one of the recommendations for action that we developed from the project. Hilda Milka Koiyer is now investigating this in a sub-project of the ANCIP network based at PRIF. (ewa)