Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa. Global-Local Networks of Power

Callaghy, Thomas, Ronald Kassimir and Robert Latham (eds.). Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa. Global-Local Networks of Power. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 322 pp.

For social scientists interested in international intervention and its impact on African politics in particular and developing countries in general, Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa, edited by Thomas Callaghy, Ronald Kassimir and Robert Latham, is essential reading for two reasons. First, in a collaborative effort, the editors develop an innovative, conceptually rich and analytically sophisticated framework, designated as transboundary formations, to identify and to interpret the fundamental dynamic of international intervention. second, in six first-rate case studies, contributors to the book then use that framework to illustrate the increasingly diverse types of intervention, both benign and malignant, which have occurred within the context of contemporary African politics.

According to Callaghy, Kassimir and Latham, transboundary formations "link global...and local forces through structures, networks, and discourses that have wideranging impact, both benign and malignant, on Africa...." (p. 5) The impact, they contend, is significant: "[a]bove all, [transboundary formations] play a major role in creating, transforming, and destroying forms of order and authority." (p.5) Essentially, then, transboundary formations attempt to explain the fundamental dynamic of international intervention, or what happens when the global collides with the local, and how that collision redefines concrete and local forms of political, economic, and social life.

Most germane to the study of international and comparative politics, but also relevant to post-colonial studies and anthropology, the editors' framework breaks new conceptual and analytical ground in the study of globalization, international intervention, and African politics. From a transboundary formations' perspective, globalization is not merely "[t]he analysis of phenomena and processes...of lightning financial exchanges or widely diffused cultural icons," (p. 5) and can not be properly understood with an exclusive emphasis on the global. Rather, it is the "binary opposition of [the] global/local..., [defined by] claims about what the global and local are..., how they shape one another..., [and produce] specific junctures joining diverse structures, actors, ideas, practices, and institutions with varying ranges in a common social and political frame." (p. 6). In short, through the lens of transboundary formations, globalization is a dialectical process conditioned as much by the particular historical, political and social context of the local as the uniformity of the global.

Transboundary formations also extend and deepen conventional conceptions of international intervention and African politics. With this innovative approach, the concept of international intervention "include[s] not just humanitarian aid, international development work, or military incursions, ...but also imperialism, international economic advisory teams, and the economic penetration of merchants and capitalist practices," (p. 71 ) carried out by "institutions as diverse as states, international organizations, NGOs, transnational corporations, and national and local polities," (p. 7) that shape political processes in Africa.

The study of African politics, under this rubric, reaches beyond conventional inquiries that mostly emphasize the classic distinction between state and society and introduces a more refined differentiation between juridical (legal) and non-juridical (informal, sometimes illegal) institutions and asserts that state and non-state institutions are often embedded within the intersection of the juridical and non-juridical. Thus, "it is only through the juncture points that we can understand how people's everyday lives are or are not ordered, how local security is constructed or ruptured, and what possibilities exist for the representation of identities and interests when the audiences for such claims are often fragmented, opaque, or unaccountable." (p. 16)

Callaghy, Kassimir and Latham's transboundary formations' analytical sophistication matches its conceptual richness. Basically, they reject the great analytical divide between international and comparative politics that separates international and domestic forces, and construct a new and appropriate level of analysis, the too often ignored interstices of the global and the local. While some might wince at the lack of parsimony inherent in such an approach, for those dissatisfied with conventional analytical frameworks, transboundary formations provide a refreshing alternative. Indeed, besides James Mittleman's Globalization Syndrome, it is one of the few works that strives for such conceptual and analytical rigor.

In addition to its conceptual and analytical rigor, Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa is also noteworthy for the skilled use of its approach in six case studies of international intervention, ranging from debt relief to human rights to conflict resolution and the protection of the oil-rich Niger Delta environment to diamonds, arms, and the political economy of local politics in weak states. Collectively, the case studies represent how domestic juridical and non-juridical institutions are enmeshed in global-local networks and how those networks produce authority and order in a given social and political space.