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Ad hoc coalitions offer flexible responses to Africa's security challenges. This article provides a comparative study of two such groupings: the Multinational Joint Task Force, which has endured, and the G5 Sahel Joint Force, which has collapsed. To explain these divergent outcomes, we begin by assessing and comparing the performance capabilities of these coalitions. We then review the "classic account" of their (under)performance, which focuses on the role of external support in sustaining coalitions. Finally, we use an organized hypocrisy lens to show how external funding only ensures a coalition's sustainability if, firstly, political relations between participating countries and between them and donors align; and secondly, the decoupling between discourse and performance does not become too great. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the Cold War led Western states to review their policies towards Africa. Against this background, the British government under John Major stressed the need for 'new thinking' [...]

France's interventions in Mali and the wider Sahel appear to mark a new departure in French military policy in terms of the approach to multilateralism adopted, the regionalisation of the response, and the levels of violence deployed. Yet how 'new' is this approach, when set against the historical backdrop of French military interventions in Africa? Should it be seen as a modified version – an adaptation – of the new type of multilateral engagement that emerged in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide? Using a historical institutionalist lens, employing the notions of critical junctures, 'layering', and 'drift', this article briefly sets out the unilateral approach that marked French military policy in Africa prior to 1994 before going on to analyse the multilateral approach and associated path-dependent practices that emerged after the Rwandan genocide. Drawing on elite interviews in Europe, the US and Africa, the article shows that, while France's engagement in the Sahel is characterised by an ostensibly novel multilateral approach, it does in fact combine new and old norms, ideas and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge of isolating the impact of Europeanisation is an arduous one, which explains why analysts have preferred complex rather than parsimonious explanations of this phenomenon. Given this predilection among scholars, it is surprising that the concept of regime complexity has not been meaningfully applied in the Europeanisation literature. This article lays some initial groundwork for assessing whether regime complexity has weakened or reinforced the impact of Europeanisation, with reference specifically to French aid. This article begins by highlighting the limited impact of Europeanisation on French assistance in the early decades of European integration. Next, it demonstrates how the climate became more propitious as from the late 1990s following domestic reforms, increased European Union (EU) pressures and the emergence of an aid regime complex. Drawing on elite interviews, it shows how France has become more receptive to Europeanisation, while also using regime complexity to reframe EU norms. Finally, it explains why and how France has resisted Europeanisation and explores the wider significance of the French case and of regime complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the extent to which Great Britain and France have preserved their identities as great powers in the post-colonial era and in the post Cold War period. Commonwealth and francophone summits in the post-colonial era; Summits in the Post Cold War era; Highlights of Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings;.