Impact of Parliamentary Diplomacy in Africa

Brief description of the project

Diplomacy in the Post World War II world has become much more complex with need for parliaments to engage in multilateral negotiations beyond bilateral contexts (Stavridis & Jančić, 2016). In this sense, as noted by the Baleka Mbete, the then Speaker of the South African Parliament, parliamentary diplomacy is the ‘continuation of engagement on national issues’ (Stavridis & Jančić, 2016, p. 106). With parliamentary diplomacy, there is a transfer of policy making powers beyond the borders of a state and a greater involvement of parliamentarians in affairs that go beyond the national borders; this is seen in the case of the European Parliament. At the heart of parliamentary diplomacy is the increased globalisation of parliamentary activities, which goes along with the increased interdependence between states in economic and political activities (Janćic, 2015). The overarching research question of this research is related to the impact of parliamentary diplomacy on the foreign policy decision making in Africa through the Pan African Parliament. The hypothesis is that Pan African Parliament is not relevant enough at this point in time to have a significant impact on foreign policy decision-making in Africa.

Background and rationale for the project

The case for increased parliamentary diplomacy is made on the basis that parliamentary institutions are no longer merely engaged in domestic policy making, but are also increasingly a part of the policy making in international affairs at least in three ways: influencing foreign policy through national parliaments; establishing and empowering parliaments as representative bodies of international and organisations; and importantly for this research, by conducting parallel diplomatic relations or parliamentary diplomacy (Malamud & Stavridis, 2016). The area of parliamentary diplomacy is one of the least researched among the three ways mentioned here. One of the reasons for the lack of adequate interest or research on parliamentary diplomacy, especially in the African context may be that some commentators and scholars consider parliamentary diplomacy to be just another form of parliamentary ‘tourism’ with little actual work done under this head (Malamud & Stavridis, 2016, p. 106). If true, then this role of the Pan African Parliament contrasts with the way the European Parliament influences foreign policy in Europe (Janćic,, 2017). The role played by the Pan African Parliament may also not be in consonance with the growing literature on parliamentary diplomacy which sees an increased space for regional parliaments in foreign policy making (Janćic,, 2017). This creates a background for further research in this area.

Literature review

As parliamentary diplomacy becomes more relevant in the way foreign policy is being driven, and examples of such diplomacy become more prominent with the work done in the Europe and Americas, there is an argument made that African countries too must learn from the experience of the others and adopt measures to inculcate parliamentary diplomacy within their parliamentary processes in a more effective manner (Ahmed, 2009). The argument that regional parliaments have something to learn and imbibe in the area of parliamentary diplomacy from those who have already adopted has been made for some time (Stavridis,, 2006). In African context, the critique is that there is a little constructive role played by the Pan African parliament and that it is irrelevant to actual policy making (Malamud & Stavridis, 2016, p. 106). However, considering the role that has been played in European diplomacy by the European Parliament and the possibility for the Pan African Parliament to play a similar role in Africa, it begs the question whether it would be true to consider parliamentary diplomacy as irrelevant. The Pan African Parliament was founded in 2004 and today it is the parliamentary organ of the 53-member state African Union, with exclusively advisory and deliberative powers related to, inter alia, harmonising national legislation (Malamud & Stavridis, 2016). On paper, Pan African Parliament may seem similar to the European Parliament, however, it has been argued that the Pan African Parliament lacks many of the competences that characterise the European Parliament; for instance, it does not have powers to shape national decisions, or even to determine the AU budget and it has a weak and ambiguous (Malamud & Stavridis, 2016). In this regard, it is also argued that the Pan African Parliament had the mandate to legislate for the entire African region with regard to certain areas, but it has largely failed to deliver on this mandate due to historical and contemporary reasons (Mngomezulu, 2018). Masters and Nganje (2017) note that there is potential to develop parliamentary diplomacy more effectively in the African context as also seen by the experience of the South African Parliament, which has developed its parliamentary diplomacy even by involving more international relations programme. Pan African Parliament has the potential to be involved more in foreign policy development because of the link between regionalism and foreign policy making (Babarinde, 2018).

In Europe, parliamentary diplomacy works in a different way with the European Parliament itself emerging as an important player in European diplomacy, although it is still not as powerful as the executive organs of the European Union like the European Commission (Janćic,, 2017, p. 19). Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to presume that the European Parliament does not play an important role in external policy making as is suggested by the role it has played formally and informally in outlawing terrorism, giving approval to international agreements on trade and investment, legislation on data privacy and data protection, and even in the development of the strategic partnerships of the European Union (Janćic,, 2017).

Expected research contribution / Significance of the research

There are two reasons that are driving this research: the first is that there is a paucity of literature on this subject matter. Since 2000, there admittedly has been development of literature in the field of parliamentary diplomacy and some work has also been done in the African context but, there is little or no work on the case of a Pan African Parliament based on the comparative literature on European Parliament. Therefore, the first expected research contribution of this research study is that it will add to the academic understanding on parliamentary diplomacy within the African context and take the case of a Pan African Parliament as the core of the contribution. The other reason for undertaking this research study is to identify its main differences between parliamentary diplomacy and traditional parliamentary cooperation so that a case for the former can be made out on the basis of the differences from traditional parliamentary cooperation and the advantages that are offered by parliamentary diplomacy by taking the comparative case study of the European Parliament. Therefore, the second possible contribution of this study is to add to the knowledge on the advantages of parliamentary diplomacy in the context of the African case study. It may be noted that there is a difference between actual parliamentary activity and the theory, where the former may be more developed in practice as compared to the latter (Stavridis,, 2006; Stavridis & Jančić, 2016). Therefore, through the study of reports and other primary material related to government practice on parliamentary diplomacy, this research study hopes to make contribution to the existing theory on parliamentary diplomacy in Africa by exploring the government practices related to the same.

Aims and objectives

This research aims to create a more in-depth academic understanding of parliamentary diplomacy and its application to the African context through the establishment of the Pan African Parliament. The work of the Pan African Parliament and its comparison with the European Parliament is explored and analysed in the light of the developing theory on parliamentary diplomacy. The objectives of the research are as follows:

To conduct an in-depth research on the area of parliamentary diplomacy theory;

To consider the practice of parliamentary diplomacy through the case study of the Pan African Parliament;

To note the differences between the theory and practice of the parliamentary diplomacy in Africa; and

To suggest measures for bringing the practice of parliamentary diplomacy in African through the Pan African Parliament closer to the theory by comparison with the practices of the European Parliament in the same area.

Proposed mode of research

In order to explore this area, a case study approach is adopted with the focus on the Pan African Parliament. Case study relates to the exploration and study of the characteristics of a single individual unit; in this case this single homogenous unit is the Pan African Parliament and the European Parliament (Bryman & Bell, 2015). The purpose of the case study method is to achieve in-depth information of the unit (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Case study methods are useful in international relations research because of the considerable advantages that case study methods have in studying complex phenomena (Bennett & Elman, 2007). Indeed, case studies have been used in some seminal studies in IR field, including Randall Schweller’s 2006 book on Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Schweller, 2006); and Stephen Walt’s 1996 book Revolution and War (Walt, 1996). Schweller (2006) used the case study method to explore the reasons why states often do not balance in response to dangerous aggressors through case analyses of Argentina and Brazil in the War of the Triple Alliance of 1864 to 1870, and Britain and France between the world wars. Walt (1996) used the method to study why states that undergo a revolution often end up in other revolutions or at war with their neighbours. Based on the approach taken by others in the field, the case study approach is adopted in this research also to understand the way parliamentary diplomacy functions in specific contexts (in this case Pan African Parliament) and how these practices may vary from theory by taking the case study of the European Parliament. The case study method is one of the methods that can be adopted well within a qualitative research framework (Myers, 2013) and has been found to be suitable in IR research (Bennett & Elman, 2007), thereby justifying its employment in this research study as well. Both primary and secondary data will be collected by the researcher for this study. Secondary data will be collected from books, peer reviewed journals and relevant government reports. Primary data will be collected through administering of questionnaires to Pan African Parliament honourables residing in the EAC countries. Data collected shall be analysed by applying a thematic approach due to the potential subjective nature of the qualitative data that will be collected. The utility of the thematic analysis method is that it allows the researcher to organise and analyse vast quantities of qualitative data by organising the data into specific themes that are recurrent in the data (Bearman & Dawson, 2013, p. 252). As the study involves both the primary as well as secondary data, it can be expected that the data will be copious and subjective in nature. Organising into themes will help to collate the primary and secondary data as well.

Proposed methodology

The proposed methodology for this research would be guided by the qualitative research approach, which is focused on theory building (Opoku, Ahmed, & Akotia, 2016). As this is a higher level research at doctoral level on a subject matter on which there are gaps at the present, the qualitative research method would be appropriate as it would allow the researcher to apply a subjective qualitative approach for addressing these gaps (Collis & Hussey, 2009). As the preliminary literature review has indicated, there are gaps in the current literature on parliamentary diplomacy and its impact on foreign policy decision-making in Africa. The literature review has also indicated that the area of research involves a number of narratives and concepts that can be best addressed with the qualitative method. A case for qualitative research in the present subject of research is made out because this method is ideal where more insight into a given area of research is needed (Creswell, 2013). A qualitative method is not rigid like the quantitative method, it does not require fixed hypotheses to be formulated by the researcher nor does it demand the adherence to any pre-specified methods that have to be followed by the researcher (Willis & Jost, 2007). In research studies like the present one, where the researcher is required to go through layers of information and explore multiple and contrasting narratives, a quantitative research method does not allow the researcher to explore or analyse such multi-layered information; the strength of the qualitative research method is that it allows the researcher to explore and analyse such areas of research (Walliman, 2015). The research approach which will allow the researcher to relate the research to theory may be chosen between the inductive and deductive methods (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Research approach is essential for the researcher to narrow the broad assumptions about the research topic that are inadvertently made in the initial stages of the research process so that the researcher can formulate methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation as they move along the research process (Creswell, 2013). In this case, a deductive approach is chosen because the researcher is first identifying a theory in the parliamentary diplomacy field with reference to an existing European Parliament (Collis & Hussey, 2009). The deductive approach will see the researcher move from general theory applicable to the research context, to the specific context of the case study, which is the Pan African Parliament (Perrin, 2015). An inductive approach, which first observes some phenomenon and then relates it to a general theory, is not appropriate in this research because, the theory is already identified (Perrin, 2015).

Another advantage of employing the qualitative research method is that it allows the researcher to adopt an interpretative approach to the data collected and analysed. Primarily, there are four research philosophies: Realism, Positivism, Pragmatism, and Interpretivism. The researcher employs the research philosophy that would be the most impactful in terms of research design which is underpinned by the research philosophy (Wilson, 2014). The research philosophy is closely linked to whether the researcher adopts the qualitative, quantitative or mixed research design approach (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012). If the researcher chooses to augment empirical knowledge by collection of primary data, then Positivism or Realism may be adopted with a quantitative approach; but where the researcher explores an area that involves multiple narratives and subjective data Interpretivism with qualitative method may be more appropriate (Bashir & Marudhar, 2018). Based on the ontology, epistemology and axiology, a specific research philosophy may be adopted by the researcher. Ontology includes objectivism and subjectivism; objectivism relates to existence of social entities external to the social actors, and subjectivism relates to the social phenomenon created from the beliefs and perspectives of the social actors. Epistemology gauges the scope of knowledge through critical, interpretivist, or positivist approaches (Walliman, 2015). Axiology relates to the philosophy of values in research. In this research study, the Interpretivism approach is chosen based on the subject matter of research and the purpose of the researcher, which is to explore the case of parliamentary diplomacy in the context of a Pan African Parliament (Brown, 2010). The purpose of applying this methodology is to gain more insight into the role played by the Pan African Parliament and compare it to the European Parliament. The data collected from the honourables in the Pan African Parliament will provide a critical insight into the area and help to consider the ways in which the practices of the parliamentary diplomacy in the region coincides or differs from the theory especially on the basis of the working of the European Parliament.

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