The African union and procedural authority in Africa: A case study of heterarchic relationality in dense institutional settings

How does African Union authority become actionable across differentiated institutional sites? This article develops heterarchic (varied hierarchical) relationality to theorise the procedural authority of the AU through variable ordering among continental institutions, sovereign states, regional organisations and external actors. Authority dispersion, variable ranking, procedural co-production and provisional stabilisation are the empirical markers under study. Responses to coup d’états, African peace operations and efforts toward the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area are scrutinised to trace how procedures change as continental competence intersects with various elements. These include subregional authority, member-state agency, nationally controlled capabilities and international resources. The comparison reveals distinct configurations at play within different procedures alongside variable hierarchical ordering. African continental governance thereby provides a basis for theorising authority as a relational and procedural undertaking in which the significance of formal competence, political agency and material capability changes across successive phases of collective action.