Germany’s interaction with international intergovernmental organizations in Africa (a case study of the African Union)

The article examines the specific features of Germany’s policy toward international intergovernmental organizations. The African Union is used as a practical case study. The relevance of the stated topic is driven by a decline in the influence of individual European countries—above all, former metropoles—on the African agenda and by the need to create new mechanisms to replace that influence. Germany, as one of the leading economies of the European Union, seeks to occupy an important place in the African agenda. As the theoretical basis of the study, the author proposes Susan Strange’s concept of structural power, based on four main forms of control exercised by European countries over African ones. They cover the basic spheres of interaction between actors: the political and security sphere, the economic sphere, and the humanitarian sphere. Originally, the concept covered the policy of exclusively state actors, but it was later expanded to non-state actors as well, including international organizations, NGOs, transnational corporations, and others. It is precisely these institutions that exert the greatest influence on Berlin’s subsequent voting in external bodies such as the IMF. The study’s aim is presented as demonstrating that Germany is striving not for altruistic assistance to African countries in ensuring security and economic stability, but for solving its own foreign policy tasks. Conclusions are drawn for each of the four forms of control; general traits that are characteristic of Germany’s behavioral model in the process of exercising structural power toward the African Union are also identified.