Africa's New Peace and Security Architecture is an important contribution to the literature on the African Union (AU) and its flagship activities, dealing primarily with issues of peace and security. There are several novelties about this volume, and it is worth highlighting two as they help to explain the emerging dynamics within the AU's security architecture. First, this book represents a fascinating and welcome paradigm shift in relation to the manner in which epistemic communities both within and outside the AU are shaping its emerging agendas, and thus helps to explain the complex developments that are currently taking place. Pairing AU members of staff with an insider understanding of the fast-paced developments that have occurred within the organisation with outside scholars with far-reaching knowledge about the AU brings depth and new insights to the book. But even more fascinating is the application of regime theory and dynamics as an explanatory framework through which to understand the complexity of multiple issue-areas that the AU's peace and security architecture seeks to deal with.

This book of just eight chapters provides a veritable tour de force of the historical and political processes and developments that have contributed to the ‘heritage and transformation’ of the institution from the Organisation of African Unity to the AU. The book does this by tackling what has generally come to be accepted as the constituent institutions collectively forming this architecture, namely the Peace and Security Council (PSC), the Panel of the Wise, the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) and the African Standby Force (ASF). While there is a lot of enthusiasm about the peace and security architecture, there is confusion about what its constituent parts are. Ulf Engel and Joao Porto's chapter provides useful practical information about this evolving architecture. But even here, one notices continuing confusion and uncertainty about what this architecture really is, when the authors argue that the peace support operation division of the Peace and Security Directorate (PSD) has two divisions, Peace Support Operations (PSO) and Defence and Security (DSD). Nothing could be further from reality. DSD provides analytical frameworks for the department which deals with much narrower issue-areas such as small arms and light weapons, terrorism, and the common African Defence and Security Policy, as well as providing general policy guidance on peace and security issues.

This notwithstanding, this book is a gem of information and critical analysis that is useful for professionals, students and casual readers interested in the AU. The chapter on the Peace and Security Council is particularly well written, and captures the dynamic debates that occur in Council and more critically the challenge of ensuring that the politics of the bureaucratic struggles between the Council and the Commission do not impede the effective functioning of the PSD as a whole.