Paper Titles & Abstracts

Transforming as historically rooted and asymmetric a relationship as that of the EU and Africa (ACP) is a complicated task. It entails not only the reconstitution of a material framework for interaction, but also change at the ideational level. The material and ideational are in effect intertwined, since long held and often dated perceptions remain a significant barrier to facilitating the process of change. Yet change has occurred, most notably with the launch of the 2007 Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), an explicitly political framework which broadens and deepens areas of cooperation between the sides.This paper will examine the process of effecting this change by assessing the microfoundational level - the individual -- and the extent to which individual agency can influence an asymmetric structure. Using a cognitive approach which emphasises perceptions, it is argued that dialogue can provide officials with important opportunities to build trust, consequently challenging stereotypes and biases which normally inhibit the influence of the weaker party in particular.The JAES partnership on democratic governance and human rights will be the object of focus here. The very establishment of this partnership required a convergence of values long absent between the EU and Africa. This was not simply the case of the EU imposing its will. It will be shown that African Union officials challenged stereotypes and created a more receptive environment through which the AU could influence the focus of the partnership and ultimately the JAES itself.Of course organisations are not monolithic and whilst individual officials involved in the negotiation of the partnership modified perceptions, similar change was not as evident at senior and member state levels on both African and European sides, where long standing views remained less malleable. This inter- and intra-organisational incoherence and its consequences will also be addressed.