Ulrike Lorenz-Carl is Assistant Professor of International Politics at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Martin Rempe is Assistant Professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Chapter 1 Bringing Agency (Back) into African Regionalism, Ulrike Lorenz-Carl, Martin Rempe; Part I Agency in Regional Security; Chapter 2 The Security Culture of the African Union, Daniela Sicurelli; Chapter 3 Bypassing the Regional? International Protagonism in the IGAD Peace Processes in Sudan and Somalia, Debora Valentina Malito, Aleksi Ylönen; Part II Agency in Regional Economic Integration; Chapter 4 When the 'Not So Weak' Bargain with the 'Not So Strong', Ulrike Lorenz-Carl; Chapter 5 Explaining the Influence of Extra-Regional Actors on Regional Economic Integration in Southern Africa, Johannes Muntschick; Chapter 6 Uganda and the East African Community, Martin Welz; Part III Agency 'Below the Radar'; Chapter 7 Civil Society and Regional Trade Integration in Southern Africa, Andréas Godsäter; Chapter 8 Regional Integration and Informal Cross-Border Trade in the East African Community, Lisa Nixdorf; Chapter 9 Micro-Regionalisms, Information and Communication Technologies, and Migration in West Africa, J. Andrew Grant, Matthew I. Mitchell, Frank K. Nyame, Natalia Yakovleva; Chapter 10 Which Challenges for African Regional Agency? Prospects for the Continent on the Road to 2020, Timothy M. Shaw;

Despite regionalism having developed into a global phenomenon, the European Union (EU) is still more often than not presented as the 'role-model of regionalism' whose institutional designs and norms are adopted by other regional actors and organizations as part of a rather passive 'downloading process'. Reaching beyond such a Eurocentric perception, Mapping Agency provides an empirically rich 'African perspective' on regionalisms in Sub-Saharan Africa. It adopts an actor-centred approach but departs from a rather simplified understanding of agency as exerting power and instead scrutinizes to what extent actors actually participate in or are excluded from processes of regionalism. The value of this volume derives from the inclusion of historical dimensions, its open multi-actor approach to both formal and informal processes and its comparative perspective within but also beyond Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters offer a multifaceted picture of agency beyond disciplinary divides where the EU is one actor amongst many and where local, national, regional and global state and non-state actors shape - and sometimes break - processes of regionalisms in Sub-Saharan Africa.