not generally take this form, but rather a series of more subtle mechanisms that reflect the more complicated balance between democracy and autocracy and the recent history of the region. These include the subversion of benefits intended (nowadays) for democratic states, difficult trade-offs (especially between stability and democracy), the rejection of Western values seen as political impositions and the ability to derive benefits from multiple fora i.e. ECOWAS and the AU (forum shopping). These mechanisms are then highlighted and examined in the context of West African regionalism, demonstrating how this regionalism has presented politico-security and legitimacy-boosting benefits for authoritarian West African leaders. Beyond the academic contribution, the findings of this article are also relevant in policy terms, both in West Africa and further afield. While the more extreme cases of authoritarianism in West Africa are now largely historic (with the removal of Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso in 2014 and Yaya Jammeh in Gambia in 2016, two of the remaining long term autocrats are now gone), it would be nevertheless complacent to assume that the trajectory towards democracy is now complete in the region. Despite the very real progress in terms of democratic transition in West Africa, democracy is not yet consolidated in many West African states. Democratic backsliding is a real danger in West Africa as it is in other parts of the world, including Europe, Latin America and the former Soviet Union (Diamond, Plattner and Walker 2016, 3). The mechanisms and actions described in this article could be used by any future democratic backsliders and may embolden them to launch more egregious attempts to subvert democracy. The information in this article is thus of use to those who would seek to understand both how previous authoritarian leaders sought to use regional cooperation to survive in power and to ensure that others would not be able to do the same in the future. Secondly, there are other regional bodies in Africa such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which have experienced democratising trends and
However, legitimate promotion of international pluralism can open the way for authoritarian leaders to reject pluralism at a domestic level. In such cases, the assertion of sovereignty, while the right of all states, can be subverted and may work to the advantage of authoritarian leaders. An interview with former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh on the eve of Gambia’s recent celebrations of 50 years of independence exemplifies the way in which pro-sovereignty, anti neo-colonialist arguments can be used for authoritarian legitimation by linking democratic states in West Africa to neo-colonial powers. Jammeh suggests that all Gambians should ask themselves ‘what is democracy’ and then answers his question by stating that: ‘it is not the ‘derimocracy’ [sic] where I am here, but representing foreign interest, and I allow them to rob my country of her resources and later you call me one of the leaders of Africa and paste me on their mass media’. He suggests that a number of ECOWAS states are led by and funded by ‘Western powers’ and argues that this is negative trend that affects both ECOWAS and the AU (Jammeh 2015). ECOWAS, according Jammeh (2015) works against ‘independent African leaders who have a sense of dignity and pride [and] who want Africa to be something better than what we are today’ (with the implication being that he is one of these independent leaders). Here Jammeh sets himself in partial opposition to ECOWAS, and employs a de-legitimation of ECOWAS as a means of self-legitimation (in a strategy that is not dissimilar to some British Governments’ approaches to the EU). Reflecting his anti (neo) colonialist legitimation strategy, Jammeh presents himself as opposed to some ECOWAS decisions that he argues are neo-colonial impositions, noting, ‘when you look at most of the ECOWAS decisions that we always object to are decisions that did not come from us but that came from outside – the West, the same thing they are trying to do with AU’ (Jammeh 2015). Overall, the West African/ECOWAS position on resisting the West is less strident than that of the AU as a whole. But this middle ground, however, puts ECOWAS in an unenviable
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