Converging practices and governace in West Africa: examining regional convergence in the economic community of West African states
Date
2017
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation examines the role of practitioners in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in driving regional cooperation in West Africa. ECOWAS practitioners, called “Ecocrats” help change and define the scope of regional governance practices in West Africa. This research identifies the mechanisms that drive regional convergence—the process in which regional political practices become more constant, as illustrated in areas of peace and security, finance, and public health. Using process tracing and interview data from ECOWAS practitioners and West African-based Civil Society organizations, this project examines how Ecocrats network West Africa through its engagement with non-state regional stakeholders. In understanding the role of Ecocrats, this work emphasizes the governance practices of ECOWAS, its various institutional forms, and cooperation between and among states and non-state actors in West Africa beyond solely legalistic frameworks of integration. This dissertation argues that regional convergence is strongest where ECOWAS engages in deep forms of institutionalization, defined through the process by which modes of behavior and practices become more dependable and durable. ☐ This work contributes to existing scholarship on regional organizations in three significant ways. First, by using a networked approach, this dissertation makes an empirical contribution to the role and utility of intergroup and organizational behavior in regional organizations and identifies the institutional drivers of governance convergence. Second, this dissertation tackles issues of conceptualization and causality by providing knowledge as to how regional governance practices emerge outside the decision-making realm of West African Heads of State and Foreign Ministers; and third, this dissertation contributes to the theorization of Africa in the study of comparative regionalism by examining bottom-up approaches to the politics of regional institutional change and the conditions in which social practices shape regional institutional formation.
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Keywords
Social sciences, African politics, Comparative regionalism, ECOWAS, International organizations, Regional organizations, Regionalism