The economic community of West African States, the defence of democracy in Sierra Leone and future prospects

Democratization

Volumn 6, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 139-165

  Francis, David J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION; GEOPOLITICS; POLITICAL ECONOMY; TRADE BLOC;

(WEST); AFRICA; SIERRA LEONE;

EID: 0033391546     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510349908403636     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Robert D. Kaplan, The Corning Anarchy, Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 1994), p.46.
2. ECOWAS is made up of five Anglophone states - Sierra Leone, Nigeria, The Gambia, Ghana and Liberia; nine Francophone countries - Guinea, Senegal, Côte dIvoire, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Mauritania, and two Lusophone members - Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. For further discussion of the evolution of ECOWAS see Olatunde Oju, Nigeria and the Formation of ECOWAS, International Organisation, Vol.34, No.4 (1980), pp.571-604.
3. Liberia by the mid-1980s was the largest per capita recipient of US aid in sub-Saharan Africa estimated at $500 million between 1980 and 1988. Foreign intervention was limited to the evacuation of western nationals by US marines.
4. John Inegbedion, ECOMOG in Comparative Perspective, in Julius Okolo and Timothy Shaw (eds.), The Political Economy of the Foreign Policy in ECOWAS (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), p.219. -c :
5. For a discussion of the privatisation of security in Sierra Leone see David J. Francis, Mercenary Intervention in Sierra Leone: Providing National Security or International Exploitation, Third World Quarterly Vol.20, No.2 (1999), pp.319-338.
6. Sierra Leone website, News Archive, available at http://www.sierra-leone.org/slnews 0396.html
7. John R. Cartwright, Political Leadership in Sierra Leone (London: Croom Helm, 1978).
8. Alfred Zack-Williams, Coping with Complex Emergencies; An Aetiology of COPE in Sierra Leone 1991-98, Department of Social Studies, University of Central Lancaster, Preston (April 1998), unpublished paper, p.2.
9. Samuel P. Huntington, Tlie Third \Vave: Démocratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
10. John Wiseman, The Rise and Fall and Rise (and Fall ?) of Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, in David Potter et al., Democratizalion (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), p.272.
11. Julius Nyangoro and Timothy Shaw, "The African State in the Global Economic Context, in L.A. Villalon and P.A. Huxtable (eds.). The African Slate at a Critical Juncture: Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration (Boulder, CO: Lynne Ricnner, 1998), p.28.
12. What on earth is democracy? West Africa, 19-25 Jan. 1998, p.48.
13. Patrimonialism is defined as a situation wherein political authority or control of state apparatus is privatized and made an object of appropriation and accumulation by political elites and formal office holders. In such a situation, there is no distinction between the public and private realm of the state. For further discussion see Douglas Yates, The Rentier State in Africa: Oil Kent Dependency and Neo-colonialism in the Republic of Gabon (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996);
14. Peter Lewis (ed.), Africa: Dilemmas of Development and Change (Oxford: Westview Press, 1998).
15. D. Levine defines formal democracy as characterized by the inauguration and survival of reasonably free, pluralistic, and democratic institutions in national life. Religion and Politics: Dimensions of Renewal, Renewal, Vol.59, 233, 1984, p.181.
16. See Georg Sorensens discussion of patrimonialism and the personal loyalty generated by the strongman, in Democracy and Démocratisation: Processes and Prospect in a Changing World (Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), pp.5I-2.
17. Christopher Clapham, Private Patronage and Public Power: Political Ctientelism and the Modem State (London: Frances Pinter, 1982), pp.1-2.
18. René Lemarchand, The State, the Parallel Economy, and (he Changing Structure of Patronage System, in Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chanzan (eds.) The Precarious Balance: State-Society in Africa (London: Westview Press, 1988), p.154.
19. Prebend is a concept introduced by Max Weber to describe personal benefits acquired from the appropriation of public office. Max Weber, Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft, in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).
20. Sorensen, op. cit., p.78.
21. J.S. Coleman and C.G. Rosberg, Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966); Max Weber, op. cit.
22. Jean-François Medard, "The Underdeveloped State in Tropical Africa: Political Clientelism or Neopatrimonialism? in Clapham, op. cit., p. 167.
23. Joel Barkan and J. Okumu, Patrons, Machines et Elections au Kenya in CEAN-CERI, Aux urnes LAfrique (1978), quoted in Clapham, op. cit., p.168.
24. Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (Oxford; James Currey, 1996), p. xviii.
25. Jeff Haynes, Democracy and Civil Society in the Third World (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), p.82.
26. Potter cf oJ., op. cit., p.281.
27. Quoted in Sorensen, op. cit., p.52.
28. Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: Politics of the Belly (Harlow: Longman, 1993).
29. Sierra Leone website, 29 November 1997, available at http://www.sierra-Ieone.org/ slnews.htlm
30. The ECOWAS Committee of Four comprised Nigeria, Guinea, Côte Ivoire and Ghana, and also representatives from OAU. See Final Communiqué -Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of ECOWAS 26 June 1997, Conakry, Guinea.
31. Article 53.1 of the UN Charter provides for co-operation with regional organisations for the maintenance of international peace and security and that any such enforcement actions undertaken, that is the use of force, shall receive the authorisation of the Security Council.
32. Letter from the UN Secretary General addressed to the Security Council (Distr. General, S/1997/776, 7/1/97). The Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to UN in support of the Sierra Leone resolution argued that . . .the actions we take today will set yet another example of co-ordinated approach between the security council and regional organisation in addressing conflict situations in Africa. What is at stake is the great cause of democracy and we believe that the international community should continue to stand as one in prevailing upon the junta that there is no compromise on this principle. Statement by Ambassador Park Soo Gil Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea on the situation in Sierra Leone at the Security Council 8 October 1997 (New York: UN Plaza).
33. Thomas Weiss (ed.). Beyond UN Subcontracting: Task Sharing with Regional Security Arrangements and Sen-ice Providing NGOs (London: Macmillan, 1998), p.xiii.
34. For further discussion of the new security agenda see David J. Francis, ECOMOG: A New Security Agenda in World Polities, in Simon Bakut and Sagarika Dutt (eds.),/l/nca Towards the Millennium: A Mature Approach to Development (London: Macmillan, 1999), forthcoming.
35. For further discussion of this view see I. William Zartman (ed.), Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (Oxford, James Currey, 1996).
36. See Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter. The 1980s and 1990s have seen a progressive erosion of this principle in defence of universal values. There is an impressive literature on the breaching of traditional interpretations of international law, particularly with reference to sovereignty. See amongst others; James Mayall (ed.), The New Interventionist!! 1991-1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, former Yugoslavia and Somalia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
37. M. Lewis, Making History in Somalia: Humanitarian Intervention in a Stateless Society (Discussion Paper 6, Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics, 1993);
38. Janet Heininger, Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia (New York: Twentieth Century Press, 1994).
39. Michael Walzer, The Politics of Rescue, Dissent (Winter) 1995, pp.35-6.
40. J. Tacsan, Searching for OAS/UN Task-Sharing Opportunities in Central Africa and Haiti, in Thomas Weiss, op. cit., 1998, p.102.
41. Francis, Mercenary Intervention in Sierra Leone, op. cit.
42. Nicholas Wheeler, Humanitarian Intervention and World Polities in John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds.), Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.394-5.
43. Marina Ottaway, Democratization in Collapsed States, in Zartman, op. cit., p.235.
44. West Africa, 19-25 Jan. 1998.
45. Sorensen, op. cit., pp.64-7.
46. Some of these civic associations and social movements include: The Sierra Leone InterReligious Council; National Commission for Democracy; Sierra Leone Bar Association; Civil Defence Forces; National Union of Sierra Leone Students, South-East Displaced Peoples Welfare Association; Womens Association for National Development; Grassroots Gender Empowerment Movement; Sierra Leone Womens Development Movement; Campaign for Development and Solidarity; Sierra Leone Teachers Union; Sierra Leone Trade Unions. .?
47. Richards, op. cit., p. 155.
48. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971) quoted in Sorensen, op. cit., p.50.
49. Presidential Address on the State Opening of the Second Session of the First Parliament of
50. the Second Republic of Sierra Leone delivered by His Excellency Alhaji Dr Ahmed Tejan Kabbah on 22 May 1998 - available at http://www.sierra-leone.org/kabbahl8.html
51. J.L. Musa, The Conakry Accords; What has the ECOWAS concert wrought for Sierra Leone? An Essay on the pitfalls and Reservations of the Peace Agreement available at http://www.sierra-Ieone.org/musa.htlm
52. Max Sesay explains that the etymology of the terminology is unknown but Kaks in Portuguese means shit. The RUF/AFRC are considered by many Sierra Leoneans to be the worst citizens of the state because of their savagery, wanton destruction and crimes against humanity. See Politics and Society in Post-War Liberia, Journal of Modem African Studies, Vol.34, No.3 (1996), p.16.
53. Ibrahim Abdullahs description of the RUF following as lumpen proletariat conveys this kakistocray mentality. Lumpen proletariat in the Sierra Leone context is the equivalent of dregman dem, that is, largely unemployed and underemployable youth, mostly male (female), who live by their wits and have one foot in what is generally referred to as the informal economy. They are prone to criminal behaviour, petty theft, drugs, drunkenness and gross indiscipline. Bush Path to Destruction: The Origin and Character of the Revolutionary United Fronts/Sierra Leone, Journal of Modem African Studies, Vol.36, No.2 (1998), pp.207-13.
54. West Africa, 21-27 Oct. 1996, p.1632.
55. Presidential Address, op. cit., p.ll.
56. West Africa, 21-27 Oct. 1996, p.1632.