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Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

This blog focuses on African Politics in the ECOWAS countries: Benin (where I served in the Peace Corps), Burkina Faso (where I attended FESPACO!), Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire (where I biked my first century), Gambia, Ghana (home of Milly's Backyard!), Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali (home of Sekou Oumarou!), Niger (challenging for vegetarians!), Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo (the only place I ever attended a beauty pageant).

200 countries, 200 years, in 4 minutes

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- January 05, 2011

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Burkina Faso army orders coup leaders back to barracks; dueling focal points in battle of the sexes

- September 21, 2015

Source: AFP In my first post on last week's military coup in Burkina Faso, I predicted that "It is unlikely that the military will remain in power for long." However, I'll be the first to admit I had no idea the coup would end the way it seems to be ending. Quick background: President Compaore's 27-year rule ended on Halloween last year in response to street protests when he and his ruling party, the CDP, tried to remove the term-limits so Compaore could run for another term as president. An interim government planned for elections in October 2015, but a new electoral code banned the CDP and its allies from running. The CDP appealed to the ECOWAS Court, and that Court said the ban violated the former ruling party's human rights, but the Burkina Faso Constitutional Court ignored that ruling and enforced the electoral code, banning the CDP. Meanwhile, a commission of the interim government recommended disbanding Compaore's elite presidential gua...

Presidential Term Limits and Regime Type

- September 22, 2020

After my post on president age , it struck me that in just 2 years, three of the 15 presidents ran for a 3rd or 4th term. That seems like a lot, since presidential term limits (usually 2) are one of the continent's democratic successes. Presidential term limits are particularly important in "presidential regimes" in which the president is both head of state and head of government. In semi-presidential regimes , where the prime minister is head of government and answers to both the president and the legislature, presidential term limits might play a different role. The president is already constrained to a greater degree by the legislature, and prime ministers generally don't have term limits, so term limits on the presidency might not be as high-stakes. So I thought it would be interesting to look at the status of term limits in presidential and semi-presidential ECOWAS countries separately. (There are currently no parliamentary regimes in the region.) Shugart and ...

President Buhari visits the White House and makes plans to root out Boko Haram and official corruption

- July 21, 2015

Nigeria's President Buhari, who defeated Goodluck Jonathan in March (the first time the PDP lost a presidential election since multiparty elections were re-introduced in 1999), was in Washington yesterday to gather support for his related campaigns against Boko Haram and official corruption. Yesterday Buhari met with Obama in the White House to discuss his plans to defeat the terrorist group Boko Haram and also to root out corruption. Obama expressed approval for Buhari's plans and offered support in the form of intelligence and other cooperation. Since Buhari's election, the US has committed $5 million to support a multinational task force to fight Boko Haram. According to Reuters , "U.S. cooperation with Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, had virtually ground to a halt over issues including his refusal to investigate corruption and human rights abuses by the Nigerian military." Yesterday Buhari also wrote an editorial in the Washington Post in whi...