Democratic Backsliding in West Africa

Abstract

In the past two decades, West Africa has been home to nascent democracies with substantial democratic principals, including term limits. However, there have been signs of rising authoritarianism, as some West African leaders have sought to evade term limits to retain power. The evasion of term limits and other socio-economic factors have resulted in Freedom House reclassifying some West African countries from Free to Partly Free. Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2020 Report revealed that five West African countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria should the greatest decline in freedom. Particularly, Senegal and Benin fell from Free to Partly Free status, leaving the Republic of Ghana and the Republic of Cape Verde as the only Free countries in the region. This alarming trend signals democratic backsliding and may cause political instability in West Africa. This paper assesses democratic backsliding in countries apart of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) using the democratic backsliding framework establised by Stephan Haggard and Robert Kauffman. It explores the prominence of the causal factors of democratic backsliding (polarization, capture of legislature, and democratic regress by stealth) using the Varieties of Democracy data set and other coded variables. Polarization assesses if society is polarized into antagonistic political camps and capture of the legislature assesses legislative constraints on executive power. Lastly, regression of stealth refers to the subversion of democratic principles, including term limits.