From ploughshare to sword: regionalism in Africa

The emergence of regional security organisations during the 1990s in Africa proved to be of great significance for the lives of many Africans, including those living in conflict-torn countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone or the Democratic Republic of Congo, but has been, at the same time, understudied. This book explores why regional security organisations with an agenda of democratic governance emerged in Africa in the 1990s by looking at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and at the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Looking the circumstances of their creation and their qualified failure as economic communities, this book analyses their security and democracy mandates and their implementation records to come to the conclusion that a security agenda cannot emerge without the involvement of the regional hegemon. What the regional hegemon can do, including affecting the speed of the transformation, is constrained by the acceptance of its leadership by its neighbours (legitimacy) and by state weakness (capability).