Regional Governance and State Reconstruction in Africa

Daniel C. Bach

working paper Series No.6

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Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies

Regional Governance and State Reconstruction in Africa

Daniel C. Bach

Working Paper Series No.6

2006

The translated version of this paper in Japanese was published in M. Kawabata, and T. Ochiai, eds., AFURIKA KOKKA WO SAIKO SURU (Rethinking the State in Africa), Kyoto: Koyoshobo, 2006. Daniel C. Bach Research director at CNRS (Centre d'Etude d'Afrique Noire) and Professor at Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Universite Montesquieu Bordeaux IV (France). E-mail: d.bach@sciencespobordeaux.fr Ⓒ2006 Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies 67 Tsukamotocho Fukakusa Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, JAPAN All rights reserved ISSN The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies. The publication of this working paper series is supported by the Academic Frontier Centre (AFC) research project "In Search of Societal Mechanisms and Institutions for Conflict Resolution: Perspectives of Asian and African Studies and Beyond" (2005-2009), funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Ryukoku University.

Such notions as respect for the rule of law, good governance and regional security were conspicuously absent from the mandates of the regional and sub-regional economic organizations that were established in the 1970s to promote integration. 1 Most of their member-states were governed by authoritarian military or single party regimes that would reject any constraints on the enhancement of the power and personal wealth of incumbent rulers. Post-colonial patronage linkages and cold war alignments also meant that raising security issues within the larger sub-regional groupings was akin to stepping into a minefield. Within less than a decade after the end of the cold war, the situation has become totally reversed. The regional implications of violence and disregard for the rule of law within member-states are no longer minimized or overlooked. These are explicitly treated as an impediment to the implementation of integrated regional policies. In a context marked by growing extra-regional pressure for African involvement into peace and security related matters, insecurity and state collapse are contributing to the revitalization of regional mandates. In this chapter, I argue that state reconstruction is steadily and somewhat paradoxically emerging as the key issue upon which hinges success for regional groupings. This trend generates in turn a momentum for donor support to regional and sub-regional economic organizations.

The following pages review Africa's few cases of regional economic integration

(emphasis mine) which may be considered as a legacy from Africa's colonial past. I then discuss the difficulties that have been affecting the projects for integration and region-building within the African Economic Community that is meant to include all 53 African states by 2028. In practice, as the final section of the chapter emphasizes, state reconstruction is increasingly acknowledged as a key mandate for regional organizations and a stepping stone for region-building.

Regional Integration as a legacy

Throughout the colonial period, inter-territorial coordination was tailored to suit the requirements of imperial systems. Integrated policies encouraged linkages with metropolitan centers and endorsed the delimitations of inter-imperial boundary-lines. Regionalism was underscored by the assumption that economic self sufficiency and imperial preference should prevail over territorial proximity or trade liberalization. By 1970, a number of inter-territorial arrangements survived across the continent, but Nigeria was the only federation that had managed to overcome the challenge of balkanization. Sub-Saharan Africa was much more fragmented politically than under European rule. Whether inter-territorial arrangements survived or not, hysteresis remains a significant element in the representation, interpretation and reorientation of regionalism in present day Africa.

1 Daniel C. Bach, "Africa", in Mary Farrell, Luk Van Langenhove and Bjorn Hettne, eds., The Global politics of Regionalism, London: Pluto Press, 2005.

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The CFA zone is a monetary union of 14 member-states plus the Comoros that was

established before the Second world war, and reorganized in 1972-1973. Intra-regional monetary integration is ensured through two regional central banks, the Banque centrale des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (BCEAO) and the Banque des Etats d'Afrique Centrale (BEAC). These operate on a parallel basis and issue their separate currencies which are freely convertible on a one-to-one basis through the inter-banking system. The CFA is pegged to the euro at a fixed parity, but its convertibility is exclusively guaranteed by the French Treasury. In West and Central Africa, the CFA currency zone also acts as the linchpin of Union Economique et Monétaire West Africaine (UEMOA) and Communauté Economique et Monétaire d'Afrique Centrale (CEMAC), the two essentially francophone sub-regional groupings established in the wake of the January 1994 devaluation of the CFA.2

UEMOA has been facing serious difficulties since 2002. That year, the first phase of

UEMOA's program of macro-economic convergence had to be postponed by another three years. Trade liberalization also remains hampered by road blocs, administrative harassment and, since September 2002 the spill over effects of the fighting in Côte d'Ivoire. Over a decade after the establishment of UEMOA, intra-regional trade still accounts for less than 10 per cent of its member-states' total external trade. Trade liberalization, due to be effective since 1st January 2000, has been seriously hampered by road blocs, administrative harassment and, since September 2002, the spillover effects of the fighting in Côte d'Ivoire. Implementation of the Pact of Convergence, Stability and Solidarity (PCSS) has also had to be postponed until January 2006. Due to the war in Côte d'Ivoire and tensions between Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso, UEMOA seemed to owe its survival to France's ongoing support and monetary endorsement. These have enabled the CFA zone to do away with the short term implications of the crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, but this not the same for the earlier ambitions to transform UEMOA into "a sub-regional hub comprising the Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, with a rim comprising the other African members". 3 Côte d'Ivoire is still the key economy within UEMOA (with 38 per cent of its total GDP in 2003), but war, insecurity and the xenophobic slant of 'ivoirité' now invite landlocked Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to seek alternative import-export routes and disentangle their economies from that of their unstable neighbor.

Besides the CFA currency zone, the only other case of regional integration in Africa is

to be found in Southern Africa, where integration within the Southern African Customs Union/Common Monetary Area (SACU/CMA) is organized around a customs union and a common currency, the Rand. Integration within SACU proceeds from a common external

2 For a detailed analysis see Daniel C. Bach, "The Dilemmas of Regionalization", in Adekeye Adebajo and Ismail Rashid, eds., West Africa's Security Challenges, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004, pp. 69-92. 3 Jeffrey Fine and Stephen Yeo, "Regional Integration in Sub-Saharan Africa: Dead End or Fresh Start?", in Ademola Oyeyide, Ibrahim Elbadawi and Paul Collier, eds., Regional integration and trade liberalization in sub-Saharan Africa; volume 1: Framework, Issues and Methodological Perspectives, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 452.

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tariff, the free circulation of goods and services (but not labour) and de facto reliance on a common monetary base. The customs union was originally established in 1910, as a fiscal and customs arrangement designed to redistribute revenues between territories where integration was a pre-existing economic and politico-administrative reality. The continuation of South Africa's exclusive control over the management of SACU was reluctantly endorsed by the newly independent BLS (Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland) countries in 1969. Following protracted renegotiations that lasted eight years, the revised treaty signed in 2002 by South Africa, the BLS and Namibia (BLSN) confirms pre-existing economic integration, while seeking to introduce a ‘democratised’ system of regional governance.

SACU's new agreement addresses what was widely perceived to be an historical anomaly, namely South Africa's unilateral control over policy-making and management of SACU. An inter-governmental institution, the Council of Ministers, is now entrusted with the formulation and conduct of the policies of the customs union; including with respect to international trade negotiations, an unprecedented situation in Africa. Decisions are to be adopted by consensus, a pattern that imposes new constraints on South Africa: each of the BLNS now has in effect a veto power that may be only overruled by a majority ruling of the tribunal, the highest institution of SACU. The shift from exclusive control towards joint decision-making also involves the transfer of South Africa's administrative management tasks to new institutions, inter alia a secretariat based in Windhoek, a Customs Union Commission, a Tariff Board (an independent institution consisting of experts who send recommendation to the Council) and for Technical Liaison Committees (on agriculture, customs, trade and industry, transport). National bodies are also established within each of the BLNS.

In East Africa, the 1960s were characterized, as in many other parts of Africa, by the

dissolution of common services and integrative ties established during the colonial period between Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. This has made attempts to revive the East African Community particularly spectacular. The adoption of the Arusha Treaty, on 30 November 1999, followed a decade and a half of co-operative arrangements designed to harmonize monetary and fiscal policies, promote the restoration of a customs union, and establish common regulatory frameworks to attract investors. What is sometimes encapsulated as nostalgia for the days of the Community was stimulated by slow progress within COMESA, the much larger and particularly heterogeneous grouping that ranges from North Africa unto the Indian Ocean. Private sector operators also and simultaneously pressed for the re-launching of EAC, encouraged by new prospects for convergence due to pro-market economic reforms within all three states. As the heads of state of the EAC met in November 2004, co-ordination of national policies had achieved significant progress in several areas, in conjunction with regional networking and institution (re-) building. Walking into the footsteps of previous common services in order to reinstate them seems to have considerably facilitated the creation of a momentum. A first step towards economic integration, through the establishment of the East African Customs Union (EACU), was due to be operational as from as from 1 January 2005.

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Region-building as a 'grand' ambition

It is in 1980 that the heads of state and government of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) adopted the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) aiming to create an African common market and an African Economic Community (AEC) by 2000. Implementation then stalled until an overhaul of initial deadlines and objectives resulted in the adoption of the new treaty of Abuja, on 3 June 1991. Its target is still the creation of an AEC which, by 2028, should enable the free movement of people and factors of production and involve the operation of a single domestic market, an economic and monetary union, a central bank with a single African currency and a Pan African Parliament. The process is evocative of the creation of a quasi-federal system inspired by the experience of Europe, although this is not explicitly mentioned. Implementation is expected to result from the strengthening of existing regional economic communities and the establishment of new ones if required. For this purpose, seven regional groupings have so far been labelled as key 'building blocks': the Arab Maghreb Union (5 member-states); the Economic Community of West African States (15 member-states); the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (20 member-states), the Southern Africa Development Community (14 member-states), the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (7 member-states) and the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (18 member-states).

Out of the seven regional groupings labelled as 'building blocks by the African Union

(AU), four are largely dormant institutions in the field of economic integration. The Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), established by the Treaty of Marrakech in 1988, is yet to take any concrete steps towards a customs union or a common market. UMA has also failed to function as a forum for engaging discussion on regional issues –no heads of state summits has been held since 1994. The Community of Sahelian-Saharan States (CENSAD), created in February 1998 at the instigation of Libya, carries no explicit mandate in the field of regional economic integration and gathers states who already belong to other regional 'building blocks'. The yearly summit meetings of CENSAD have been essentially a tribune for Colonel Muammar Khaddafi. In Central Africa, the Economic Community of Central African State was established in 1983 for the purpose of merging two pre-existing organizations. 4 It has appeared unable to fulfil its stated mandate due to financial difficulties and political tensions between member-states. Since 2002, the organization is also trying to reinvent itself through its conversion into a regional organization for conflict prevention and peace-keeping. Inter-Governmental Authority for Development is also labeled a building block for the establishment of the AEC. IGAD dates back to the establishment, in 1986, of a loose structure, the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development. IGADD. was due to promote food security and environmental protection in the Horn, but tensions among its member-states and in the region meant that little had been achieved when it was transformed into IGAD in

4 The ex-Belgian colonies belong to the Communauté Economique des Pays des Grands Lacs (CEGPL) while former French territories (along with Equatorial Guinea) are regrouped within the Communauté Economique et Monétaire d'Afrique Centrale (CEMAC).

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1996. Since then, IGAD has acquired some clout as a regional forum and an interface for EU, US, and AU peace initiatives in the Horn and the Sudan. IGAD's inclusion among the key 'building blocks' of AEC reflects therefore more on political rather than economic achievements.

ECOWAS is one of the more successful sub-regional IGOs on the continent. Since its

establishment in 1975, significant progress has been monitored in areas such as institution-building and the emergence of a sub-regional consciousness that straddles over the Francophone-Anglophone divide. The ECOWAS Secretariat can also claim to significant achievements with respect to the harmonization of norms and the improvement of regional transport and communication infrastructures. ECOWAS, however, has so far failed to meet its stated goals in the field of sub-regional economic integration. Member-states still do not apply the provisions of the revised Cotonou Treaty (1993) instituting the principle of supranationality and key protocols pertaining to free movement of goods and persons are casually contravened. In accordance with the trade liberalization program re-launched on 1st January 1990, a Customs Union should have been established by 31st December 1999. By 2004, all countries were yet to adhere to the much more modest objective of establishing a Free Trade Area. The ECOWAS program towards the creation of a single monetary zone has similarly kept being delayed since its initial conception in 1975. In December 1999, ECOWAS Authority of heads of states launched a "fast track" program towards economic and monetary integration. A Nigeria-Ghana sponsored initiative then led (December 2000) to the adoption of the agreement and statutes for a West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). Six out of the eight member-states of ECOWAS (Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone) are expected to establish their own WAMZ as a step towards a merger with the francophone Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA). Due to insufficient macro-economic convergence and financial discipline, the establishment of the WAMZ has had to be postponed several times already. Macro-economic convergence has not progress as anticipated and the original target of 2002 for establishing the non-UEMOA monetary zone had to be postponed to July 2005. Another adjournment of this deadline was announced a few weeks ago, while deeper interrogations keep being cast over the merit and feasibility of the whole exercise.5 More generally, political instability within the region makes the launching of an autonomous and sustainable ECOWAS monetary policy highly improbable in the near future. Indeed, since the 1990s, the regionalisation of war and instability in West Africa has de facto gained preponderance over socio-economic and financial agendas. ECOWAS is nowadays more famous for its attempts to establish, through the permanent mechanisms, a collective security system, than for its record in the field of economic integration.

5 See for instance, David White, "African Currency Union to Miss Target", The Financial Times, 3 March 2005, p. 6; see also Nigerian Central Bank Governor Charles Soludo as quoted in The Independent (Banjul), 13 September 2004; C. U. Uche, The Politics of Monetary Sector Cooperation among the Economic Community of West African States, Washington DC: The World Bank, Institute Policy Research Working Paper 2647, July 2001.

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In East and Southern Africa, trade liberalization within COMESA may be described as partly successful since 9 out of the 20 member-states formally agreed to meet the 2000 deadline for the creation of a Free Trade Area (FTA). 6 A key member-state, Tanzania, however chose to pull out from COMESA and extension of the FTA to all the other COMESA members has kept being postponed. SADC's contribution to the creation of an integrated sub-regional space has been even more disappointing, a reflection on its initial establishment as a forum essentially geared towards the capture and coordination of international aid to infrastructural projects. Although SADC's commitment to economic integration, community went back to 1992, it was only in March 2001 that an extraordinary summit recommended concrete steps for a conversion of SADC scattered institutions into a more cohesive entity. Restructuring is expected to involve the clustering of the 21 SADC(C) sectors into four directorates located within the Gaberone Secretariat, as well as the establishment of SADC National Committees to help diversify inputs on the formulation of SADC policies. The formation of SADC's own Free Trade Area TA, originally scheduled for 2008, is not expected to take place before 2012.

Southern Africa Development Community was initially established as a 'Coordination

Conference' (SADCC) in 1980, so as to counter South African plans towards the establishment of the Constellation of Southern African States (CONSAS). During the subsequent decade, SADCC maximized international donor support to the region, but failed in countering South Africa's magnetic pull – a combination of destabilizing military incursions, economic preponderance and control of infrastructures and communications. The SADC Treaty of Windhoek signed in 1992 was viewed as a new departure since it emphasized integration and prepared for South Africa's membership that became effective in 1994. It then took almost a decade before the SADC extraordinary summit of March 2001 recommended concrete steps for a transformation of SADC multilateral framework into a structure tailored to promote integration as opposed to policy co-ordination. The formation of SADC's own FTA, originally scheduled to be operational by 2008, is not being expected until 2012. In July 1996, SADC heads of state decided to launch a specific Organ for Defence, Politics and Security Co-operation, but this became a source of deep polarization. SADC initiatives in the field of peace and security are emblematic of the fallacy of collective security so long as shared interests are not identified.

State reconstruction as a pre-condition to region-building

Insecurity, violence or disregard for the rule of law within member-states can no longer be minimized or overlooked by regional groupings since these issues contribute to unfulfilled pledges and cast discredit on the rhetoric of region-building. In an international context where growing extra-regional pressure is exerted so that Africans take responsibility for peace and

6 The nine member-states of the FTA are Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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security related matters across the continent, insecurity and state collapse are also contributing to the revitalization of regional mandates. This also helps impoverished regional groupings to secure renewed donor support. As a result, security sector and state reconstruction operate as a stumbling bloc, due to constraints on the implementation of the socio-economic mandates of regional groupings, but also as a stepping stone towards enlarged agendas and increased resources.

Prospects for continental integration or selective transfers of sovereignty are bound to be

hypothetical so long as member-states will be primarily concerned at (re)asserting their territorial authority or at preserving exclusive access to their states and its resources. Within the past decade, the trend has all but abated with the return to multi-party systems, the crisis of neo-patrimonial governance and the discredit cast on the nation-state ethos due to its capture by parochial interests. The effects of state failure have been compounded by a “tendency towards regional assertion and autonomy seeking” among sub-national geo-ethnic groups7. De facto territorial fragmentation also applies to the even larger number of critical situations where the resolution of civil conflicts has little to offer beyond a return to the status quo ante bellum.

For a number of regional groupings, institution-building in the field of security offers

new outlets for policy implementation while casting a shroud over the shortfalls of socio-economic integration. The holistic nature of security agendas encourages the redefinition of priorities while improving access to international aid. In Central Africa a largely formal economic grouping, ECCAS has undertaken, since 2002, to carve a new role for itself in the world of conflict prevention and peace-keeping. In the Horn, the successful transformation of the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD) into a regional security agency exemplifies this trend. After its creation in 1986, IGADD was unable to promote its food security and environmental protection objectives due to tensions in the Horn and among its seven member-states8 In 1996, member-states decided to transform IGADD into IGAD, an inter-governmental grouping with a rejuvenated mandate so as to include conflict prevention, management and resolution. Since then, IGAD has carved a niche for itself as a forum and an interface for UN, EU and US sponsored initiatives over Somalia, the Sudan and the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

ECOWAS and SADC are the only sub-regional organizations which currently combine

significant experimentation of peacekeeping with pledges towards the institutionalization and promotion of security communities. Their new organs and programs are also meant to supplement the AU's newly asserted continental ambitions in the field of conflict prevention

7 Joshua Forrest, Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity, Alliances and Politics, Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 2004, p. 1. 8 Current member-states are Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and (since 1993) Eritrea.

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and peacekeeping. The ECOWAS Permanent Mechanism and the SADC Organ have been painstakingly trying to depart from the conventional identification of insecurity to external military threats so as to confront internal violence and disregard for the rule of law within their member-states. Willy-nilly, stated ambitions with respect to conflict prevention, peace-keeping and post-conflict transitions find it difficult to avoid treating state reconstruction and good governance as preconditions to the implementation of commonly defined policies. In West and Southern Africa as in other parts of the continent, opposition to unlawful political change is also being pursued, albeit with mixed intensity. Due to international pressure associated with shuttle diplomacy and peer pressure, but also sometimes local resistance, the relative decline of successful military coups and unconstitutional transitions contrasts with the situation observed until the 1990s. By August 2004, the combination of African and international initiatives had ensured that only two out of the eight military coups monitored since January 2003 had been followed by an unlawful change of regime. Sub-regional groupings and the AU have shown a far less impressive ability to ensure free and fair elections. Focusing on the adoption of formal signposts such as multi-party competition, elections and strict compliance with the constitution, has commonly resulted in a legitimation of outcomes that overlooked irregularities and anomalies. This was characteristically the case in Togo where, following the death of President Gnassingbe Eyadema on 5 February 2005, the combination of dialogue with punitive sanctions exerted by ECOWAS led his son, Faure Gnassingbe, to step down and agree to hold elections. ECOWAS decisively contributed to put on track a negotiated electoral transition and managed to deploy a modest group of 20 electoral observers, but this did not break the hold exerted by Eyadema's loyalists throughout the electoral campaign and on the day of the election. Despite widespread allegations of fraud on 24 April, the victory of President Faure Gnassingbe was swiftly endorsed by ECOWAS which then undertook to champion the formation of a government of Unity government.9

ECOWAS and AU attempts to resolve the Togo crisis also illustrates the propensity of

regional and extra-regional peacekeeping agencies to rush to peace agreements in order to meet timetables and expectations of the international community. In the process, the search for long term and sustained agreements is overlooked. Success in the field of conflict prevention, peace-keeping and post-conflict transitions naturally reflects on the politico-administrative culture of peace-keeping agencies. In Africa as in other parts of the world, international engagement conveys its own idiosyncratic criteria for evaluation: "If an operation can be completed on time, with minimal loss... and with relations between the various members of the intervening coalition in relatively good repair, it is normally seen as successful. Interventions can thus become narcissistic, with questions about the long term effects of external involvement pushed to the back of the queue" 10 . Peace-keeping missions are chronically underfunded and corseted by mandates that often combine inadequacy with over ambitious

9 Louis Achi, "ECOWAS Team Visits Togo", This Day (Lagos), 2 May 2005 at http://allafrica.com (accessed on 4 May 2005). 10 Charles King, Ending Civil Wars, Oxford and London: Oxford University Press and International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper 308, 1997, p. 12.

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goals.

Crafting post-conflict transitions is commonly associated with settlements that ensure to warring parties a swift and dependable access to state related offices and resources. In the process, developmental and human rights records are side-tracked and the preeminence of state authority is formally reasserted although effective territorial control often remains beyond reach. Governments of national unity, when they successfully incorporate all contending factions, often do so by substituting prospects for rationalized forms of neo-patrimonialism to pre-existing patterns of predatory governance. In fine, state reconstruction incurs the risk of assimilating inclusiveness to the redistribution of spoils among participants to the negotiating process. This appears to have been the case in so far as one of the outcomes expectations resulting from the diplomatic negotiations towards a Somali peace settlement that began on 12 October 2002 and would last for nearly two years. The process, almost exclusively funded by EU member-states and the European Commission, was held under the aegis of IGAD in Nairobi. The cohort of Somali faction leaders and warlords hosted in Nairobi hotels eventually agreed to the election of 'Abdullaahi Yusuf as president of a Transitional Federal Government in October 2004. A cabinet was subsequently appointed and celebrated by the international community as the outcome of an inclusive process on the ground that "all warlords were now ministers and therefore part of the process".11 In effect, the transitional government's legitimacy within the country kept looking highly problematic as the TFG failed to resettle in Somalia where, by mid-2005, violence had reached levels unprecedented since 1993.

Building collective security systems assumes that heads of state and government are willing to disentangle domestic and external security problems from personal rule and survival. When this is not the case, claims to establish international security regimes act as a cover up for the preservation and enforcement of regime security. Governments committed to enforcing respect for rule of law and due process also require the ability to enforce these among office holders and security forces. In states deemed to be democratic, communal violence and insecurity can contribute, as in Nigeria, to a low key but pervasive erosion of the differentiation between war and peace. State betrayal, or its capture by private interests, blur the distinction between legality and lawlessness or security and disorder12 In many parts of the continent, armed and police forces still constitute the major source of insecurity in the eyes of the population, due to excessive use of force, casual human rights violations and petty corruption. Armed forces are also clearly reluctant to renounce to a post-colonial history of inverted civil-security sector relations that still breeds "a superiority complex on the part of the military and a debilitating incapacity complex on the part of civilian oversight

11 Roland Marchal, "Somalia", in Africa Yearbook 2004, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. 12 Daniel Bach, "Inching Towards a Country Without a State: Prebendalism, violence and state betrayal in Nigeria", in Christopher Clapham, Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills, eds., Big African States, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2005.

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institutions". 13 Collective sub-regional security systems also postulate the existence of a critical mass of states within which armed and security forces restructuring has been successfully achieved.14 West Africa's two post-conflict states, Sierra Leone and Liberia, offer an insight into the breadth of reform agendas when state collapse combines institutional decay with the privatization of violence.15 The establishment of quasi-trusteeships is viewed by some authors as the solution for state reconstruction due to comprehensive nature of the transformations required and the failure of past reformist attempts. State collapse and post-conflict reconstruction seem to offer "the most hospitable political environment for 'full scale' security reconstruction in Africa" since this is "precisely the kind of context that (for better or worse) facilitates unfettered donor interventions". 16 The extensive involvement of the international community into state reconstruction is not without generating its own paradoxes: meant to reestablish stateness, it purports to do so through a negation of the sovereignty of the states concerned. Externally driven post-conflict state reconstruction also banks on the benefits of a loosening of linkages between state building and sovereign control or ownership to promote sustainable structural change. In Liberia as in Sierra Leone, governmental authority is substantially constrained by the influence exerted by advisors, aid donors, etc...in areas that, unlike past structural adjustment programs, now encompass all aspects of state sovereignty, and not least its most sensitive prerogatives, security sector reform and state control over the use of force. The infusion of massive international aid and the intrusive nature of external involvement has come to be casually associated with a situation of quasi-trusteeship. Successful 'completion' of the ongoing transition still represents a daunting challenge if what it at stake is the capacity of the international community to nurture the emergence of "a post-patrimonial state...where the level of 'businessified' politics, social exclusion and impoverishment" will be drastically and durably reduced.17

The mandates assigned to sub-regional organizations in the field of security and good

governance are expected to set on firmer ground their socio-economic ambitions. The poor record of most regional IGOs with respect to trade liberalization, macro-economic convergence and common policies reflects on the nature of macro-economic governance within member-states. Macroeconomic convergence and monetary integration plans make little sense when macroeconomic stability do not echo a domestic basis that can be built upon. Respect for due process and the rule of law within member-states ultimately defines the scope for integrating national policies within broader sub-regional or continental frameworks. The

13 Adedeji Ebo, "Security Sector Reform: West Africa", in Alan Bryden and Heiner Hänggi, eds., Reform and Reconstruction of the Security Sector, Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004, p. 81. 14 Ebo, "Security Sector Reform", p. 75. 15 J. 'Kayode Fayemi, "Governing Insecurity in Post-Conflict States: the Case of Sierra Leone and Liberia", in Alan Bryden and Heiner Hänggi, eds., Reform and Reconstruction of the Security Sector, Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004, pp. 179-205. 16 Fayemi, "Governing Insecurity in Post-Conflict States", p. 188. 17 Morten Boas, "Civil Society in Sierra Leone: Corruption, Destruction (and Reinvention?)", Democracy and Development, Journal of West African Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2002, p. 53.

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creation of the ECOWAS Court of Justice provides a good illustration. Since it establishment in 2001, this organ is mandated to carry out its mission "independently of the Member States and the institutions of the Community" (article 15, § 3), while its rulings are to be "binding on the member-states, on the institutions of the Community and on individuals and corporate bodies" (article 15, § 4). Accordingly, in those areas under its competence, the Court is at the apex of judicial institutions in West Africa. Its effectiveness, however, depends on the readiness of lower courts to enforce and endorse Community legislation. This is central when, for instance, such legally-binding agreements as the Protocol on the free movement of persons, one of the most significant achievements of ECOWAS in the area of socio-economic integration, are not being adhered to. Implementation of this protocol began in 1980, yet has been largely formal due to the multiplicity of road-blocks or check points where customs officers and policemen extort illicit payments, if need be through the invention of pointless or ad hoc bureaucratic requirements. In practice, the discriminatory treatment accorded to foreign ECOWAS citizens often does not differ that much from the insecurity which ECOWAS nationals may encounter within their own countries on grounds of non-indigeneity or as a result of a pariah status within specific societies. The scope and contents of regionalism in Africa mirror on domestic policies as much as on politics within the member-states of regional and sub-regional groupings.

Conclusion

In the hay days of the OAU its claims to enhance sovereignty, nation-building and regional construction actually transcribed into territorial stability enforcement and strict non intervention into domestic policies. More recent attempts to promote an African renaissance through regional and international initiatives have been stumbling over the pre-requisite of state reconstruction. African regional institutions are increasingly becoming involved in the reconstruction of collapsed states. In this respect they perform functions that are clearly distinctive from the promotion of regional integration. The famous electoral motto that Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah used in the 1950s, "Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added onto you” is therefore as relevant as it was then. This time, the imperative is even more compelling since it involves a reconstruction of entire states, and requires following a particularly narrow path between situations of international trusteeship that incur the risk of undermining state legitimacy and 'ownership', as currently observed in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and domestic pressure for the establishment of neo-patrimonial governance mechanisms under the pretext of promoting national unity, as illustrated by the flaws of post conflict transitions in Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies 67 Tsukamotocho Fukakusa Fushimi, Kyoto JAPAN ISSN