ABSTRACT
Mauritania’s military coups and attempted coups made headlines in 1978,
1979, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1987, 2003, 2004, and 2005. After 1991, contested
multiparty elections added more to the overall image and reality of Maur-
itania’s political instability, erratic geopolitics, and widespread poverty. In
the wake of the December 1984 military coup, the Mauritanian government
embarked on an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank-
backed structural adjustment program. The program was part of a broader
development strategy conceived by the G7 countries in response to the economic crisis of the 1970s, which developed out of a fundamental con-
tradiction between nationalist policies (adopted by most developing coun-
tries at the time) and the G7-supported neo-liberal economic policies. In
1991, the Mauritanian government also embarked on a French-backed
democratization process. This process was initiated after the end of the first
US-led Gulf War and on the eve of the official dissolution of the Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War. These policies contributed to what has
been conceptualized and analyzed as the denationalization of the Mauritanian state, the devaluation of its economy, and the fragmentation of its
sociopolitical system.1
