ABSTRACT
As in much of Africa, the countries of the West Africa Sahel (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad) all responded to global pressures for democratization in the early 1990s. The nature of their respective transitions varied widely, however, as did the degree of democracy achieved over the two decades that followed. Most fundamentally, this chapter argues that the specific ways in which the “politics of democratization” was pursued in each country over that period also had highly variable long-term and profound consequences for the building of resilient state structures, independently of their apparent degree of democracy. Thus, when the region was subject to a variety of pressures, notably stemming from the spillover effects of the conflict in Libya in 2011, it was Mali’s so-called “model democracy” that collapsed. In the resulting context of international intervention and spiraling social breakdown and conflict, a persistent security crisis has tested the resilience of states across the region. In each country the ongoing politics of democratization since 2012 have become intertwined with the security imperative. Whether political dynamics in each country can balance the terrible dilemmas of security provision while building state structures amenable to democratic processes remains an open question for the Sahel.
