ABSTRACT
This chapter once again summarizes the key findings of the study and outlines their utility beyond West Africa. The conclusion revisits the inductively generated causal mechanism, connecting ECOWAS member states’ delegation choices to the Commission and external actors. Resource constraints and dependence are identified as the primary factors tying ECOWAS’s member states, the Commission, and external actors into a common policy-making nexus. Applying process tracing and a policy studies approach, the purported complexity of policy making within ECOWAS can be stripped away to reveal causal processes involving distinctive entities. As one of the most researched regional organizations, the theoretical and practical lessons gleamed from the case of ECOWAS may be instructive for the broader field of comparative regionalism and international organization studies. Comparing ECOWAS to other organizations and their institutional dynamics highlights that viewing regional organizations as open systems and considering the interplay of member states, regional public administrations, and external actors is fertile ground for future research.
