ABSTRACT
For some time now, West Africa has acquired the image as a zone of poverty, high transaction costs, low civic participation, low resource allocation to the social sectors and political instability (Kaplan, 1994). The region, however, offers a rich tapestry of 'new regionalism' in which regional political economy and goal projections are shaped by the activities and preferences not just of states and foreign capital, but also informal sectors and civil societies from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to grassroots movements (Shaw, 2000a: 400). Conventional state-centric and formalistic studies of African regional integration (Asante, 1997; Mistry, 2000) have, however, failed to capture the co-existence of these multiple new and old actors linked together in hybrid networks and coalitions that are together creating a wide range of complex regionalization patterns. The omission of this new regionalism amplifies the pitfalls of using conventional or pre-made theoretical and policy paradigms of regionalism borrowed from Europe to analyze the overlapping processes of regionalization that continues to evolve across Africa.
