Economic Community of West African States Regional Integration Process: A Study of the New Regionalism Phenomenon in Africa

Regional cooperation and integration in the international system has taken new dimensions especially following the end of the Cold War and the example of the successful story of the European Union integration process. This new dynamism in the intra-regional cooperation, which started to emerge in the 1980’s, has been described by some scholars as ‘new regionalism’, with a view to differentiate it from the ‘old’ type of regional cooperation which was prominent from the 1950’s till the late 1970’s. This phenomenon of new regionalism is caused by a multitude of often interrelated structural transformations of the global system, and it is a comprehensive, multifaceted and multidimensional process, implying a change of a region from relative heterogeneity to increase homogeneity, and in many dimensions, the most important being culture, security, economic policies and political regimes. This study of West African States integration process is therefore limited to these parameters of new regionalism. In view of this, the New Regionalism Approach is used as the theoretical framework for this thesis. Furthermore, to offer a deeper and a better understanding of the new regionalism phenomenon in West Africa, the qualitative research method, and the case study research design are the preferred choice for the methodology and the thesis is literature-based