Description
The recent wave of West African military coups threatens to undermine AU and ECOWAS prohibitions on unconstitutional changes of government. A growing number of senior political figures use urgent security imperatives in the Sahel to argue for their dilution. For a large body of scholarship and advocacy this would represent a return to the ‘bad old days’ of the OAU (1963-2002). This was a time, allegedly, when African states unanimously recognised (violent) coups as legitimate means of taking power. This paper’s first aim is to show why this historical account is mistaken. Even at the height of the Cold War a number of (especially) West African states did in fact work hard to maintain an anti-coup norms, despite their increasing incompatibility with a thickening (international) legal consensus that effective control was the most important test for recognising governments. This paper’s second aim is to identify lessons for the present. This history helpfully highlights how, then as now, anti-coup norms can be supported by states for a variety of reasons, including anti-democratic ones. It also highlights possible ongoing tensions between (West) African legal instruments prohibiting coups and international law more generally, now most notably UN Charter rules governing the use of force.
