From Regulation to Fragile States: Cognitive Capture and Delayed Institutional Corrosion in West Africa

Abstract Between 2020 and 2023, the UEMOA-Sahel region split into opposed institutional trajectories, culminating in constitutional ruptures in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, despite a shared currency, comparable agro-climatic constraints, and a common colonial legacy. This article identifies the missing link: cognitive capture of elites, transposed for the first time from regulation theory to the macro-institutional analysis of fragile African states. Using four composite indices built by principal component analysis over fifteen countries (1996-2024), we deploy a five-stage empirical architecture: a four-model triangulation (System-GMM, PMG-ARDL, panel VAR, SEM), second-generation robustness tests, causal identification through a synthetic control for Mali and a staggered event study of the coup wave, distributional and regime extensions, and a calibrated two-equilibria trap model simulated in Dynare. No model detects a contemporaneous effect of capture on the common good; instead, capture Granger-causes the erosion of ethical governance and institutional trust with a five-to-six-year delay still measurable after ten years. The Malian rupture costs 1.3-1.4 standard deviations of institutional trust over a decade, and regime-switching dating places the regional shift before the putsches. Cognitive capture does not strike; it corrodes, and its slowness is what makes it formidable. JEL Classification: O43; D73; C33; O55.