Sustainable Democratic Governance and Regional Integration in West Africa

Abstract Since the 1960s, West African leaders have viewed regional integration as a vehicle for economic growth and subcontinental development. However, more than six decades later, integration has yielded marginal returns. Democratic governance and regional integration have been examined as separate contributors to security outcomes, but how the two interact to shape a specific country’s security exposure has rarely been tested. As West Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, Nigeria’s national security is directly threatened by the region’s institutional fragmentation. Drawing on expert interviews and a survey, and grounded in assemblage theory and general systems theory, this study shows that perceived democratic governance quality and regional integration effectiveness are significantly correlated with Nigeria’s perceived security exposure, with regional integration indicating the stronger association. It argues that governance and integration are interacting subsystems and that Nigeria’s security depends jointly on the durability of its own democratic institutions and ECOWAS ’s capacity to consistently enforce governance norms across the subregion.