West African States: Failure and Promise
A Study in Comparative Politics

In 1956 the West African coast between southern Mauretania and western Cameroun was lined with no less than ten European colonial territories, along with a single independent African state.

John Dunn (Edited by)

9780521292832, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 June 1978

268 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

In 1956 the West African coast between southern Mauretania and western Cameroon was lined with no less than ten European colonial territories, along with a single independent African state. All of these colonial units have joined Liberia in formal political independence. Their political experiences since 1956 and indeed the forms of their present political regimes themselves have varied very widely over this period, from the defiant and paranoid austerity of Guinea to the gleeful surge of Nigeria's oil-generated capitalist expansion. In political taste the present governments cover almost the full spectrum of Third World regimes. Yet the societies themselves have many geographical and historical features in common, certainly far more in common than in the case of most units studied by analysts of comparative politics. This book was first published in 1978.

1. Comparing West African states John Dunn
2. Ghana Richard Rathbone
3. Guinea R. W. Johnson
4. Ivory Coast Bonnie Campbell
5. Liberia Christopher Clapham
6. Nigeria Gavin Williams and Terisa Turner
7. Senegal Donal B. Cruise O' Brien
8. Sierra Leone Christopher Allen
9. Conclusion John Dunn.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]