The Role of ECOWAS in Managing Post- Election Crises in West Africa: The Case of Ivory Coast and the Gambia

ABSTRACT
The study examined ECOWAS’s consistency in its operationalisation of the 1999 and 2001 protocols in managing post elections crisis. The 2010/2011 Ivorian Crisis and the Gambian 2016/2017 crisis bordering on unconstitutional change of government were the case studies. Given the provisions of the 1999 and 2001 Protocols, it was obvious that ECOWAS was bound to intervene in the two crises to shore up to its legitimacy and redeem its image. In the two cases, ECOWAS deployed its pacific and enforcement mechanisms in resolving the crises. To that extent, the study concludes that ECOWAS has been consistent in deploying its protocols in managing post-election crises. However, social phenomena are ambivalently similar and dissimilar. The structural properties of the two crises are similar but are as they are unique because of the context Besides, French interests in the Ivorian crisis was preponderant, which eventually rendered ECOWAS’ role in the Ivorian Crisis peripheral. The Gambian Crisis counted only as an aberration to global normative consensus on unconstitutional change of government. As such ECOWAS played the dominant role in resolving the Gambian crisis. The work recommends that ECOWAS, the Media and Civil Society Organisations should be more proactive to incipient conflict in order to save cost and time and enhance its expediency; because the use of force, though within the remit of ECOWAS is putative, and may yield unintended consequences.