Economic Community of West African States and the Gambian Crisis: Building Cooperation and Resolving Conflict
This paper examines the role of ECOWAS in building cooperation among the states of the West African sub-region through enhancing the political stability of member states and effective conflict resolution in Gambia between 2016 and 2020. The paper seeks to identify the role of ECOWAS in establishing cooperation, resolving conflicts and enforcing legal measures in the Gambian crisis. Anchored on neoliberal institutionalism theory and using descriptive design as a for analysis, the paper reveals that ECOWAS played a prominent role in building cooperation among member states and resolving the political crisis in the Gambia through the use of diplomacy and military actions to effectively restore peace and order in the Gambia. The work recommends, among other things, that the Gambia government should amend the country's constitution to specify the number of terms for an elected executive in order to avoid authoritarian administration that would violate the polity's democratic process and to offer the true dividends of democracy to the Gambian people.
Keywords: african, building, community, conflict, cooperation, crisis, economic, gambian, resolving, states, west