The Meta-institutions of Geopolitical Liminality in West African Regional Integration

Abstract This paper conceptually leverages meta institutions of geopolitical liminality to counter the emergent empirical consensus that the exit of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from the ECOWAS and their setting up of the Alliance of Sahel States will undermine West African regional integration. Geopolitical liminality is an unstable, normatively uncertain arena defined by unsettled conditions and a “threshold” space where actors are neither fully assimilated into nor alienated from dominant orders. Given that actor embedded in conditions of geopolitical liminality seek to prevent being overwhelmed by contingencies or gain control and predictability through innovation, bargaining with or resisting others, geopolitical liminal situations are concurrently arenas of disrupted and (re)constructed coordinated relationships, hence are meta institutions in their own right. Drawing on the methodology of meta governance, the art of “governance of governance”, where actors consciously orchestrate relations without the compulsive power of government and maintain a balance between “discretion with control” and the method of narrative configuration analysis, the weaving together of data into a lucid story, this paper theoretically demonstrated that the vulnerability of the ECOWAS and BMN to common threats implies that they will work at common and not cross purposes and in the process enhance West African regional integration.