Making lasting peace in the Sahel

There is certainly no silver bullet, but long-term thinking and fidelity to reality-based policies could put Sahelian states on the path to stability.

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I: The economic, governance, and security problems in the Sahel didn’t start with the recent coups

Coups beget coups and tend to retard the process of political development. This is especially true with regard to the institutionalization of regularized leadership turnover. For that reason alone, coups are unambiguously bad. Consequently, it is not surprising that most reactions to the recent coups in the Sahel have pined for the situation ex ante. Calls for “a return to constitutional order” have been ubiquitous.

They have also not been entirely accurate. It is true that the juntas have not done any better than civilian governments before them in addressing the problems of insecurity, misgovernance, and economic deprivation. However, intellectual honesty demands accepting that the coups only worsened already bad trends. Violence was alre…