About this Research Topic
The recent series of coups d’état in Western Africa (in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) puzzled numerous scholars and analysts by their rapid dynamics, their efficiency in terms of meeting the perpetrators’ objectives and their chain effects – one coup legitimizing the next. If several aspects have been thoroughly decorticated in the experts’ reports and in the media (e.g.: the power-grabbing mechanisms activated by the putschists, the attitudes of the different branches of the armed forces, or the international and regional reactions to the coups), it remains that the ideological and political dimensions of the coups have not yet been satisfactorily approached. More generally, when focusing on the post-Cold War coups in Sub-Saharan African, the literature tackling the military and security-related aspects and the international implications is rather abundant, while the scholarly writings about the ideological background and the political moves meant to stimulate the popular support in favour of the coups are at least relatively less significant.
Given this knowledge gap, in this Frontiers in Political Science Research Topic, we aim at analysing the complex relationship between ideology, the political strategy and the efforts for the achievement of popular mobilization in support of the coups d’état perpetrated in Francophone, Anglophone and Portuguese-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa since 1990. We aim at understanding how and why the ideological determinants of the anti-regime actions, including anti-Westernism, combined with the political tactics of the putschists, succeeded in bringing popular support in favour of the coups, and how the popular mobilization boosted at its turn the consolidation and legitimization of the newly instated juntas.
Contributors are expected to propose original research articles where they analyze these political phenomena and processes in-depth in a single country or compare them in two or three countries, in the latter case concentrating on a single more particular aspect, such as, for example, the impact of the anti-colonial dimension of the putschists’ proclamations on the popular mobilization in favor of the coup.
Given this knowledge gap, in this Frontiers in Political Science Research Topic, we aim at analysing the complex relationship between ideology, the political strategy and the efforts for the achievement of popular mobilization in support of the coups d’état perpetrated in Francophone, Anglophone and Portuguese-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa since 1990. We aim at understanding how and why the ideological determinants of the anti-regime actions, including anti-Westernism, combined with the political tactics of the putschists, succeeded in bringing popular support in favour of the coups, and how the popular mobilization boosted at its turn the consolidation and legitimization of the newly instated juntas.
Contributors are expected to propose original research articles where they analyze these political phenomena and processes in-depth in a single country or compare them in two or three countries, in the latter case concentrating on a single more particular aspect, such as, for example, the impact of the anti-colonial dimension of the putschists’ proclamations on the popular mobilization in favor of the coup.
Keywords: West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Political Strategy, Coups, Popular Mobilization, post-Cold War, putschists, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger), armed forces, ideology, anti Western sentiment, popular support, anti-colonial sentiment, post-colonial
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
