State Collapse, Democratic Dysfunction, and the Rise of Military Intervention in West Africa: A Study of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea

Military coups in Mali (2020), Burkina Faso (2022–2023), Niger (2023), and Guinea (2021) received substantial citizen support despite violating democratic procedures. This paradox demands explanation: why did populations within formally functioning democracies actively support military overthrow? This article argues that the coups represent rational responses to state capacity collapse, security catastrophe, and neo-colonial dependency that systematically delegitimized democratic governance. Qualitative analysis of World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, ACLED conflict data, and Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index documents that governance decline and security deterioration preceded each coup. Afrobarometer survey data reveal satisfaction gaps between abstract democratic support (68–72%) and performance satisfaction (32–41%) exceeding 25 percentage points in all four countries. Coup leaders framed their interventions around three dominant themes: state capacity restoration, sovereignty assertion, and nationalist legitimacy against neo-colonial domination. The analysis integrates state capacity theory, legitimacy theory, and neo-colonial dependency theory to explain how formal democratic institutions, severed from genuine capacity and sovereign authority, become vehicles for elite extraction. These findings challenge prevailing Western assumptions about democracy's universal appeal and demonstrate that procedural democracy without substantive performance and sovereignty cannot sustain legitimacy in fragile state contexts.

Democratic Legitimacy, Military Coups, West Africa, State Capacity, Neo-colonialism, Sovereignty, Performance Legitimacy

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