Populist Military Regimes In West Africa

Abstract

Recent events in three West African states-Ghana, Liberia, and Upper Volta-raise questions as to whether there has been a change in the nature of military coups and military regimes in Africa. All three regimes started off as "populist'"; that is, leaders tried to have direct contact with followers, attacked established institutions, and showed impatience with formal legality and established hierarchies. But in Upper Volta and Ghana, the caste nature of the military was itself called into question. This did not happen in Liberia, and the country quickly moved back toward a personalistic, conventional-type military regime. This essay explores the limits of the innovations which have occurred in Ghana and Upper Volta; it also assesses the meanings of these experiments for the possible evolution of African regimes by making comparisons among the three cases, as well as between them and Afro-Marxist regimes.