Integration in West Africa : an empirical examination of ECOWAS

The Economic Community of West African StatQs (ECOWAS) was established by treaty in 1975 to promote the economic and political well-being of its 16 regional members. As a coordinated effort of geographically associated states ECOWAS joins an expanding group of regional integration schemes created by developing countries. As an international organization with some claim to supranational authority the success of the ECOWAS scheme is of practical and theoretical importance. Success in this sense implies an increasing level of interaction among the ECOWAS members and the development of a regional economic and political position toward non-member states. This coordination of member states' national policy within a regionally constituted political body offers an interesting laboratory for the examination of regional integration efforts. This paper seeks to establish the degree of integration achieved by the ECOWAS members to date and to chart the progress of that integration over time.