Ecowas Integration Studies

Because of limited national power of single countries and concern of losing self-control to integrate into the world, regional cooperation and integration become inevitable choice of development strategy in West African countries. Economic globalization and regionalization have become the important trend in world economy. West Africa taking the road of regional integration complies with the trend of historical development. As the major regional organization in West Africa, the integration in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) directly affects developing prospect of West Africa. Therefore, the progress of its integration is the main content of this paper.The paper is divided into five parts to discuss integration in ECOWAS. The first past mainly analyzes rationale of integration in West Africa and introduces regional cooperation and integration in West Africa in 1960s. And it discourses establishment of ECOWAS by analyzing the factors that promoted the West Africa from sub-regional cooperation into the cooperation including the whole West African countries. As the same time, it also states its aims and institutional arrangements and the influence that the institutional arrangements make on the integration in West Africa. The second part directly elaborates the progress of integration in areas of market, production and infrastructure and analyzes the reason leading to the different outcomes in the above areas, as well as discusses effects of the level of economic development on the regional integration in ECOWAS. The third part mainly introduces the progress of integration in non-economic areas, such as environmental protection, culture, society and collective security. And the part also analyzes the active role they play in integration in ECOWAS. The fourth part analyzes the limited factors that affect the integration in ECOWAS. The last pat is the conclusion of this paper. It summarizes the experience and the lessons from the integration in ECOWAS.