Constitutional Development in Postindependence Francophone West Africa: A Comparative Case Study of Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire

While colonial legacy is often the lens via which independent Africa is assessed, including constitutional successes and challenges, the focus tends to be on the differences across the metropoles themselves. Specifically, the scholarship tends to delineate between which European colonial powers controlled specific territories and their disparate impacts on postindependence African societies. Few pieces explore the variations across postcolonial states previously subjected to territorial control by the same metropolitan authority and the implications for the empirical realities of constitutional development. Using a historical institutionalism approach, this chapter explores the evolution of the constitutional development in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. Though the historiography tends to eschew like-case comparative perspectives, focusing on the least-like cases, single-case studies, or individual actors, the Senegal–Côte d’Ivoire dyad presents an interesting opportunity to conduct a comparative study examining whether and/or to what extent the constitutional developments in these two entities are similar or exhibit important intercountry variations. This study suggests that common metropolitan and constitutional backgrounds may not necessarily result in similar historical trajectories or outcomes. This chapter further examines factors that influence the disparate outcomes across the cases and concludes that both components (i.e. colonial legacies and the empirical realities of constitutional development) are crucial for understanding the long-term consequences of and variations in the constitutional development of the independence era in Africa.