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From independence through 2004, the sixteen West African states have experienced forty-four successful military-led coups, forty-three often-bloody failed coups, at least eighty-two coup plots, seven civil wars, and many other forms of political conflict. Part I of this article used a political-economy approach to provide theoretical explanations of this record. Part II presents a unique data set describing all coup-related events in West Africa since 1955. Military interventions are widespread, occurring repeatedly in fourteen states. These data permit examination of coup behavior over the past fifty years. No evidence of declining coup activity is found. The major instances of war and conflict are reported, and it is shown that coups and conflict are reciprocally related. Changes that might reduce coups and conflict and permit these countries and their 238 million citizens to have better lives are discussed in the conclusion.

From independence through 2004, the sixteen West African states have experienced forty-four successful military-led coups, forty-three often-bloody failed coups, at least eighty-two coup plots, seven civil wars, and many other forms of political conflict. This two-part article seeks answers to the question, what has gone wrong inWest Africa? Part I uses world-systems and rational-choice analyses to provide theoretical answers involving macro structures and micro leadership behavior. Structural peripherality and poor leadership result in underdevelopment and state weakness, the major structural causes of West African instability. Empirical evidence demonstratesWest Africa's peripheral role in the world-economy, the high risks associated with political leadership in the region, andWest Africa's critical socioeconomic situation. Part II, appearing in the January 2006 issue, will examine new data on coups and conflict inWest Africa and speculate on what can be done to improve the situation.

Described here is a new data set including all successful coups d'état (80), failed coup attempts (108) and reported coup plots (139) for all 48 independent sub-Saharan African (SSA) states for the 46-year period from January 1956 until December 2001. Elite political instability (PI) in this form remains widespread in SSA, in contrast to other regions of the global South. Military-led PI has been shown to adversely affect economic growth and human development in SSA, and is a major cause of the current African 'crisis'. The frequency of these instability events is given for each state for all 46 years and for the two periods 1956–79 and 1980–2001. A Total Military Intervention Score (TMIS) for each state is calculated and examined over time to explore trends in coup behaviour. The distribution of these events among major African regions is presented. Appendix A lists all coups and failed coups by state and date. Major findings are that military interventions have continued to be pervasive in Africa, despite democratisation trends since 1990; that coups, failed coups and coup plots form a syndrome of military-led PI; that colonial heritage is unrelated to coup activity; that the chance of success when launching a coup attempt has averaged more than 40% since 1958; that once a successful coup has occurred, military factionalism often leads to more coup behaviour; that except for a declining rate of success once a coup is undertaken, there is no major difference between 1956–79 and 1980–2001; that no trends of increasing or decreasing coup behaviour are evident, except that up to around 1975 as decolonisation progressed, TMIS also increased; and that West Africa is the predominant centre of coup activity in SSA, although all African regions have experienced coups. States that have been free of significant PI since 1990 are examined and those with institutionalised democratic traditions appear less prone to coups.

Samir Amin has recently argued that black African countries are all characterised by extreme forms of underdevelopment. In his view, this situation is produced by the dependency of African states on more developed countries that is a consequence of the continent's common historical experience of economic exploitation by European-organised mercantilism, the slave trade, imperialism, and colonialism. Moreover, via the mechanisms of western-based neo-colonialism, African under-development has been perpetuated, and perhaps even increased, during the achievement of political independence over the past 25 years.