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Atlas / Organisations / Sahel Sovereigntist Juntas

Sahel Sovereigntist Juntas

AES · 2020– · Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger · Military Sovereigntist · Held state power · coding confidence low

−02ECcollective
+06CUtraditional
+09AUmonist
+07SCcentral
+04IDascriptive
+06CHcoercive

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

Military governments claiming popular legitimacy through expulsion of French forces and rejection of regional bodies.

Economic model

Nationalised mining stakes, new partnerships with Russia and Turkey, subsidy politics under insurgency.

Organisation of powers

Constitutions suspended, elections postponed indefinitely, parties dissolved, journalists conscripted.

Reading note

Recent and volatile; coded at low confidence. Popular support for these governments is real and is not the same measurement as constitutional constraint.

Check a claim about Sahel Sovereigntist Juntas. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored −02

Coded −2: mining stakes nationalised and new external partnerships.

  • Documented act or statuteNiger revoked a French uranium mining permit in 2024; Mali raised state shares in gold mining.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +06

Coded +6: sovereigntist and religiously conservative framing.

  • Documented act or statutePublic broadcasting and education have been reoriented toward national and anti-colonial themes.

AU · Organisation of power · scored +09

Coded +9 with low confidence: constitutions suspended and no electoral timetable honoured.

  • Documented act or statuteTransition charters replaced constitutions; promised election dates have been postponed repeatedly.

SC · Scale of decision · scored +07

Coded +7: centralised military administration with a new regional confederation.

  • Documented act or statuteThe Alliance of Sahel States was formed in 2023 and became a confederation in 2024.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +04

Coded +6: sovereigntist national framing against France and against regional bodies.

  • Documented act or statuteThe three states left ECOWAS in 2025 and formed the Alliance of Sahel States.

CH · Method and tempo · scored +06

Coded +6: power taken by coup in all three states.

  • Documented act or statuteMali 2020 and 2021, Burkina Faso twice in 2022, Niger 2023.

Scores that have been revised

ID +06 → +04Sovereigntist against France and regional bodies rather than exclusionary internally. The anti-colonial frame is territorial, not ancestral.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Burkina Faso · Mali · Niger

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Sahel Sovereigntist Juntas. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/sahel/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.