Atlas / Organisations / Sankarism
Sankarism
1983–1987 · Burkina Faso · Revolutionary Socialist · Held state power · coding confidence medium
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
Self-reliance, mass literacy and vaccination, land nationalisation, and one of the earliest state feminist programmes in Africa.
Economic model
Land and mineral nationalisation, refusal of foreign aid and debt service, cooperative agriculture.
Organisation of powers
Revolutionary committees replacing local government; a military council; opponents tried by popular tribunals.
Reading note
Radically progressive on culture and membership while highly concentrated on authority. Assassinated after four years.
Check a claim about Sankarism. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe 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 −08
Coded −8: land and mineral nationalisation and refusal of debt service.
- Documented act or statuteAll land was nationalised in 1984; the government called on African states to repudiate colonial-era debt in 1987.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored −06
Coded −6: among the earliest state feminist programmes in Africa.
- Documented act or statuteFemale genital cutting, forced marriage and polygamy were banned; women were appointed to cabinet and the army.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +07
Coded +7: revolutionary committees replacing elected local government.
- Documented act or statuteCommittees for the Defence of the Revolution administered localities and ran popular tribunals.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +05
Coded +5: centralised campaigns executed through local committees.
- Documented act or statuteThe committees for the defence of the revolution ran national campaigns at village level.
ID · Rule of membership · scored −04
Coded −4: pan-Africanist and anti-imperial, with a national renaming.
- Documented act or statuteUpper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso, land of upright people, in 1984.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +07
Coded +7: power taken by coup and exercised through mass campaigns.
- Documented act or statuteA vaccination campaign immunised 2.5 million children in a week; literacy campaigns ran alongside.
Where it came from, and what came after
- takes its doctrine fromNégritude and Fanonism
Anti-colonial self-reliance carried into government.
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.
- New Jewel Movement2.4
- Conspiracy of Equals4.4
- Bolsheviks5.0
- FARC5.0
- Tudeh Party5.6
- Carnation Revolution6.2
Countries
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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.