Africa's new territorial politics: regionalism and the open economy in Côte d'Ivoire

This paper considers implications of the neoliberal shift for forms of national integration that were achieved during the era of state-led development. These national integration strategies (1960s–1980s) helped define and manage regional competition within the juridical boundaries of the territorial state. In today’s “open economy” settings, old strategies of national integration are difficult to sustain. What has emerged is a new territorial politics, which revolves around attempts to consolidate power within subunits of the state and reorder relations among them, to enforce political control within communities, and to reorder rural property rights. Côte d’Ivoire provides a case in point.