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In the past decades, different regions of Africa, particularly West African countries, witnessed intense regional crises and disputes. Several mechanisms including crisis management have been used in order to reduce the intensity of these crises. This article examines the impacts and the consequences of democratization in security sectors. It maintains that providing opportunities for democratic spaces and transition of failed states to governments based upon democratic elections could enhance an avenue for reform in security sectors. But the democratization procedures have not led to a democratic management of security sectors in all of the West African countries. In this research, West African countries were categorized based upon their achievements in reforming the security sectors. In fact, the efforts to integrate different regional rules and the activities of non-governmental sectors could lead to good governance even in security sectors both in national and regional levels. But the interesting point is that this would not necessarily bring fundamental changes in these countries. Therefore, it is necessary that a comprehensive program should be implemented in both national and sub-regional levels to bring democratic reform in managing the security sectors in West Africa. Despite slow progress in democratization in some Western African countries, there has been some success. In this article, the status of each country, the nature of their regimes, their capabilities and the level of reform in security sectors were discussed in details.

Keywords: West African contries, Crisis management, Ecowas, Security sectors, Democratization

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