45 Years of Academic Publication on the Economic Community of West African States: A Bibliographic Analysis

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is one of Africa's most important institutions and has been involved in peacekeeping operations, the fight for women empowerment and the enforcement of democracy, among others. While academic research on the role and functioning of ECOWAS has increased over the years, it remains far behind those of other international alliances. Therefore, this research sought to empirically examine the content, performance, quality and quantity of ECOWAS articles in reputable publications. To achieve this, data were retrieved from the Scopus Scientific database, and the data were subjected to a comprehensive bibliometric assessment, using the VOSviewer software and the manual elaboration and calculations. The analyses include co-occurrence, text, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, country collaboration and leading publications/authors, among others. The study revealed an increasing trend towards economic, energy and sustainability-related themes, and a shift towards applied and quantitative approaches. This article provides an important resource for scholars on ECOWAS, and provides an empirical basis for future studies on the bloc.