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ABSTRACT
West African security threats have become more frequent in recent years, most notably in the Gulf of Guinea. As increasing quantities of the world’s trade pass through the maritime domain, ship hijackings and other maritime criminal activities have garnered widespread attention from the international community. The International Maritime Bureau reports 785 piracy incidents have occurred in the region since 2000 and current models forecasting worldwide piracy trends have failed to accurately predict maritime crime in all of the West African states. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of piracy developments in the Gulf of Guinea. The authors argue that increased military capacity and anocratic regimes lead to increases in piracy while failed states are associated with a decline in such maritime crimes. Data from 2000 to 2016 is used to empirically test this claim. The analysis shows that a state’s military capacity has no impact on the prevalence of piracy events while institutional frameworks and regime type influence the degree and number of maritime attacks off the coast of West Africa. The results imply that institutionally strong and democratic regimes are less likely to experience piracy in the Gulf of Guinea than weak states or anocracies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. International Maritime Bureau, “Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships: Annual Report” (Piracy Reporting Center, International Chamber of Commerce, International Chamber of Commerce, London, 2016).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
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8. International Maritime Bureau, Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships: Annual Report.
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14. Harm Greidanus, Marlene Alvarez, Torkild Eriksen, and Thomas Barbas, “Ship Traffic Distribution and Statistics in the Gulf of Guinea and Off West Africa” (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, Publication Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2013), https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/ShipTrafficGoG_v20.pdf.
15. Ursula Daxecker and Brandon C. Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy,” Foreign Policy Analysis 11 (2015): 23–44; Ursula Daxecker and Brandon C. Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57, no. 6 (2013): 940–65.
16. Jane’s Information Group, “World Navies: Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo,” 2017, https://janes.ihs.com/WorldNavies/ (accessed December 7, 2017).
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Defense Web, “United States Donates Vehicles, Boats to Liberia,” July 14, 2016, http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44280&catid=74&Itemid=30 (accessed December 7, 2017).
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21. Abdullahi D. Ahmed, “Debt Burden, Military Spending, and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis,” Defense and Peace Economics 23, no. 5 (2012): 485–506.
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24. Herbert M. Howe, Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004).
25. Ibid.
26. Patrick J. McGowan, “Coups and Conflict in West Africa, 1955-2004: Part II, Empirical Findings,” Armed Forces and Society 32, no. 2 (2006): 234–53.
27. Julien Morency-Laflamme, “A Question of Trust: Military Defection During Regime Crises in Benin and Togo,” Democratization 25, no. 3 (2018): 464–80.
28. Adewale Banjo, “The Politics of Succession Crisis in West Africa: The Case of Togo,” International Journal of World Peace 25, no. 2 (2008): 33–55.
29. Peter Lewis, “Nigeria: Elections in a Fragile Regime,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 3 (2003): 131–44.
30. Morency-Laflamme, “A Question of Trust: Military Defection During Regime Crises in Benin and Togo.”
31. World Bank, “Military expenditure,” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS; Trading Economics, “Cocoa.” https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cocoa; “Coffee,” Trading Economics. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coffee.
32. Daniel Chirot, “The Debacle in Côte d’Ivoire,” Journal of Democracy 17, no. 2 (2006): 63–77.
33. Howe, Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Anna Leander, “The Market for Force and Public Security: The Destabilizing Consequences of Private Military Companies,” Journal of Peace Research 42, no. 5 (2005): 605–22.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 619.
40. Ibid.
41. Adam Nossiter, “Massacre in Nigeria Spurs Outcry Over Military Tactics,” The New York Times, April 29, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/africa/outcry-over-military-tactics-after-massacre-in-nigeria.html (accessed June 19, 2019).
42. Herbst, “African Militaries and Rebellion: The Political Economy of Threat and Combat Effectiveness.”
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Kevin Sieff, “The Nigeria Military Is So Broken, Its Soldiers Are Refusing to Fight,” The Washington Post, May 15, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/the-nigerian-military-is-so-broken-its-soldiers-are-refusing-to-fight/2015/05/06/d56fabac-dcae-11e4-b6d7-b9bc8acf16f7_story.html?utm_term=.15226b564fbb (accessed December 5, 2017).
46. Robert Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair,” in When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, edited by Robert I. Rotberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004): 1–50.
47. Martin N. Murphy, Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money: The Challenge of Piracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); G.G. Ong-Webb, “Piracy in Maritime Asia: Current Trends,” In Violence at Sea: Piracy in the Age of Global Terrorism, edited by Peter Lehr (New York: Routledge, 2007).
48. Daxecker and Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy,” 943.
49. Murphy, Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money.
50. Ibid.
51. Olaf J. de Groot, Matthew D. Rablen, and Anja Shortland. “Gov-aargh-nance – ‘Even Criminals Need Law and Order’” (Economics of Security Working Paper Series 46, 2011), http://hayek.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.372927.de/diw_econsec0046.pdf (accessed September 8, 2017). This paper finds that state failure is not a significant driver of maritime piracy; Justin Hastings, “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings,” Political Geography 28 (2009): 214–23. This article reveals that failed states are associated with unsophisticated piracy attacks but do not facilitate sophisticated attacks.
52. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair.”
53. Hastings, “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings.”
54. Ibid.
55. Lydelle Joubert, “The State of Maritime Piracy 2018,” One Earth Future, Broomfield CO, USA.
56. e.g. Bridget L. Coggins, “Failing and the Seven Seas? Somali Piracy in Global Perspective,” Journal of Global Security Studies 1, no. 4 (2016): 251–69; Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy”; De Groot, Rablen, and Shortland, “Gov-aargh-nance – ‘Even Criminals Need Law and Order”; Yasutka Tominaga, “Exploring the Economic Motivation of Maritime Piracy,” Defence and Peace Economics 29, no. 4 (2018): 383–406.
57. Martin N. Murphy, “The Troubled Waters of Africa: Piracy in the African Littoral,” Journal of the Middle East and Africa 2 (2011): 65–83.
58. James Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90; Havard Hegre and Nicholas Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of Empirical Results on Civil War Onset,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 4 (2006): 508–35; Havard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates, and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change and Civil War 1816-1992,” American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (2001): 33–48; Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, “Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 275–99.
59. Ted Gurr, “Psychological Factors in Civil Violence,” World Politics 20, no. 2 (1968): 245–78.
60. Cullen S. Hendrix and Stephan Haggard, “Global Food Prices, Regime Type, and Unrest in the Developing World,” Journal of Peace Research 52, no. 2 (2015): 143–57.
61. “Angola: 200 Arrests in Luanda as Rights Groups Appeal for Protections,” Africa Times, May 30, 2018, https://africatimes.com/2018/05/30/angola-200-arrests-in-luanda-as-rights-groups-appeal-for-protections/ (accessed June 20, 2019).
62. Ryan S. Jablonski and Steven Oliver, “The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 57, no. 4 (2013): 682–708.
63. John S. Burnett, Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas (New York: Dutton, 2002).
64. Jablonski and Oliver, “The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy.”
65. Alexander Knorr, “Economic Factors for Piracy: The Effect of Commodity Price Shocks,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 38, no. 8 (2015): 671–89.
66. Murat Iygun and Watcharapong Ratisukpimol, Learning Piracy on the High Seas (Boulder: University of Colorado, 2011). Typescript.
67. Maggie Dwyer, “Peacekeeping Abroad, Trouble Making at Home: Mutinies in West Africa,” African Affairs 114, no. 455 (2015): 206–25.
68. Ibid.
69. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982, http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf (accessed September 8, 2017).
70. International Maritime Organization, Assembly Resolution A.1025 (26), 2010, http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Security/PiracyArmedRobbery/Guidance/Documents/A.1025.pdf (accessed September 8, 2017).
71. The following seventeen countries are included in our analysis: Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo. Some scholars include the small island countries of Cabo Verde and Sao Tome and Principe in their definitions of the Gulf of Guinea. We have elected to exclude these two states as less data is available for them across our collective variables which would result in dozens of missing values if included.
72. International Maritime Bureau, Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships: Annual Report.
73. Ibid.
74. Murphy, Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money, 60.
75. IMB data does not include the pirates’ country of origin, only where the attack occurs. However, the majority of pirate attacks in the GoG occur within a country’s territorial waters, as opposed to the Horn of Africa which saw Somali pirates travel great distances into the high seas. Most of the attacks are on oil industry vessels coming in to port and most of the pirates use small boats incapable of traveling great distances. Pirates using boats that can only travel short distances will likely launch themselves from the nearest coastline.
76. Daxecker and Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy.”
77. Map generated using ESRI ArcGIS 10.4 with World Light Gray Base layer.
78. Data for military spending as a percentage of GDP is available online at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS. We use state population and GDP per capita data to calculate each state’s military spending per capita. Missing military expenditure values were imputed by creating a log linear regression using World Bank data on military personnel, population, GDP, government effectiveness, coastline length, and U.S. EIA information on oil production as predictors.
79. Although we did not include CINC scores in our final models, we found similar results when replacing the World Bank’s military spending data with CINC scores.
80. Brian Benjamin Crisher and Mark Souva, “Power at Sea: A Naval Power Dataset, 1865-2011,” International Interactions 40 (2014): 602–29.
81. Daxecker and Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy.”
82. Cullen S. Hendrix, “Measuring State Capacity: Theoretical and Empirical Implications for the Study of Civil Conflict,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 3 (2010): 283.
83. e.g. Crisher and Souva, “Power at Sea: A Naval Power Dataset, 1865-2011.”
84. Several GoG states have navies; however, they are comparatively small and function as coast guards. The one possible exception to this is Nigeria.
85. “Coastlines,” https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/282.html (accessed November 15, 2017).
86. Monty G. Marshall and Gabrielle Elzinga-Marshall, “State Fragility Matrix 2016” (Center for Systemic Peace, 2016), http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/SFImatrix2016c.pdf (accessed November 15, 2017).
87. Independent variables are lagged by one year; therefore, the timeframe for the predictors is 1999-2015.
88. De Groot, Rablen, and Shortland, “Gov-aargh-nance – ‘Even Criminals Need Law and Order.’”
89. Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy.”
90. Coggins, “Failing and the Seven Seas? Somali Piracy in Global Perspective.”
91. State Fragility and State Fragility Squared terms are orthogonal. The turning point in the inverse-U curve for state fragility squared is towards the upper end of the range. This indicates that the weakest of states, or failed states, are less likely to experience attacks when compared to weak states.
92. Daxecker and Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy.”
93. We use the polity2 measure from Polity IV. Data is available online at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html.
94. e.g. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Hegre et al, “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change and Civil War 1816-1992.”
95. GDP per capita data is available online at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD.
96. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on “Petroleum and Other Liquids Production, 1980-2016” can be found online at https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/.
97. Ibid.
98. Coggins, “Failing and the Seven Seas? Somali Piracy in Global Perspective.”
99. Tominaga, “Exploring the Economic Motivation of Maritime Piracy.”
100. Hastings, “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings.”
101. Daxecker and Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy”; Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy.”
102. Data available online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.
103. Coggins, “Failing and the Seven Seas? Somali Piracy in Global Perspective.”
104. While there are no chokepoints on the high seas or EEZs in the Gulf of Guinea, Nigeria, Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have chokepoints near their main ports and/or upriver from the gulf. We do not consider these to be traditional chokepoints as they are located in close proximity to the ports.
105. The World Bank, “Population, total,” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.pop.totl (accessed November 15, 2017).
106. Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy.”
107. Hastings, “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings.”
108. W. Holmes Finch, Jocelyn E. Bolin, and Ken Kelley, Multilevel Modeling Using R (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2014). Data analysis, plotting, regression modeling and table preparation conducted in R version 3.3.3 using the dplyr, ggplot2, gamlss, stargazer, and txtreg packages. Our model also takes into consideration country-year correlations.
109. Not only did we find similar results when operationalizing military capacity as national capabilities from the CINC dataset, but also when using military personnel as a percentage of GDP from the CINC, total military spending from the World Bank, and military spending as a percentage of GDP per capita from the World Bank.
110. Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy.”
111. Coggins, “Failing and the Seven Seas? Somali Piracy in Global Perspective”; Tominaga, “Exploring the Economic Motivation of Maritime Piracy.”
112. de Groot, Rablen, and Shortland, “Gov-aargh-nance – ‘Even Criminals Need Law and Order’”; Hastings, “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings”; Jablonski and Oliver, “The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy.”
113. Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy.”
114. Daxecker and Prins, “Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy”; Tominaga, “Exploring the Economic Motivation of Maritime Piracy.”
115. Iygun and Ratisukpimol, Learning Piracy on the High Seas; Jablonski and Oliver, “The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy”; Knorr, “Economic Factors for Piracy: The Effect of Commodity Price Shocks.”
116. Ursula Daxecker and Brandon C. Prins, “Searching for Sanctuary: Government Power and the Location of Maritime Piracy,” International Interactions 41 (2015): 699–717.
117. We ran the models without Nigeria for a total of sixteen states and found similar results regarding the direction and magnitude of the coefficients for the significant variables.
118. Daxecker and Prins, “The New Barbary Wars: Forecasting Maritime Piracy”; Daxecker and Prins, “Searching for Sanctuary: Government Power and the Location of Maritime Piracy”; Jablonski and Oliver, “The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy.”
119. Hastings, “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings”; Tominaga, “Exploring the Economic Motivation of Maritime Piracy.”
120. International Maritime Bureau, Piracy Reporting Center, https://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre.
121. Greidanus, Alvarez, Eriksen, and Barbas, “Ship Traffic Distribution and Statistics in the Gulf of Guinea and Off West Africa.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ginger L. Denton
Dr. Ginger L. Denton is Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Coast Guard Academy.
Jonathan R. Harris
LCDR Jonathan R. Harris is Assistant Dean and Mathematics Instructor at the United States Coast Guard Academy.