Les déchirures ivoiriennes: entre excès et manque de transcendance

Abstract

The author proposes a reading of the crisis experienced by the Ivory Coast since the end of 1999 by showing that this former French colony passed the first two decades of its independence attached to the excessively powerful and transcendent image of Houphouët-Boigny, who secured the allegiance of his people through authoritarianism and lavish expenditure; but that afterwards, confronted simultaneously with a profound socio-economic depression, the death of the ``Father of the Nation'' and the political competition that accompanied the democratization process, the country literally fell into an immanence of ethnic, regional and religious discord, with its leaders unequal to the task of maintaining its unity.