Loss Aversion and ex-British Southern Cameroons’ Nationalist Conflict Escalation in Cameroun Republic

Abstract

Though the de-colonization of Africa has had a profound and lasting impact on political conflicts in the continent in general and on the war declared on former British Cameroons by President Paul Biya in November 2017, few studies provide an empirical understanding of what became known as the war on “Anglophone Cameroon.” This study explores loss aversion in the escalation of the conflict from the standpoint of rational policymaking in government (Rye, p. 16). Using a structural approach and with inspiration from Robert Mnookin's (1993) framework on barriers to negotiated agreements in conflict studies, I argue that the conflict between the two Cameroons escalated into a violent war because of loss aversion by authorities of Cameroon Republic, only sought to impede ex-British Cameroons’ mobilization and to suppress nonviolent challenges to a centralized bureaucratic power structure (Blanton, Mason & Athow, 2001). I posit that the outcome of the policy of the Cameroon Republic to suppress the people of ex-British Southern Cameroons only further escalated the conflict and that it was easy to identify alternative resolutions that might have left the Cameroun Republic (former French Cameroun that gained independence on January 1, 1960) better off.