Africana Periodical Literature 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Issues and Substance in the Prescription of Liberal-Democratic Forms for Nigeria's Third Republic |
| Author: | Graf, William D. |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society |
| Volume: | 88 |
| Issue: | 350 |
| Period: | January |
| Pages: | 91-100 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subjects: | democracy constitutional reform Politics and Government |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/722601 |
| Abstract: | In his contribution to the debate about the role of constitutions in contemporary Africa with special reference to Nigeria's current attempt once again to design a liberal democratic structure for itself (amongst others in: Afr. Aff., vol. 86, no. 343 (1987); p. 209-226), Larry Diamond argues that Nigerian democracy can be established if only 1) a constitution can be 'engineered' so as 'to check, balance and decentralize political power ...' and 2) 'the economically dysfunctional consequence of State control over the economy' can be eliminated through privatization and incentives. The present author argues that such prescriptions are based on a grave misreading of the causes of the collapse of formal liberal democracy and hence would, if realized, merely recreate the pathologies of the Second Republic. The 1979 constitutional order was unable to cope with the problems arising from the nature of peripheral capitalism. Only deliberate, determined and patient counter-hegemonic work in all spheres of politics, society and the economy, by and for the popular classes, stands to propel the Nigerian political economy beyond peripheral capitalism. Note, ref. |
