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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | Parallel institutionalism and the future of representation in Nigeria |
| Author: | LeVan, A. Carl |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Contemporary African Studies (ISSN 1469-9397) |
| Volume: | 33 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 370-390 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subjects: | federalism political conditions political systems |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2015.1099218 |
| Abstract: | As Nigeria marked its centennial in 2014, violent sectarianism pried open a historical debate about whether 'amalgamation' of the country's two former regions by British authorities in 1914 was a 'mistake'. Even before independence, however, self-interested nationalism restrained self-interested regionalism, sustaining unification. The author argues that a 'parallel institutionalism' has ever since mediated the nation's heterogeneity through two different visions of representation. A long pause in state creation, a reduction in the Effective Number of Parties, and declining relevance of a pact that facilitated the 1999 democratic transition have revealed latent tensions in the status of multicultural institutionalism and strengthened liberal institutionalism. The author then analyses how demographic, economic, and migratory trends are slowly transforming the structure of representation, placing dilemmas of parallel institutionalism at the centre of future nationhood. Additional research could explore a natural experiment between the northeast, which is facing an Islamic insurgency, and the northwest, which is not. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
