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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Parallel institutionalism and the future of representation in Nigeria
Author:LeVan, A. CarlISNI
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]
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