FEATURED RESEARCH: “Analytic Authoritarianism in Nigeria”
In this article, forthcoming in Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, I situate Nigeria's dictatorships within a new area of research that I call "analytic authoritarianism." This literature questions personal rule and studies a range of dependent variables, such as why dictators sometimes provide public goods. These scholars emphasize the inherent collective nature of governance, and explore the institutional basis of policy control.
Building on insights from this literature, I then demonstrate how different military factions and subnational actors in Nigeria imposed transaction costs on the policy process between 1966 and 1998. These alternative centres of policy control limited the ability of dictators to unilaterally advance their policy preferences on questions relating to federalism and transition plans, two issue areas of importance to each regime. I conclude by linking this analysis to Nigeria’s lingering legacies authoritarianism and the institutional basis of its 1999 transition.