American University
Instructor, School of International Service
Co-Chair, Council on African Studies
Africa Coordinator, Comparative & Regional Studies
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20016
Office hours fall 2007:
Tuesday 2-5, Friday 2-4
Asbury, room 224B
Dictators, Democrats, and Development in Nigeria
I dispute explanations for government performance in Nigeria based on regime type or fiscal resources. To test my theory that the number of policy actors better predicts performance, I build a veto player model that applies across regimes and to outcomes besides policy stability. Qualitative and quantitative analyses show that my theory better predicts policy outputs. Since Nigeria’s rules of political inclusion impact the number of veto players, my findings pose a dilemma: Increasing the number of political actors improves the representativeness of the policy process. But introducing surplus preferences adds new payments to policy actors and impairs the delivery of public goods. I measure performance using original time-series data on education, fiscal discipline, and the judiciary covering four decades.
"Politics in Nigeria," (co-authored with Robert Mundt and Aborisade Oladimeji) in Comparative Politics Today (ninth edition). Gabriel Almond, Bingham Powell, Kaare Strøm and Russell Dalton, editors. Longman (July 2007).
"Federal Structure, Decentralization and Government Performance in Nigeria," in Nigerian Federalism in Crisis: Critical Perspectives and Political Options, edited by Ebere Onwudiwe and Rotimi Suberu. (Ibadan: Program on Ethnic & Federal Studies, 2005).
"Elections in Nigeria: Is the Third Time a Charm?" co-authored with Titi Pitso and Bod Adebo
Journal of African
Elections, Vol. 2., No. 2 (Oct. 2003): 30-47. Published by the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.
In Democracy's Shadow: The Secret World of National Security. Co-edited with Marcus Raskin. (New York: Nation Books, 2005).
Click here for information about the book and the National Security State Seminar at George Washington University.
November 9 op-ed in The Hill, the Capitol Hill newspaper: "Be Careful Libby Case Doesn't Lead to More Secrecy"
Working Papers
"Dictatorship in Two Dimensions: Nigeria's Authoritarian Regimes in Comparative Perspective"
"Current and Future Challenges for Nigeria's Electoral Framework," presentation at the Nigerian Peoples Forum, Washington, DC, May 2006.
"Civil Society During Nigeria's Democratization: Testing for Autonomy and Action"
Carl LeVan / Political Science Department / Last Modified: 10/24/07