African State Governance ― Subnational Politics and National Power

This book offers a comprehensive picture of state and local legislative politics in Africa and a detailed examination of formal and informal political authority in the states, provinces and counties.

It considers the pace and nature of change of African federalism is changing - identifying a variety of subnational institutions emerging as centres of policy control - and asks the key questions: how do state legislatures affect the balance of power between governors and the national executive? What influences state-level budgetary control? Given recent decentralization and various political reforms, what is a state legislature? How will Africa's new oil discoveries impact distributive politics?

The book explores how executive-legislative relations often differ across levels of government, even where the party system otherwise seems similar, and argues that these differences are not simply the result of limited resources or experience, but due to misaligned institutional incentives.

Chapters on Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa fill an important gap in comparative institutional research about state and local politics, and consider how identified trends could lead either to the promotion of democratic reform – or the consolidation of illiberal local politicians and 'godfathers' in Africa.

A. Carl LeVan is Assistant Professor at American University and the author of Dictators and Democracy in African Development: the Political Economy of Good Governance in Nigeria. His research focuses on comparative political institutions, democratization, African security, and authoritarianism.

Joseph Fashagba is Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Political Science and International Relations at Landmark University, Nigeria since 2012. He co-edited a book with Professor Rotimi Ajayi entitled Understanding Government and Politics in Nigeria in 2014.

Edward McMahon is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Vermont and the co-author of Piecing a Democratic Quilt: Universal Norms and Regional Organizations.