Adjustment, civil society, and democratization in Africa : the case of Nigeria

Abstract

This thesis is a contribution to the on-going development debates on adjustment, state-civil society relations and democratization in Africa.

In the increasing departure from state-centric and economistic interpretations of Africa's development problems, analysts have employed the concept of civil society in an attempt to capture the dynamics of these processes and to identify the potential for democratic development in Africa. However, the concept of civil society is often used uncritically, according the civic terrain with romantic libertarian attributes, rather than employing the concept as a rigorous analytic tool to identify the possible sources of democratic renewal in Africa. While there is a need to shift analysis to the dynamics of civil society in order to recognize the subjective factors of African development, the conceptualization of state-civil society relations in much of the new literature fails to illuminate the concrete dynamics of African social realities or the direction of socio-economic and political change.

This thesis is therefore an attempt to go beyond the current orthodoxy which posits a positive and mechanistic relationship between neo-liberal market reforms, in formalization, civil society and democracy in Africa to critically examine and relate the complexities of the current processes to the prospects of democratic developmental without reaching deterministic conclusions. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)