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Conclusion

What Nigeria Can Teach Us about Good Governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2023

Portia Roelofs
Affiliation:
King's College London
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Summary

Politics in Nigeria teaches us that power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable. Previous chapters drew on in-depth qualitative fieldwork in southwest Nigeria to theorise alternative conceptions of the constituent parts of the good governance agenda, namely, accountability, transparency, and the public–private divide. If we are to take the social dimension of these “ethnographically derived political concepts” seriously, then we need to rethink the neo-classical economic ontology of the dominant approach to good governance, which relies on principal–agent models. Thus, the book’s empirical analysis gives rise to normative political prescriptions which entail a methodological critique. The second part of the chapter argues that by neglecting the social dimension of governance, technocracy is vulnerable to populist challengers who leverage unmet demands for closeness and connection. Socially embedded governance intersects with three key debates of interest to theorists of democratic politics, concerning scale, inequality and conflict. By rethinking the contours of politics, we discover that the struggles of Nigeria’s fourth republic are not marginal to democratic theory – the struggles of a democracy yet to really get started – rather, they lie at the crux of what it means to wield power responsibly.

Type
Chapter
Information
Good Governance in Nigeria
Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century
, pp. 262 - 291
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Conclusion
  • Portia Roelofs, King's College London
  • Book: Good Governance in Nigeria
  • Online publication: 13 April 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009235471.009
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  • Conclusion
  • Portia Roelofs, King's College London
  • Book: Good Governance in Nigeria
  • Online publication: 13 April 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009235471.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Portia Roelofs, King's College London
  • Book: Good Governance in Nigeria
  • Online publication: 13 April 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009235471.009
Available formats
×