Publication

This paper addresses questions of the foundations and determinants of authoritarianism and democracy in Africa in the background of the institutional and historical reality of the region. It argues that it is the forms of accumulation interacting with a number of socio-economic variables which mainly determine the nature of the dominant political system. The author then focuses on the Nigerian experience with structural adjustment and democratization, demilitarization and civil governmental authority, civil society and the state and the democratization of the rules of competition.