Hybridity, Political Order and Legitimacy: Examples from Nigeria

Abstract

Africa is a region characterised by state fragility based largely on the failure of Western-style institutions. This article argues that local/hybrid political order can emerge as a response to lack of access and persistent sub-national concentrations (decentralisation) of power in post-colonial states. The role of sharia in producing political trust in three states in Nigeria is examined and the argument advanced that even in divided states it can function to increase trust, thereby providing legitimacy. The study finds broad support for the contention that hybrid political orders produce greater legitimacy, with trust in local and national governments reflected in Kebbi, Kaduna, and Zamfara states that generally exceed national averages.

Keywords:

• hybrid political order
• Sharia
• political trust
• legitimacy
• Nigeria

Notes

¹ Examples can be found in the Failed States Index of the Fund for Peace, the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International and numerous measures of fiscal extraction such as Relative Political Extraction found in Kugler and Tammen (2012).

² Some estimates put the Muslim population in Kebbi at 60%.

³ The Afrobarometer survey project is coordinated by the Centre for Democratic Development in Ghana, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa and the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy in Benin. The data are publicly available at www.afrobarometer.org. Surveys for Nigeria are conducted by the CLEEN Foundation in conjunction with Practical Sampling International (PSI).

⁴ The sampling design of each Afrobarometer survey is a clustered, stratified, multi-stage, area probability sample. The sampling error of Afrobarometer surveys is ± 3 percentage points. Details of the sample designs and principles, as well as interview methods, can be found at www.afrobarometer.org.

⁵ We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the inclusion of this finding. The Afrobarometer asks respondents to self-identify their religious affiliation, providing over a dozen categories. Categories varied slightly across surveys For the purposes of simplicity, self-identified Catholics, Protestants, nominal Christians and followers of the African Independent Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons were categorised as ‘Christians’; Sunni, Shiite, and other Muslims were categorised as ‘Muslims’. The remainder were considered ‘others’. Across the six surveys, Christians represented 57.5% and Muslims 40.4% of the sample.

⁶ These surveys were conducted in 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2008.

⁷ All data on political trust are from the Afrobarometer survey, conducted in the years given in the graphs.

⁸ Trust in the president across states in 2008 might be partly due to an end to the tumultuous and contested 2007 election season.