With the rise and fall of neopatrimonialism as the dominant theoretical explanation of politics in Africa, a huge theoretical opportunity has been opened up for the exploration of alternative explanations and frameworks. Two major factors account for the decline of neopatrimonialism. The first relates to some positive developments in the political economy of Africa that generated the discourse on “Africa Rising,” which raise hopes about the future of the continent. Largely contrary to the arguments of the proponents of neopatrimonialism, these developments draw attention to institutional salience and innovations in the effort to address the governance crisis and performance deficit of state institutions.

The second factor relates to the internal contradictions of the neopatrimonial theory and its variations, including the assumption that there is clear demarcation between formal and informal institutions, and that informal institutions are premodern and contradictory to formal institutions. This weakness is further underscored by the poor predictive value of the various forms of neopatrimonialism.

The new institutional economics has enriched our understanding of institutions and underscored the interface between formal and informal institutions in shaping human behavior, with consequences for our understanding of state performance. From the earlier assumption that formal institutions do not work in Africa, it has now gradually been accepted that formal institutions matter in Africa, and that there is a need to investigate how formal and informal institutions interact there.

Against this backdrop, an array of frameworks such as political settlements, rational choice, historical and other varieties of institutionalism are now being applied to the realities of African politics. The two books under review exemplify this tendency. Both books deal with state–society relations and performance in service delivery. While A. Carl LeVan’s work uses the number of veto players as determinant of state performance, Daren Kew’s examines the performance of civil society in democracy promotion in terms of the presence or absence of democratic political structure and culture in civil society organizations. As single case studies, both books seek to contribute to comparative politics from a longitudinal perspective, using mixed-methods surveys of Nigeria’s politics and policy processes. Dictators and Democracy in African Development covers the period 1961 to 2007, while Civil Society, Conflict Resolution, and Democracy in Nigeria explores the gamut of Nigeria’s history from precolonial times to the present.

In Dictators and Democracy, LeVan eschews prevalent explanations of policy performance, such as regime type, ethnicity and parochialism, leadership, or oil wealth, and argues that “the structure of the policy making had a more systematic impact on government performance than these other factors” (p. 13). LeVan both liberates and stretches the concept of veto players from its association with the study of formal institutional design in advanced democracies, to study state performance in Nigeria, a developing country. His independent variable integrates informal institutions into the veto-player framework, and shows that multiple veto players can exist within authoritarian regimes. Veto players operate in “both formal and informal political settings with leverage to block policy change and extract concessions” (p. 3). Institutional or partisan veto players have a motive for challenging policy based on distinctive preferences, have a mechanism for coordinating common interests and reducing information cost, and prevail in one major policy issue (p. 37). The author identifies 14 distinctive veto-player regimes (an arguable number), constructed from a selection of salient issues from his particular rendition of Nigeria’s political history. In his words: “My purpose in counting the number of veto players was to estimate the overall distribution of political authority and therefore create my independent variable” (p. 214; emphasis mine).

Levan’s main thesis is that “the number of veto players not only impacts policy stability, the usual focus of veto player studies, but also has differential effects on local and nationally oriented policy outputs” (p. 22). Two propositions are then subject to statistical tests: The coordination hypothesis that “regimes with more veto players face coordination problems that impede the delivery of indivisible public policies enjoyed at the national level” (p. 34) is statistically confirmed, while the logroll hypothesis that “regimes with more veto players face demands for excessive spending on targetable policies enjoyed at the local level” (p. 34) is statistically rejected.

A series of ordinary least squares regressions shows that an increase in veto players worsens coordination problems and is systematically correlated with fewer national public goods, such as fiscal indiscipline, inefficient courts, and larger classrooms. This correlates with reduction in the supply of local collective goods, thereby increasing accountability. Fewer veto players leads to corruption and patronage, LeVan argues. Nigeria thus needs to balance between the differing conditions for supply of national public goods and public accountability. He calls this the “Madisonian dilemma.”

Questions regarding the external validity of the statistical analyses detract from the strength of LeVan’s claims. For instance, the limited number of observations means that no time series analysis can be done, and there is no control for potentially confounding factors, such as widespread communal or other forms of violence, wildcat or protracted strikes across the educational sector and the judiciary, or economic recession arising from the sudden and deep slump in oil revenue. In addition, the qualitative analysis does not provide a deep and incisive description of the actual workings of the policy process in a manner that buttresses the hypothesis by linking it to the various ways in which veto players influence public spending in federal Nigeria.

Overall, LeVan’s effort does demonstrate the utility of the veto-player framework in the analysis of politics in Nigeria. The strength of the book is its focus on policy choice and performance in service delivery. The author skilfully operationalizes the concept of policy performance with clear indicators. He painstakingly accessed the required data and effectively utilized them in the quantitative analysis. However, the limits of its utility for comparative studies are shown in his discussion of Ghana and Zimbabwe (curiously), where he neither identifies veto players nor shows how they validate his theory. There are also some unexpected inaccuracies in the book, such as conflating the Niger Delta or the south or southwest zones with southern Nigeria, and the assumption that Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones consist of six states each (pp. 42, 220, 231). There is, finally, a general assumption that the most fundamental division in the country is that between the south and north. I would rather argue that the salience of any divide in Nigeria is tied to the specific issue at stake.

Daren Kew seeks to explain the performance of civil society in democracy promotion in terms of “the pattern of values and belief orientations the members of a polity are internalising and contributing to the larger political culture” (p. 29). He develops a conflict orientation model that draws on elements of transformation in the problem-solving workshop method of managing large groups or intercommunal disputes to examine how civil society organizations’ internal political structure and culture transmits democratic values to the larger national political culture. This is a very creative and innovative way of engaging the ongoing debate around the efficacy of civil society in Africa. Without rejecting alternative explanations, he anchors the debate on the localized culture of conflict resolution, by redefining democracy as “the institutionalisation of conflict resolution methods.” Kew buttresses this with an outline of values that are common to both conflict resolutions methods and democratic political culture (p. 56).

Kew’s central hypothesis is that “[d]emocratic political structures and democratic political cultures have differential but co-varying influences on the democracy promoting activities of civil society, such that the more democratic either the political structure or political culture of a civil society group, the more effective the group will be in promoting democracy” (p. 38; italics in the original). In other words, depending on the political structure and political culture, some organizations are better democracy promoters than others.

The author classifies civil society in Nigeria into three groups: the precolonial first generation (pre-1900), the colonial and early postcolonial second generation (1900–80), and the generation of nongovernmental organizations (1980–present). The first generation consists of largely ascriptive groups like religious and traditional institutions and ethnic associations; the second generation is mainly voluntary membership organizations, such as trade unions, professional associations, chambers of commerce and students associations; the third generation is largely NGOs, with a focus on human rights, pro-democracy, women’s interest, and environmental and conflict resolutions issues. Kew notes that “the changing character of the state is the single most important factor influencing the growth, development, and nature of civil society in Nigeria” (p. 73). He observes a ”correlation between centralisation of the state and centralisation in civil society, and subsequent decentralisation in both, [which] reflects the relationship of mutual influence that these two spheres share in structural terms.“ He also discusses “the leading role the state takes in this relationship” (p. 104).

Kew selects the conflict resolution experiences in a few organizations taken from each generation of these civil society groups for close examination. He classifies the democracy promotion characteristics or achievements of civil society groups, namely, “None,” “Passive,” “Active,” and “Active, Sustained,” with the most efficient and effective level of democracy promotion being the Active, Sustained. Of the 58 groups examined, only five engaged in Active, Sustained democracy promotion activities, and all five of these are democratically structured. Of the 27 organizations with democratic structures, 26 have highly democratic cultures, while three had moderately democratic structures (p. 294). Of the three generations of civil society, the second generation, which features more democratic political structure and culture, is the most effective in forcing regime change (p. 282).

Kew concludes that civil society groups whose formal organizational structures are democratic promote democracy within the national polity, and that democratically structured associations are classrooms of democracy. However, authoritarian-structured groups may also be classrooms for democracy if their political cultures are highly democratic (p. 276) While these broad conclusions and the recommendations associated with them fall short of the author’s promise to provide a “blue print for would-be grassroots democracy promoters in Africa and elsewhere” (p. 71), the book nonetheless provides a number of important insights. These are to be found in the very interesting narratives of the activities and experiences of three generations of civil society organizations concerning democratic development in Nigeria. It provides insight into the nature of the diversity in civil society organizations; the complexity of interactions among civil society actors, their motivations, values, communications, and other challenges; and the conflict management mechanisms within those organizations.

In general, both books are quite ambitious and bold in terms of experimenting with new theoretical approaches, and in drawing policy conclusions derivable from their empirical data sets and analyses, especially given that they are single case studies with limited observations. The authors have been painstaking in crafting their theoretical frameworks and point to new possibilities in the search for more rewarding approaches to the study of Nigeria’s changing, stormy, and often unstable political landscape.