PRESERVING FEDERALISM, LOCAL AUTONOMY IN A RESOURCE DEPENDENT RURAL STATE: A CASE OF NIGERIA

Abstract

The Paper explores the practical implications of the new political economy of federalism, Tiebout hypothesis and the subsidiarity principle all of which couched around the modern market system of federal governance. Focusing on Nigeria’s experimentation, the paper casts a dissenting voice to the emergent converging proposition of the new political economy of federalism by arguing that federal governance is not merely a matter of market efficiency because the distinctive features of plural societies often require that both principles of good
economics and federal governance be subordinated to political considerations. After exploring the practical implications of the Nigerian market preserving model of federalism in the light of its “three-player ethnic game,” the inference is that, there is organic relationship between the logic of the market and state, and the contradiction between “competitive federalism” and “cooperative federalism” that undermines the centralizing tendencies and
enhances federalism’s perdition, and therefore predisposes the state to adopt both defective model of development and federal governance. Against the prevailing orthodoxy, the paper avers the need to move from a “market preserving federalism” that encourages “bargaining and compromise” at the cost of social equity to an institutional dimension and makes a case for yet another experimentation with the social market economy model of the East Asian and the Nordic nations which lays greater emphasis on social equity and participative aspects
of delivery as well as encouraging of freedom of choices, political, social, economic and cultural freedom within the rule of law. Finally, as an alternative to the prevailing nominal modern market system of federal governance in Nigeria, the paper concluded by noting that the concept and practice of market preserving federalism had to be deconstructed to reflect the extension of the concept of market into politics and original idea behind federalism as a model of political organization.