From ＂Militacracy＂ to Illiberal Democracy An Analytical Discourse on Nigeria's Struggles with Liberal Democracy

Adeniyi S. Basiru

《Taiwan Journal of Democracy》 17卷2期 (2021/12) Pp. 149-175

摘要

This essay, in a discursive cum analytical fashion, examines Nigeria's struggles with liberal democracy in the post-militacratic order. It notes that since the end of the militacratic order in 1999, the practice of liberal democracy has not sufficiently conformed to liberal democratic requirements and, indeed, has mimicked illiberal democracy and appurtenances associated with semi-authoritarian order. The essay concludes that as long as the domain of civil society in Nigeria remains weak, the society remains praetorianized, and the country remains pervasively entrenched in neo-patrimonial political culture and other socio-cultural habits that are antithetical to liberal democratic practices, the Nigerian polity is likely to stay trapped in illiberalism.

關鍵字

Authoritarianism ； democracy ； democratization ； illiberalism ； praetorianism

參考文獻

Kelvin Ebiri et al., “INEC Decries Military Intervention in Rivers Guber Election,” Guardian, March 17, 2019.

Emmanuel O. Ojo, “Separation of Powers and Good Governance,” in The Legislature and Governance in Nigeria: A Festschrift in Honour of Prof. J.A.A. Ayoade, vol. 2, ed. Emmanuel Ojo (Ibadan, Nigeria: John Archers, 2018), 49.

Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Law (1748)

Felix Okoli and Fidelis Okoli, Introduction to Government and Politics (Enugu, Nigeria: Africana FEP Publishers, 1990), 15.

Kwame Prempeh, “Presidential Power in Comparative Perspective: The Puzzling Persistence of Imperial Presidency in Post-Authoritarian Africa,” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2008): 761-834.