African State Governance: Subnational Politics and National Power

This book offers a comprehensive picture of state and local legislative politics in Africa and a detailed examination of formal and informal political authority in the continent's states, provinces and counties. It considers the pace and changing nature of African federalism - identifying a variety of subnational institutions emerging as centers of policy control - and asks the key questions: how do state legislatures affect the balance of power between governors and the national executive? What influences state-level budgetary control? Given recent decentralization and various political reforms, what is a state legislature? How will Africa's new oil discoveries impact distributive politics? The book explores how executive-legislative relations often differ across levels of government, even where the party system otherwise seems similar, and argues that these differences are not simply the result of limited resources or experience, but due to misaligned institutional incentives. Chapters on Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa fill an important gap in comparative institutional research about state and local politics, and consider how identified trends could lead either to the promotion of democratic reform – or the consolidation of illiberal local politicians and 'godfathers' in Africa.