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Abstract

Is the United States (U.S.) committed to promoting the much-touted ‘liberal’ democracy abroad, including Nigeria? Liberal democracy is widely conceptualised and popularly regarded as the best form of human political governance system because of its liberal theoretical features. Democracies are assumed to possess these theoretical features that would guarantee human rights, people’s freedoms, and this political system will emerge to complement the state in its socio-economic development strides. This thesis interrogates the United States of America’s support for democratisation in Nigeria between 1993 and 2011. It explores how the American elite’s transnational network enabled the Nigerian elites to constantly manipulate the electoral process to ensure the recruitment of their cronies to the group of political elites. These elites, who are policymakers, are also power brokers whose influence is predominant on national decision-makers’ choices. Extant literature is fixated on domestic factors as a major challenge to democratisation, making external assistance for democracy appear intellectually subordinate and unimportant. The study explores how American and Nigerian elites' behaviour is captured by power elite theory, social network approach, elite transnational networking, and the U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy to create an ‘electoral’ democracy in Nigeria. This collaboration empowered the Nigerian elite to become and remain the ’selectorate’ who through the electoral process, utilised the framework to nominate and secure the voting of their anointed candidates, neither through free and fair elections nor by the electorates. This interdisciplinary thesis employs works across intellectual history, ideology/philosophy, economics, domestic politics, and international relations to rethink the U.S. support for democracy abroad as a soft power and a major post-Cold War foreign policy strategy. It uses elite transnational network, neo-Gramscian, and Marxist approaches to both criticise liberal theory and to analyse how power elites were the intellectual forces, who through their sponsored ideas, recalibrated the U.S. liberal internationalism to consolidate American hegemony as well as ensure that the political elites remained a significant feature of this Washington’s global objective. The American power elite were the intellectuals who translated their (class) thoughts and group interests, through imperial knowledge networks, into policies that drove American support for democracy in Nigeria.

This thesis brings to bear a mixed synthesis of often-touted classical ideology (liberalism) and discursive empirical understanding of the challenges to the development of democracy in Nigeria from over 25 research interviews to explore the transnational social networks between American and Nigerian elites. In developing this thesis and its conclusion, the study explores how the U.S. constructs electoral (capitalist) democracy through the projection of endemic soft power with hidden motives, and the export of this democratic political system to Nigeria. In this regard, the elite theory provides the framework for establishing whether the backgrounds of U.S elite policymakers affected the process and outcome of their policy decisions toward promoting democracy in Nigeria. The core question is whether there was a self-serving, undemocratic, and elitist class that dominated American democracy promotion policy processes, and if yes, which people were in this category of this group in U.S. society? What is the nexus between their background and perspectives, and how did this connection affect the content and context of their policy decisions? Based on the understanding of who and the attributes of the U.S. decision-makers, what policy would I expect them to formulate and implement toward promoting democracy in Nigeria, and what did they, in reality, do in the country? Did the U.S. and Nigerian elites have common interests in Nigeria and if yes, what and why? What does the U.S. transnational elite knowledge network mean for international democracy promotion and democratisation in Nigeria? Perhaps the fundamental question is whether the outcome of American and Nigerian elites’ collaborated support for democracy reflects capitalist democracy. Overall, this study examines, understands, and analyses the U.S. support for democracy in Nigeria as a case of ‘selectoral’ democracy orchestrated to serve elite policymakers’ interests. Fundamentally, the U.S. theoretical projection of democracy did not meet Washington’s empirical practice of democracy promotion in Nigeria.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) J Political Science > JZ International relations
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > International Politics School of Policy & Global Affairs > School of Policy & Global Affairs Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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