Based on selected papers presented at the international conference on Indigenous Political Structures and Governance in Africa, held in the University of Nigeria in 2001. Drawing from the works of leading scholars of the subject, this volume explores the interaction between indigenous socio-political structures and African state politics. Focusing on the imaginative response of indigenous structures to the expansion of political space in the 20th Century, it analyses the implications of these grassroots institutions for modern state formation.

George Ayittey’s Indigenous African Institutions presents a detailed and convincing picture of pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa - its cultures, traditions, and indigenous institutions, including participatory democracy.

This book examines how modern Nigerian political institutions have grappled with the resurgence of traditional institutions of political leadership in the post-colonial era. The contributors examine the role and nature of traditional governance institutions in West Africa from pre-colonial times to the post-colonial era. Part I considers a range of traditional institutions including monarchies, Islamic institutions and the role of culture and arts such as masking and music in traditional leadership. Part II focuses on modern governance institutions, elites, political action, arts, and democracy in post-colonial Nigeria. Part III examines democratic institutions and processes in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, covering issues such as electoral reforms, women’s political participation, and democratic citizenship. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, governance, and democratization.

An analysis of how traditional power structures in Nigeria have survived the forces of colonialism and the modernization processes of postcolonial regimes. This book analyzes how indigenous political power structures in Nigeria survived both the constricting forces of colonialism and the modernization programs of postcolonial regimes. With twenty detailed case studies on colonial andpostcolonial Nigerian history, the complex interactions between chieftaincy structures and the rapidly shifting sociopolitical and economic conditions of the twentieth century become evident. Drawing on the interactions between the state and chieftaincy, this study goes beyond earlier Africanist scholarship that attributes the resilience of these indigenous structures to their enduring normative and utilitarian qualities. Linked to externally-derived forces, and legitimated by neotraditional themes, chieftaincy structures were distorted by the indirect rule system, transformed by competing communal claims, and legitimated a dominant ethno-regional power configuration. Olufemi Vaughan is Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of History, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Winner of the 2001 Cecil B. Currey Book-length Award from the Association ofThird World Studies.