Rurality and Party System Fragmentation in the Nigerian Presidential Elections of the Fourth Republic

Nwankwo Cletus Famous ()
Additional contact information
Nwankwo Cletus Famous: Department of Geography, University of Nigeria Faculty of Social Sciences, Nsukka, Nigeria

Statistics, Politics and Policy, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 59-85

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of rurality on party system fragmentation in the Nigerian presidential elections of the fourth republic. The findings show that party system fragmentation (PSF) has been characteristically low in the Nigerian presidential elections and rurality does not significantly predict party system fragmentation. Rurality has a negative effect on PSF in all the elections studied except the 2003 election but only significant in the 2011 poll. Thus, the paper cast doubt on previous studies that indicate that striking rural-urban differences manifest in party system fragmentation in African elections and attribute it to previous studies’ measure of rurality. The paper argues that the use of a composite measure of rurality instead of singular measures of rurality might provide better analysis that helps us understand the effect of rurality on party systems. Also, it argues that in the study of the rural-urban difference in voting behaviour or political behaviours more broadly, data should be aggregated based on cities and non-city areas because cities have distinctive urban characters compared with non-city places. Analyses done on states or constituencies level may not reveal the rural-urban difference because states and constituencies usually have a mix of rural and urban population and other characteristics.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2019-0007 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:11:y:2020:i:1:p:59-85:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/spp/html

DOI: 10.1515/spp-2019-0007

Access Statistics for this article

Statistics, Politics and Policy is currently edited by Joel A. Middleton

More articles in Statistics, Politics and Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().