Towards polycentric federalism: assessing federal institutional design in multiethnic African states

Kaleb Demerew, Samson Faboye and Sampson Edodi

Journal of Institutional Economics, 2025, vol. 21, -

Abstract: This paper addresses the conceptual gap between the expected benefits of federalism in managing ethnicity-based conflict and its actual governance outcomes in the African context. One of the main reasons for this gap is the conflation of federalism with decentralization. In response, we develop and configure polycentric federalism as a praxis-oriented framework with three institutional parameters, administrative devolution, peaceful competition among governance units, and individual choice of alternating governance structures. Through this framework, we analyse federal institutional design in Nigeria and Ethiopia to illustrate why federalism fails to effectively manage ethnicity-based conflict in African states. Despite the varying approaches to federalism in the two cases, institutional design falls far short of achieving the parameters of polycentric federalism, a necessary condition for effectively managing diversity through federalism. Beyond the policy implications, our analysis contributes to institutional economics by illustrating how federal institutional design affects identity-based group dynamics in conflict-ridden multiethnic polities.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

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:cup:jinsec:v:21:y:2025:i::p:-_9

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Institutional Economics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().