POL101Y1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Personal Rule
Document Summary
Nigeria in 1974 had a oil boom which was followed by a military coup that people anticipated would be short and lead back to democracy. Most people were happy about the military coup. But with the oil boom came mass governmental corruption as money flowed easily and quickly. Most corruption is in the electoral process. Developmental trap cycle of enormous natural wealth but human development is low. Hiv/aids, lack of fresh drinking water, high birth rates all lower the standard of living for the average person. Oil and aid revenues only encourage a repressive state apparatus and feed corruption, lawlessness and personal rule. African states have been neopatrimonial because they combine the formal architecture of a modern bureaucratic state with the informal reality of personalized, unaccountable power and pervasive patron- client ties. Right to rule is given to a person rather than an office.
