Two comparative case studies: political parties and local governance in Nigeria and Senegal

In this chapter, we examine whether and how the theoretical processes that we predict actually operate in individual cases. More specifically, we seek to identify the causal mechanisms predicted by our theory in two cases – Nigeria and Senegal. These two countries are both democratically decentralized, but they vary in their levels of party integration. Nigeria is quite party non-integrated, at least from the national to the state level, and to some extent also from the state to the local level. In Senegal, by contrast, the major parties are integrated and therefore reasonably well institutionalized. Our analyses of public goods provision in these countries provides evidence that our theory has considerable validity, even in “least-likely†cases. Among democratically decentralized countries, the non-integration and deinstitutionalization of political parties are an impediment to good governance.