The Nigerian state and the political economy of state intervention

This dissertation examines the scope and impact of state intervention on Nigerian society. Using two case studies it shows how dynamic forces--within the Nigerian society and within the state itself--affect the state's formulation and implementation of economic policies. In its effort to assert its autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s, by intervening in the economic development of Nigeria, the state has had to interact with two other important members of the Nigerian society--local business and multinational corporations. The outcome of this interaction is the emergence of a much more complex, volatile, and uncertain "partnership" between the state, multinational corporations, and local business than that suggested by a strictly class-based analysis of the Nigerian state-society relations.