Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Understanding post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) has shifted from concern with a dynamic reading of a central actor, the state, and associated processes and outcomes with the increased dominance of liberal peacebuilding as well as focus on localised and substate peacebuilding discourses. Key peacebuilding scholars have called for reengagement with structures of states, societies, and economies in these debates (MacGinty, 2019). This article responds to this call as it considers the potential for transformation in conflict-affected contexts, with attention to the state as a critical entity in this regard. It advances theoretical considerations in the developmental state paradigm (DSP) to offer the analytical framework, developmental PCR. In doing so, this article investigates interactions between developmentalism and conflict. Understanding post-conflict reconstruction (PCR) has shifted from concern with a dynamic reading of a central actor, the state, and associated processes and outcomes
The article has two aims, namely, to introduce developmental PCR as an extension of the DSP and to apply it as an analytical tool with reference to Nigeria. It advances the peacebuilding literature across disciplinary themes of development economics, peace, conflict, and security studies, and empirical experiences of post-conflict recovery across spaces in the Global South, Africa, and Asia. In doing so, it is a conceptual work with empirical foundations. The article puts forward a framework for examining PCR across developing and emerging contexts undergoing socioeconomic change.
The main elements of developmental PCR are that economic development as structural transformation, that is, transition from lower value agricultural and resource sectors to the higher value manufacturing sector, and security are intrinsic to one another; structural transformation and industrialisation are underpinned by underlying state–market interdependencies; and conflict can reinforce particular characterisations of statehood and how this interacts with reconstruction (see Figure 1).
In this article, developmental PCR is deployed in analysis of the case study of the Nigerian Civil War over 1967–1970. This case is significant in global studies on humanitarian crisis and conflict (Heerten & Moses, 2014) but has been little studied outside Nigeria with respect to the dynamics of reconstruction. Yet its complexity continues to inform the construct of Nigeria as a nation-state and questions of its resilience, given its prominence as one of the foremost economies in Africa and the Global South.
Following this introduction, the second section highlights movements in thought on the role of the state in peacebuilding and reconstruction. The third section offers the extension from the DSP to developmental PCR, drawing on classical arguments for paradigm extension as well as the empirical experiences of East Asian developmental states. The fourth section undertakes an examination of reconstruction in Nigeria following the civil war through case study analysis of secondary material using developmental PCR as an analytical framework. The final section concludes the article by highlighting the relevance of its findings for broader debates on the state, development, conflict, and reconstruction.
Considering Ideas Across Spaces
The State, Conflict, and Economic Reconstruction
PCR is a central element to the peace–security–development nexus that is driven ideologically by transitions in intellectual and policy debates on development. Pugh (2005) acknowledges this relationship as he denotes reconstruction as economic peacebuilding in the treatment of conflict-affected contexts. Murphy (2004, p. 97) links development to capitalist processes, which are relied upon for global stability. Connecting economic development to reconstruction can also be located within earlier understandings of peacebuilding by Galtung (1976) that were concerned with “economic hegemony and the unequal distribution of global resources” (Pugh, 1995, p. 321).
The role of the state has been examined historically as a driving force within PCR, most notably with Keynes in postwar Europe. The establishment of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which later became the World Bank, is an enduring outcome in this regard. Addison et al. (2001) adamantly argue that state action in the economy undermines macroeconomic conditions for growth in post-conflict settings across Africa. But they acknowledge that this position is at odds with Japan and Western Europe’s state-driven post–Second World War economic rebuilding agenda as well as South Korea’s rapid growth that followed a state-anchored recovery process. Beyond Europe and Asia, Africa has its own dalliances with state action in post-conflict contexts. Recent conflict-affected settings that present a rejuvenated engagement with the role of the state include Ethiopia and Rwanda (Mann & Berry, 2016; Zenawi, 2012). Contemporary reflections on PCR in Nigeria have tended to be critical of the state apparatus on account of subscription to liberal peacebuilding and an undermined role for the state (Arowosegbe, 2011; Davidheiser & Nyiayanaa, 2011; Ushie, 2013).
There has been an ideological shift towards market-driven processes, though with increasing nuance over time, within the development discourse and this has impinged upon peacebuilding most prominently in debates on liberal peacebuilding. Although the concept is heavily contested, there is a generalised acceptance that it is anchored upon the primacy of economic and political liberalisation (Curtis, 2013; Paris, 2010). Barbara (2008) and Paris (2010) highlight unyielding market fundamentalism that can reinforce and exacerbate socioeconomic challenges in conflict-affected contexts. Omeje (2018) critiques liberal peacebuilding in Africa as generating democratic conflicts that have accompanied neoliberal agendas. Recent debates offer a counter notion of illiberal peace that recognises the state construct as of some import but reduced to prioritising regime security above all else and operating in a context of “clientelism, cronyism, corruption” (Smith et al., 2020, p. 4).
Although drawing attention to the place of the state in conflict and reconstruction, the discourse on state failure and fragility, dominated by empirical reflections on Africa, has done much to give a sense of state incapacity in post-conflict contexts (Jackson, 2002; Osaghae, 2007). This is especially through reinforcing a simplistic reading of states in these conflict-affected contexts. For instance, the World Banks’s main tool for determining financial support to fragile states for peacebuilding, Country Policy Institutional Assessments (CPIA), and Post-Conflict Performance Indicators relies upon generalised prescribed indicators for judging institutional structures that address complex economic reconstruction processes (Mendes Dos Santos, 2015). The African Development Bank has, on the one hand, advanced a reading of fragility that is attentive to complex interactions across states and societies as well as time and issue (Kaberuka, 2014). But on the other hand, it has also relied on the CPIA as the basis for financial support. Taken together, these ideas have tended to influence thinking that has limited understanding about the complex role of the state in development, peacebuilding, and reconstruction.
The shift away from concern with the state in peacebuilding and reconstruction has also been in attention to analyses of local dynamism; these arguments have been important in complicating the simplistic logic of received peacebuilding policies and practices that exclude a consideration of local agency (see MacGinty, 2011; Richmond & Mitchell, 2011). For Nigeria, Johnson and Hutchison (2012) offer interesting analysis on the ways that Sharia governance systems interact with Northern populations in the provision of political governance. However, the focus on substate structures and dynamics assumes away the interdependence of structural and microlevel dynamics in this context. As such, the reality of these Sharia systems as part of political processes that shape and are shaped by state and federal government dynamics is little addressed. Nadarajah and Rampton (2015) note that hybridity, as a focus on the plurality of local peacebuilding practices that eschew statist and structural concerns, can present a false dichotomy between the local and the international as well as the national spheres. Yet Galtung (1976) engages peacebuilding as dependent on the complex interactions across core and periphery contexts with recognition of global political economy structures.
It is against this background that MacGinty (2019, p. 1) suggests that whilst peace and conflict studies has been very well-served by the local turn…fore-grounding of the local often means that the wider context—especially that involving the international…is somewhat neglected…. for peace to take root…issues of…structures of states, societies and economies need to be re-addressed.
This article’s contribution challenges the predominant dismissal or singular characterisations of the state in intellectual debates on PCR to foreground complex interactions between the state and wider entities. It places emphasis on developmentalism and especially industrial development in conflict-affected contexts. The article situates this concern with the state in its focus on an important period in recent history, the postindependence period in Africa that has been characterised as developmentalist and thus exhibiting shared features with developmental Asia. It offers an analytical tool that draws on the DSP with emphasis on the well-established experiences in Asian developmental states as a basis for conceptualising PCR in the next section.
Learning From Developmental States and Conflict
The Case for Developmental PCR
This section presents developmental PCR as an analytical framework that maintains the DSP’s concern with industrial transformation and empiricism. It considers the DSP’s malleability for engaging conflict and security concerns. Conceptualising the state in development processes using classical development theory and the empirical experiences of developmental states, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan gave rise to the DSP (Amsden, 1989; C. A. Johnson, 1982; Wade, 1990). The economic structure is a core target for transformation in the reconstruction processes of developmental states. The economic structure is a core target for transformation in the reconstruction processes of developmental states.
Despite overwhelming focus on the successful first-tier developmental states, the DSP has crossed Global South contexts from its Latin American roots to North East and South East Asian manifestations and in postindependence and rising African contexts. Mkandawire (2001) is clear that developmental statehood in East Asia resonates with the role of the state in postindependence Africa across themes that include economic nationalism, a focus on industrial transformation, and complex interdependencies across states and markets.
The DSP’s diverse pool of country case studies affords it the capacity for greater depth and breadth, given its methodological basis in the inductive examination of empirical experiences as a basis for theorising (Ikpe, 2018). This allows for the (re)introduction of issues such as conflict-development interactions and the complex state–market interlinkages across the economic and political spheres. Essentially it is possible to reengage factors that may otherwise have been neglected, as long as they have been relevant in the DSP’s own empirical underpinning. It is against this background that the section examines the Asian developmental states as illustrative by distilling the dynamics of interactions between conflict and development and the state and market as the foundations of developmental PCR.
Kuhn’s and Masterman’s contributions to the sociology of knowledge explain concept-building as an incremental enterprise. Developmental PCR builds upon the DSP in line with Kuhn’s (1970) and Masterman’s (1970) ideas on paradigm and its extension. They present paradigm as a set of scientific achievements that should attract other scientists and offer new problems to be resolved while noting that paradigm extension is bounded by some characteristics of the paradigm in its original form.
Moving from the DSP to developmental PCR retains concern with the role of the state, sectoral focus on industrialisation, and methodological reliance on case study analysis. However, it progresses beyond the DSP with attention to interaction between conflict and development processes and outcomes and considering the actions of states as interdependent on markets and society.
The conflict experiences of the first-tier developmental states have been diverse: Japanese participation in the Pacific and the Sino-Japanese Wars 1937–1945; the Korean Civil War, 1950–1953; and contestations between Taiwan and Mainland China, 1945–1949, with lasting impacts. There is a sense in which these states were pressured and influenced to energise development and change due to their security challenges (Barbara, 2008). These cases provide a basis for the notion of developmental PCR in two stages: first, in defining and understanding the conflict-development experiences of developmental state exemplars and, second, in the progression to distilling a framework for examining wider conflict-affected contexts.
Three themes emerge that underscore how PCR in conflict-affected developmental states has been historically developmental. These also provide the three tenets of developmental PCR (see Figure 1); these are discussed in the rest of this section.
Tenet 1
Interdependency of Development as Industrialisation and Security
Within the DSP, industrialisation has been foundational to economic development with the state expected to generate resources for industrial investments and manage industrial policy in line with classical development theory (Gerschenkron, 1962; W. A. Lewis, 1954). Hirschman (1968) shows that violent conflict has underscored economic transformation through industrialisation as a result of the isolation of affected contexts in the global economy. This subsection draws on an illustrative developmental state to show the working of Tenet 1 in how the interdependency of security and industrial development can be underscored by political isolation, poor access to imports, and preserving valuable foreign exchange in conflict-affected contexts.
The empirical rooting of this first tenet draws on analysis of the Taiwanese state across political isolation, imports, and foreign exchange. Thorbecke and Wan (2007) argue that the post-1949 government saw itself in exile, and its industrial policies were guided by the need for survival. This denotes links between political isolation and development policy. Domestic industrialisation was prioritised because of high inflation and lack of foreign exchange. The outcome of this approach was industrial development in the 1950s with focus on manufacturing across chemical fertiliser, plastics, and textile amongst other sectors (Cheng, 2001). The policy tools that were used included limiting imports, prioritising access to foreign exchange and finance, and controlling competition. In this context, the state’s focus on development has been driven by security-related concerns and has meant the primacy of manufacturing influenced by changing market dynamics such as inflation and access to foreign exchange.
Tenet 2
Structural Transformation, Industrialisation, and Underlying State–Market Interdependencies
In the DSP, interdependencies between the state and market have been at the helm of shifts towards industrial development (Ikpe, 2018). The contested idea of (embedded) state autonomy, that is mitigated by its embeddedness in society, has been key to understanding the interactions between the state and other entities (Evans, 1995). The subsection draws on illustrative developmental states to show the working of the second tenet in how focus on industrial policy is influenced by interactions across the state and market in relevant policies as well as resource movements.
The empirical rooting of this second tenet draws on analysis of Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean states. In Taiwan, financing industrial transformation relied on resources from the dominant agricultural sector, given the state’s limited control of finance due to tensions with Mainland China. Transfer of resources from agriculture for investment in manufacturing relied on the interdependencies across the state and the private sector. Producer associations of agricultural producers negotiated access to state resources in inputs and infrastructure on behalf of small-scale producers (Francks et al., 1999, pp. 182–184; Moore, 1985). In return, these associations extracted agricultural produce and taxes for the state that contributed to exports and foreign exchange for reinvestment in manufacturing (Francks et al., 1999, pp. 161–174).
The postwar Japanese state strengthened its structural transformation agenda through engagement with dominant economic conglomerates (Singh, 1996). Boltho (1985) argues that selective market competition was the result of Ministry of Trade and Industry policy that was shaped by powerful dominant firms. The interdependent relationship between the state and private sector informed policies that were advantageous to exporters (Singh, 1996).
The South Korean state moved to alter the market structure by supporting the indigenous private sector that had been neglected under Japanese colonisation (Amsden, 1989, pp. 32–53). This interdependence of the state and market was seen as necessary to reduce reliance on U.S. aid. Across these cases, interdependence between the state and market informed the shift of resources to support manufacturing and negotiated industrial policies, including strengthening the domestic private sector.
Tenet 3
Characterisation of States and Interactions With Reconstruction and Development
The notion of strong and capable states within the DSP is rooted in the logic of state autonomy and robust bureaucracies and how this has influenced economic success in developmental states (Evans, 1995; Schneider, 1999). Conflict has been fundamental in defining the interactions between bureaucrats and state leadership as well as being at the core of the emergence of the military as a political force and therein occupants of the state apparatus. The military has been posited as strengthening indigenous private sector, within configurations of economic and social power that are dominant during late industrial development (Robison, 1988). The section draws on illustrative developmental states to show the working of the third tenet in how characterisation of statehood in conflict-affected contexts interacts with reconstruction and development, with attention to the place of the bureaucracy and military.
The third tenet of developmental PCR is rooted empirically in the analysis of Japanese and South Korean states. The militarily led South Korean state is seen as exemplifying a strength deemed essential for its economic success, including supporting the domestic private sector (Amsden, 1989, pp. 32–53). This also highlights the interrelatedness between the state and market. Cheng et al. (1998) argue that staffing of the bureaucracy in the South Korea was generally ineffective until the military takeover.
In Japan, Okuno-Fujiwara (1991) suggests that the experience of wartime control influenced industrial policy approaches as many bureaucrats were trained to trust and rely on the state during reconstruction. The idea of strong states in these cases is linked to the vulnerabilities that characterise such contexts so that the South Korean and Japanese states are seen as providing a necessary sense of strength and offering a robust basis of trust to support development.
The particular spaces of Asian developmental state experiences, including different types of conflict and geography, may challenge the basis for transposing lessons to African contexts. East Asian developmental states faced externally driven threats. These contexts differed amongst one another as well as from the Nigeria case study that faced primarily intranational threats but with externally influenced dynamics.
However, conflicts across the developmental states and the Nigeria case share the features of interlinked threats to state survival across political (territorial control in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Nigeria) and economic spaces (use of mineral resource bases as well as savings for investment to drive socioeconomic transformation in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Nigeria). Furthermore, conflict contexts in the developmental states, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, share certain characteristics with the case study of Nigeria including being periphery contexts, affinity for state-led recovery, and negotiating the political economy of the Cold War period and authoritarianism around the mid-late 20th-century period.
As expressed in Figure 1, developmental PCR, represented by the first block in the framework, comprises three contributing tenets represented by the second set of three blocks. There are interactions across the contributing tenets represented by arrows depicting influential dynamics. The second tenet of developmental PCR influences both the first tenet and the third tenet. 1
Developmental post-conflict reconstruction analytical framework.
As has been shown, the interactions between conflict and socioeconomic transformation in developmental states provide an illustrative basis for developmental PCR as an analytical tool. In the next section, we deploy developmental PCR in Nigeria to consider the extent to which it can inform analyses in other contexts.
Reconstruction in Nigeria
The Utility of Developmental PCR?
Postindependence African states, including Nigeria, have been portrayed as maintaining control over their development agendas through what was essentially an economic nationalist approach (Mkandawire, 2001; Young, 2004). In Nigeria, this was exemplified by four medium- to long-term development plans from 1962 to 1985 that had the key objective of structural transformation, that is, the pursuit of industrialisation within a largely agrarian economy (Ikpe, 2014). The Nigerian state’s interactions with development processes and outcomes were influenced by the civil war that was led by the regional governor of the Eastern region of Nigeria over 1967–1970. This war was precipitated by coups that resulted from underlying socioeconomic, political, and ethnic fissures that had been exacerbated by the dynamics of British colonialism (see Figure 2; Uche, 2008).
Nigerian Civil War time line.
Methodological Approach
This section presents a case study analysis that uses developmental PCR to examine interactions between conflict and development with the case of the Nigerian Civil War. This is a heuristic case study as it is part of a “building block” exercise, as an additional case to the first-tier developmental states that interrogates and potentially strengthens the analytical value of developmental PCR through its deployment (Eckstein, 1992, pp. 144–145). The case is thus one step in this concept-building endeavour that relies on the generation of other cases to incrementally strengthen this analytical framework.
Merriam (1988, pp. 35–36) argues that historical research requires reliance on making sense of previous studies. Deploying developmental PCR in this case study relies on secondary material—academic literature, policy and media reports, and nonfiction—from a systematic review using a key word search, including “Biafra,” “Nigeria,” “civil war,” “reconstruction,” “economy,” “economic,” “conflict,” “development” across ISI Web of Science, Scopus, JSTOR, PROQUEST, PubMed, Google scholar, and Google as well as policy documents such as the second and third national development plans and papers by serving government officials. These key words were used to capture literature that addressed key elements of developmental PCR, namely economic and reconstruction processes and outcomes linked to the conflict and geographical location.
Material that was selected for analysis met the inclusion criteria of case study research and thematic focus on economic reconstruction efforts, including processes (policy actors, policy formulation, and implementation) and outcomes (economic performances during and after the war). There was also focus on materials that highlighted key voices of significant state- and private-sector actors in the period of focus from 1965 to 1980. Attention to these voices provides a strong basis for examining complex interactions across the state and market within this context, which is a key element of the three tenets of developmental PCR. The period of 1965–1980 was selected to capture discussions associated with the relevant second and, to a lesser extent, third national development plans (1970–1974, 1975–1980) that addressed the postwar reconstruction period. Studies that did not address economic factors in any respect were excluded. Selection of materials was based on screening in two stages, first on titles and abstracts and second on reading full texts. The review was exhaustive in seeking to achieve a level of saturation where there were no emergent delineable new insights (Booth, 2016).
The findings from these studies are analysed based on the tenets of the developmental PCR framework in the rest of this section. This is carried out using theoretical thematic analysis of the texts (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Patterns of meaning in the narratives within and across papers that were relevant to the three tenets of developmental PCR were reflectively analysed (Chwo et al., 2018). Against this background, the following three subsections reflect analysis on the synergies between the three tenets of developmental PCR and the Nigeria case. In the final subsection, the analysis examines the discontinuities between developmental PCR and the Nigeria case.
Tenet 1
Interdependency of Development as Industrialisation and Security in Nigeria
As its first tenet, developmental PCR emphasises an interdependence between security and economic development as defined by structural transformation and industrialisation (see Figure 1). The Nigeria case resonates to some degree with the working of the first tenet of developmental PCR on political isolation, poor access to imports, and preserving valuable foreign exchange in conflict-affected contexts. In particular, these factors emerge in relation to security and defence spending, economic reconstruction, and locally driven recovery in Eastern Nigeria.
The war is cited as influencing development policy links to structural transformation and industrialisation particularly to substitute imports to manage scarce foreign exchange. Schatz (1977, p. 21) suggests that the civil war stimulated industrial production due to import restrictions that were in place during the conflict. Import restrictions were necessary also to avert a liquidity crisis linked to foreign exchange used for military spending due to the war (Nafziger, 1972; see Figure A1). The Nigerian state extended the use of its expanding petroleum resources as the central resource base for its postwar second national development plan, from 1970 that was anchored on the manufacturing sector as key to economic transformation (Ikpe, 2014; P. Lewis, 2010, p. 135).
In the subnational conflict–affected Eastern Nigeria, industrialisation has been significant in the interactions between political survival and economic reconstruction. Nafziger (1972) argues that although the civil war damaged manufacturing activity in the East, the sector was in some regards buoyed by import-substituting activities during the conflict itself. This is linked to a sense of isolation emphasised by limited support from the Nigerian state towards reconstruction in the region. Observing this subnational context presents a varied picture, from the national level, of neglect of subnational industrial and developmental objectives. As such, on the one hand, there is the contradiction of major destruction due to the violence with limited support from the Nigerian state. But on the other hand, there is the subnational prioritisation of manufacturing activities to address local needs that is attributable to the paucity of state support. In the subnational conflict–affected Eastern Nigeria, industrialisation has been significant in the interactions between political survival and economic reconstruction.
The end of the war saw urgent locally driven rehabilitation of key manufacturing-related infrastructure, including the Aba textile mills and the Nsukka water works (
Taken together, these factors highlight the interdependencies across conflict and industrial change in Nigeria as well as in the East across time that are defined also by contextual realities at national and subnational levels.
Tenet 2
Structural Transformation, Industrialisation, and Underlying State–Market Interdependencies in Nigeria
From the second tenet of developmental PCR, the interrelatedness between the state and market is a feature of industrial development as part of reconstruction (see Figure 1). This tenet resonates to some extent with the Nigeria case in how focus on industrial policy is influenced by interactions across the state and market in relevant policies. These factors emerge especially in the state’s interaction with the market with emphasis on indigenising the private sector in the pursuit of industrial development as part of economic recovery.
During reconstruction, there was a clarity of focus in which the private sector was anticipated as a key constituency in effecting the manufacturing focus of the development agenda (Ikpe, 2014). This also supports the influential dynamics between the first and second tenets of developmental PCR. The war influenced interactions between the state and the market that drove an urgent need to support the domestic private sector. This direction was linked to the level of distrust of foreign private-sector actors that accompanied the dubious roles played by multinationals in engagement with the secessionist Biafran side (Ogbuagu, 1983). An extensive indigenisation policy over 1972 and 1977, intended to place indigenous entrepreneurs at an ownership advantage vis-à-vis their foreign counterparts led to fundamental restructuring of the private sector (Hoogvelt, 1979). As such, the state directly defined the construct of the market. However, it did not lead to great successes in the indigenous private sector’s role in industrial development as is discussed later in the section.
Interdependencies between the state and the market influenced policies for strengthening the participation of the Nigerian private sector in the industrial development agenda. Certain business elite constituencies influenced the rollout of these policies to their benefit, given the limitations of other key groups (Ogbuagu, 1983). However, prominent state officials, Anthony Enahoro and Shehu Shagari, lobbied successfully to delay the deployment of indigenisation policies due to concerns about the readiness of Northern and Eastern business interests (Biersteker, 1987, p. 78). Interdependencies between the state and the market influenced policies for strengthening the participation of the Nigerian private sector in the industrial development agenda
The social, economic, and political underpinning of these interactions reveals the characteristics of the internal relatedness between the state and market. The interactions between the state and market were defined in part by the relative strength of business elite group interests across Nigeria, particularly given the impact of the war. From the 1970s, pressure to indigenise private capital was strongest from the Western and Northern business elite, given that the civil war had largely silenced indigenous private capital from the East (Achebe, 2012, p. 235; Biersteker, 1987, pp. 69–73, 252; Heerten & Moses, 2014; Ogbuagu, 1983). This can be seen as an extension of the isolation of the Igbo that was mentioned earlier. The limited Igbo participation was also informed by the damage wreaked on manufacturing institutions in the East as a result of the war. Ogbuagu (1983) confirms that the state’s indigenisation policies in the aftermath of the war were seen as reinforcing the prominence of Western and Northern actors in the private sector vis-à-vis their Eastern counterparts.
The interrelatedness of the state and market towards industrial development in the aftermath of the conflict is evidenced in two ways. First, in the state’s focus on altering the structure of the private sector constituency through indigenisation policy interventions due in part to its distrust of foreign constituencies; second, in the private sector’s influence on the indigenisation process that advantaged Northern and Western business elites vis-à-vis their Eastern counterparts.
Tenet Three
Characterisation of States and Interactions With Reconstruction and Development in Nigeria
The third tenet of developmental PCR draws attention to the characterisation of statehood in conflict contexts and how this interacts with economic reconstruction and development processes (see Figure 1). This resonates with the Nigeria case in the interactions between the characterisation of the Nigerian state in relation to the bureaucracy and military, in particular. Falola and Heaton (2008, p. 180) note that the military emerged “more powerful and dominant” than before the war but also with a “corrupt [and] bloated bureaucracy.” But Schatz (1977, p. 21) and Ohiorhenuan (1984) suggest an energy that drove the militarily led state’s post-conflict developmental objectives and nationalist tendencies. This reveals a degree of contradiction in the state’s power and dominance that is underscored by a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy but viewed as delivering on developmental objectives.
Interaction between the state and the bureaucracy is considered positively in the vision of government as centralised and single-minded in the pursuit of industrial development. Key economic bureaucrats located the Second Development Plan, associated with reconstruction, in the victorious Nigerian state’s centralised control of the economy (Awotona, 1992; P. Lewis, 2010, p. 135). Nafziger (1972, p. 242) observes Nigerian economists, including bureaucrats, as noting that “The centralisation of government and the mobilisation of the population during the war…led to the instigation of fundamental long-term economic reforms and structural changes.”
This newfound confidence was congruent with the notion of foreign interests as undermining domestic priorities. This concern was stated clearly in the Second Development Plan and formed the basis for the indigenisation and nationalisation policies (Federal Government of Nigeria, 1970, p. 289). State antagonism towards foreign interests also indicates the interrelatedness of the state and market, resulting in a deepening of domestic private-sector actors within the market structure. This reflects the influential dynamics between the second and third tenets of developmental PCR.
Military rule in Nigeria has been widely critiqued in terms of its impact on the Nigerian polity with good reason (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2009). Considering the 1970s Gowon, Mohammed, and Obasanjo regimes, the latter of which eventually handed over to the Shagari civilian administration presents a more nuanced reading. In this period, the military was influential in the political centralisation of state power that enabled a level of single-mindedness in economic pursuits. It is described as having provided “A new spirit of national consciousness and commitment to development” (Nafziger, 1972, p. 242). This is an example of how military rule and authoritarianism characterise the state’s focus and convening power around a national developmental agenda.
Yet the militarily led state’s precarity and vulnerability drove part of its reconstruction agenda. In the post-conflict period, because of its relatively uncertain position within the ruling class, the military is cited as needing to respond to general welfare needs based directly on the ability of groups to organise and articulate their needs and, inversely, on their “social distance” from the base of power (Ohiorhenuan, 1984, p. 11). This problematises the singular narrative of military authoritarian regimes as all-powerful that has also attended developmental states. In addition to progressing beyond the state–market dichotomy, this calls into question the logic of a state-society dichotomy. The state exhibits interdependencies also with constituencies in society that influence its developmental approaches.
Beyond Developmental PCR
Critical Reflections on PCR in the Postindependence Period in Nigeria
This case study reveals some resonance with developmental states across the three key tenets of developmental PCR as discussed in the preceding sections. Nonetheless, in Nigeria, there were limited synergies between indigenisation policies and manufacturing outcomes. Despite its expansion of domestic private capital, indigenisation mainly reinforced participation in trade particularly in the West as foreign capital maintained control of the manufacturing sector not least due to its continued dominance of the technology sphere (Biersteker, 1987, p. 138; Ogbuagu, 1983). In Nigeria, there were limited synergies between indigenisation policies and manufacturing outcomes.
There was a subordination of political governance and social factors to economic developmental priorities. In a pattern that buttresses debates about the incongruence between state security and human security, Awotona (1992) and Nafziger (1972) show how reconstruction efforts failed to take into account needs in the war-affected East due to poor planning and exclusion of voices in war-affected regions and wider inequality and poverty realities.
Perhaps the most critical point of note is that some of the worst affected were seemingly excluded from key economic reconstruction policy interventions, namely indigenisation policies, thus undermining their long-term economic reintegration. Davidheiser and Nyiayaana (2011) note an enduring disaffection amongst Igbos in Nigeria as a result of a failure of the state to substantively address their economic disenfranchisement during the civil war. Maiangwa (2016) is clear that neo-Biafran revivals are rooted in the sense of exclusion of Igbo peoples from reconstruction efforts at the level of the national economy, including their inability to benefit from indigenisation policies as well as insufficient investment in Eastern Nigeria in the aftermath of conflict.
This is important also because it distinguishes the Nigerian context of reconstruction as fragmented due to the legacy of intrastate conflict. This is in contrast to the Asian developmental states where reconstruction was in some regards galvanised as a national response to implicit or explicit external threats. This incongruence highlights the significance of conflict types to the dynamics that attend reconstruction processes and outcomes.
Conclusion
This article presents a conceptual lens for analysing PCR, developmental PCR that draws on the DSP. Using developmental PCR shows that postindependence Nigeria pursued reconstruction with a focus on industrial development, reconstruction processes that hinged on interrelatedness between the state and market in constructing domestic private capital and responding to foreign capital interests, and the characterisation of the state as mission-oriented in tandem with bureaucrats. The findings are significant in reengaging the complex place of the state in PCR, with a structural–developmental agenda, and elucidating how this continues to influence security and development in contemporary Nigeria.
There are shortcomings that emerge from the deployment of developmental PCR in the Nigerian context. Beyond the limited effectiveness of indigenisation policies, there was the neglect of political governance in lack of representative voices with the authoritarian regime. There were also adverse fallouts, including limited state support to the war-affected East for reconstruction as well as the region’s poor participation in industrial policy interventions that accompanied the failure to prioritise their specific needs to address poverty and inequalities. As such, there is the seeming exclusion of the Igbo that evokes a sense of horizontal inequality in sharp relief. Over time, these failings are threatening the hard-fought peace with renewed agitation by the self-proclaimed Indigenous People of Biafra movement. This outcome also emphasises a key additional layer in the Nigerian conflict, that is, its intrastate nature.
Developmental reconstruction and its empirical links to authoritarianism remain a point of contention. These have been acknowledged in key conflict-affected African countries—Ethiopia and Rwanda—that have experienced impressive economic performances with some emphasis on structural change (Matfess, 2015, p. 182; World Bank, 2017, pp. 19–20). Despite impressive post-conflict developmental trajectories, these contexts have at times sat uneasily with current discourses of political liberalisation. They highlight the discomfiture of developmentalism in the current global development policy context.
This case study analysis of the Nigerian Civil War is a heuristic one. As such, it is part of a building block process of establishing the analytical prowess of developmental PCR. This process of concept-building requires additional case study analyses that will offer, critique, and illuminate new realities whilst retaining analytical concern with the key elements of developmental PCR in line with the aforementioned principles of paradigm extension. Extended work on developmental PCR should be cognisant of old and new challenges. On the latter, it ought to build upon contemporary struggles for genuine greater popular participation in governance and development outcomes at a disaggregated level. On the former, it should reengage Africa’s postindependence ambitions for socioeconomic transformation.
Rethinking what constitutes successful PCR for long-term gains requires engaging with structural factors as essential to recovery such as industrial development and attention to the complex interdependencies between the state, domestic, and foreign private-sector actors and societal constituencies. On this, it is necessary to elevate the voices, interests, and constituencies that have been worst affected as a central component of PCR processes, policies, and outcomes. Recent history has offered us a basis for a broader analytical viewpoint on PCR beyond the dominant approaches of liberal and localised peacebuilding. To this end, developmental PCR provides an alternative framework for understanding industrial development as congruent with economic reconstruction with attention to the structures of states, markets, and society in developing and emerging contexts. It is necessary to elevate the voices, interests, and constituencies that have been worst affected as a central component of PCR processes, policies, and outcomes