David Wiley Kimberly Perez Michigan State University
The imposition of Sharia Law in Kaduna State, Nigeria in early 2000 resulted in violent opposition. This doctoral dissertation research studies whether the Nigerian local government could influence religious and ethnic conflict by ensuring adequate political representation of religious, ethnic, and gendered interest groups. The co-PI will spend approximately one year months in Kaduna researching equity and peace-building measures of local government areas (LGAs) that can be salient for conflict-reduction and democracy-building. The hypotheses are 1) local government positions, such as legislative, executive, and supervisory roles, that are more ethnically and religiously representative of the LGA population will have less ethnic and religious conflict; and 2) LGAs that are more responsive to rising ethnic and religious tension and have stronger ties to ethnic, religious, and gender organizations will have less ethnic and religious conflict. Data will be collected using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to complete an analysis of relations of power across spatial scales. The co-PI will conduct interviews of a cross-sectional sampling of individuals of voting age, a purposive content analysis of Nigerian newspaper coverage of religious conflict, archival research on LGA structures and budgets, direct observation of LGA meetings, and focus groups and interviews with elected officials; community organizations of ethnic, religious, and gender affiliations; youth groups and the principal political parties.
Broader Impacts. The study integrates methodologies from sociology, political science, gender studies, and peace and conflict resolution. The integrative approach will contribute to the understanding better of the functions of the State and local authorities in reducing conflict and building for stability at the intersection of the cleavages of ethnicity, class, gender, and religion in contemporary Nigeria. Research findings will contribute to sociological scholarship on religion, ethnicity, and politics where scholars have called for developing stronger models. This project seeks to advance measures of innovative local government equity- and peace-building in Nigeria and, indeed, the wider sub-Saharan African region.
