Federalism and conflict management: The cases of Nigeria and South Africa

There is an increasing scholarly interest in federalism studies among the students of political science which gained more currency within the last few decades. The popularity of federalism in the academia coincides with the importance of issue in the political field especially among the policy-makers of multi-ethnic societies. Given the surge in federalism studies, it is no surprise that the literature on federalism is immense, however, not much work is done to analyze the capacity of federalism to reduce or eliminate intra-group or inter-groups conflicts. This study is the product of the academic and political interest in federalism. It also aims at providing a contribution to the analysis of the potential linkage between federalism and conflict management and the feasibility of federalism as an effective conflict management device. Two African countries have been selected as case studies in our humble effort to contribute to a still-evolving field; South Africa, a quasi-federal country by post-1994 (democratic) transition era and Nigeria, the first and longest-standing federal African country. Federal arrangements and practices in each case have peculiar characteristics which evolved in different historical and socio-political contexts. This explains why the application of federalism and its capacity to manage conflicts differ in both of our case studies. As the conclusion part will indicate, South African federalism has been more successful in accommodating conflicts when compared to that of Nigeria; albeit we cannot claim that Nigerian federalism has completely failed in that regard. However, while analyzing the relative failure of Nigerian federalism in conflict management, one should consider the fact that federalism is a process and, thus, the conflict management capacity of federal applications is better seen in the middle or long-term. Moreover, it is not the ?federal idea? which failed in the Nigerian case but the lack of full implementation of federal principles -which requires some revisions- adopted through constitutional provisions. Keywords: Federalism, Conflict Management, South Africa, Nigeria.