THE RENTIER STATE, GLOBAL LIBERALISM AND CITIZENSHIP IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study analyzes the effect of fiscal crisis attendant on unearned income in citizen-state relations in the rentier state of Nigeria. The study examines the interface between personal patrimonial disdainful of plural democratic breaks on arbitrary power, the source of government revenue, and the neo-liberal dialectics reproducing the state and its resource dynamics. The fiscal crisis of unearned income as an alternative explanation to the prospects of governmental legitimacy and accountability, is weighted against the ‘emancipatory’ credentials of neo-liberal orthodoxy and popular sovereignty. The study sees authoritarian liberalism as a common denominator determining citizen-state relations in Nigeria notwithstanding neo-liberal dialectics and the fiscal crisis in rentier states.