Ethnic Federalism, Institutional Legacies, and the Persistence of Ethnic Voting in Nigeria: Towards a Theory of Electoral Ethno-Institutionalism

This study develops an original theoretical framework designated electoral ethno-institutionalism to explain the persistence of ethnic voting patterns in Nigerian elections despite four decades of democratic cycling and multiple party system reconfigurations. Existing theories of ethnic voting in Africa emphasise either primordial ethnic attachments or rational ethnic group resource competition but inadequately explain the institutional mechanisms through which ethnic political alignments are reproduced across electoral cycles even when candidate quality and policy offerings vary. Drawing on the historical institutionalism literature, the ethnic politics theory, and the constructivist approach to identity politics, the study constructs a framework that centres the role of institutional legacies including colonial administrative boundaries, regional revenue allocation arrangements, and ethnic rotational power agreements in structuring the opportunity costs and benefits of cross-ethnic political behaviour. The framework is tested through a combination of electoral data analysis covering presidential elections from 1979 to 2023 and an original survey experiment conducted in three cities representing different geopolitical zones, designed to isolate the effect of institutional primes on ethnic vote intent. The study finds strong support for the electoral ethno-institutionalism framework, demonstrating that voters respond to institutional incentive structures that make ethnic group solidarity instrumentally rational in Nigerian electoral contexts, rather than voting ethnically out of primordial sentiment. The study makes an original contribution to the African elections literature by providing both a theoretical framework and experimental evidence for the institutional foundations of ethnic voting. Keywords: ethnic federalism, ethnic voting, electoral ethno-institutionalism, Nigeria, institutional legacies