Theorising the Political Economy of Constitutional Failure in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis

Nigeria's Fourth Republic has produced a pattern of constitutional failure characterised by persistent executive overreach, legislative patronage politics, judicial corruption, and electoral manipulation that standard constitutional law analysis explains in terms of institutional design deficiencies or individual actor behaviour. A Neo-Gramscian political economy approach, which locates constitutional failure within the hegemonic project of a ruling class alliance between political elites, military networks, and corporate capital, offers a theoretically richer structural explanation that has not been developed in Nigerian public law scholarship. This study applies a Neo-Gramscian theoretical framework to analyse constitutional failure in Nigeria's Fourth Republic from 1999 to 2023, examining the mechanisms through which hegemonic bloc interests have shaped constitutional practice, judicial outcomes, and legislative behaviour. The methodology combines a systematic doctrinal analysis of Supreme Court constitutional decisions with qualitative political economy analysis drawing on elite interview data from 40 former public officials, constitutional lawyers, and political economists, alongside media and documentary analysis of constitutional crisis episodes. Antonio Gramsci's Hegemony Theory, Robert Cox's Neo-Gramscian International Relations Theory, and Critical Constitutional Theory provide the theoretical architecture for the original analytical framework. The study's original contribution is a Neo-Gramscian Theory of Constitutional Failure applicable to resource-dependent post-colonial federal democracies. Findings generate theoretically grounded constitutional reform and anti-hegemonic civil society advocacy proposals. Keywords: constitutional failure, Neo-Gramscianism, political economy, Fourth Republic, Nigerian constitutionalism.