A Theory of Adaptive Governance Failure in Fragile Sub-National States: Evidence from North East Nigeria

This dissertation develops and empirically tests an original theory of adaptive governance failure tailored to fragile sub-national states in developing countries, drawing primarily on longitudinal evidence from Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States in Nigeria's North East geopolitical zone. Existing governance failure theories, rooted principally in Western institutional contexts, inadequately account for the compounding effects of insurgency, climate stress, and administrative capacity collapse characteristic of fragile subnational governance environments. The dissertation employs a sequential mixed-methods design across three phases: a systematic review of 180 studies on sub-national governance in conflict-affected states; a two-year longitudinal qualitative fieldwork study involving 75 elite and community-level informants; and a quantitative test of the proposed theoretical model using state administrative performance data from 2018 to 2023. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) serve as the primary analytical tools. The proposed Adaptive Governance Failure Theory identifies five necessary conditions for governance system collapse: legitimacy erosion, administrative capacity disintegration, resource severance, security disequilibrium, and norm displacement. The QCA findings confirm that no single condition is sufficient but that specific conjunctural configurations produce governance collapse. The theoretical contribution advances Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development Framework by incorporating fragility-specific pathways. Policy implications focus on sequenced state-building interventions that prioritise security stabilisation, norm reconstruction, and administrative capacity recovery in that order. Keywords: adaptive governance failure, fragile states, North East Nigeria, institutional theory, qualitative comparative analysis.