Poverty Governance, Social Policy Architecture, and Welfare Outcomes in Rural South East Nigeria

This dissertation provides an original analysis of poverty governance structures and their welfare outcome implications in rural South East Nigeria, encompassing Anambra, Abia, Imo, Enugu, and Ebonyi States. Poverty in rural South East Nigeria presents distinctive governance challenges rooted in the region's political economy, demographic pressures, and the weaknesses of both state and non-state poverty governance institutions. The dissertation employs a three-phase mixed-methods design: systematic analysis of social policy architecture across the five states using budget analysis and policy document review; a panel household survey of 1,500 rural households tracked over three years from 2021 to 2023; and 48 in-depth interviews with state social welfare officials, non-governmental organisation programme managers, and community leaders. Multilevel modelling with household and community-level fixed effects and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) serve as the primary analytical tools. The Welfare State Theory in developing country contexts, the Social Protection Floor Initiative by the ILO, and Grindle's Good Enough Governance Framework jointly provide the theoretical foundation. The dissertation proposes the Poverty Governance Effectiveness Model (PGEM), which identifies social policy architecture coherence, administrative implementation fidelity, and community participation mechanisms as the three necessary conditions for welfare outcome improvements in low-capacity governance contexts. Findings reveal that Anambra and Enugu States, with stronger inter-agency coordination and higher programme delivery fidelity, recorded significantly better poverty reduction trajectories than the other three states over the observation period. Keywords: poverty governance, social policy, welfare outcomes, South East Nigeria, multilevel analysis.