The Role of Epistemic Communities in Shaping Nigeria’s International Trade Policy: A Constructivist Analysis

This dissertation applies a constructivist theoretical lens to analyse the role of epistemic communities, specifically technocratic experts, academic economists, and international organisation advisors, in shaping Nigeria's international trade policy positions and negotiating stances across major policy episodes from 1995 to 2024. Constructivist international relations theory posits that ideas, knowledge, and shared normative frameworks significantly influence state behaviour in international economic negotiations, yet this perspective has been underutilised in the study of Nigerian trade policy, which is typically analysed through realist or liberal institutionalist frameworks. The study employs process tracing methodology applied to five major Nigerian trade policy episodes: WTO accession negotiations, AGOA preference utilisation, ECOWAS Common External Tariff negotiations, AfCFTA accession, and the EU Economic Partnership Agreement deliberations. Data are collected through 45 elite interviews with former trade ministers, negotiating team members, trade advisors from the World Bank and WTO, and academic researchers who participated in policy advisory processes, supplemented by archival analysis of Cabinet memoranda, position papers, and negotiating briefs obtained through Freedom of Information requests. The theoretical framework integrates Haas's epistemic communities concept, Finnemore and Sikkink's norm diffusion model, and the discourse analysis approach to policy construction. The dissertation makes original theoretical contributions through a modified epistemic communities model for developing country trade policy contexts, a typology of expert influence pathways in trade negotiations, and empirical documentation of ideational content in Nigerian trade policy discourse. Keywords: epistemic communities, trade policy, Nigeria, constructivism, WTO