Abstract

Why do states often fail to enforce their own policies, especially those governing the poor and vulnerable? This paper investigates this question in the context of modern-day Nigeria, a decades-old democracy which nevertheless features high levels of violence and exploitation. I provide a conceptual framework I dub 'connivance,' which outlines how enabling such exploitation is functional for states insofar as it empowers non-state allies who benefit from the vulnerability of regulated populations. Diverging from existing approaches, which characterize uneven enforcement against the poor as benevolent, I detail how states produce precarity in vulnerable citizens through uneven enforcement of their own policies. I focus on the role of transport unions in Lagos, Nigeria - extractive actors who exploit drivers, and work as purveyors of electoral violence for the ruling party - in determining state enforcement of a ban on okada motorcycle taxis in the state. First, using evidence from several months fieldwork in Lagos; as well as an original networked dataset of the Lagos transport union, I show how the Lagos State Government's selective enforcement of its ban on motorcycle taxis was preceded by driver threats of secession amidst union extortion. Second, I use original geocoded data on enforcement locations, union territory, and traffic patterns along the Lagos road network to show how the political geography of the ban's enforcement displaces riders into areas controlled by the union. Third and finally, I exploit the timing of a surprising election result to show how a shock to state reliance on the union affects enforcement patterns. This paper not only explores how states can exploit an understudied enforcement lever to usurp democratic institutions and redistribute to their allies, but how powerful - but not necessarily criminal - groups can trade extralegal violence for such redistribution.

Recommended Citation

Pavlik, Melissa. 2025. "Connivance and Coercion." Working Paper.

Notes

Presented at the Leitner Program on Political Economy Workshop at Yale University, 2023 and 2025; American Political Science Association (APSA), 2024; APSA Comparative Labor Politics Workshop, 2025; Norteast Workshop on Empirical Political Science (NEWEPS), Spring 2025; Boston-Area Working Group on African Political Economy (BWGAPE), 2025; and European Political Science Association (EPSA), 2025. This work was supported by Yale University's MacMillian Center on International and Area Studies (2023, 2024) and the National Science Foundation's APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (2023).