Institutional development and legislative public engagement in Nigeria: Breaking down the bars of iron?

This study explores the extent to which legislatures in newer democracies develop as sites, enablers, and facilitators of democratic inclusion, through their legislative public engagement (LPE) functions. It uses the Nigerian national House of Representatives and the subnational Lagos State House of Assembly as cases, drawing on a multilevel governance approach to trace the factors, actors, and politico-societal dynamics that shape their public relationships and how these link with their institutional development and wider democratic strengthening. The study draws on the extant LPE literature but argues that their formal-bureaucratic framings often miss important informal dynamics that shape elite/institution-citizen connections in newer democracies. It therefore develops a novel analytical framework that combines the formal and informal elements, and an eclectic data approach, including over one hundred interviews, to seek answers to four research questions. The questions focus on actors’ interpretations and frameworks, practices, the role of MPs’ constituency activities, and the mediating role of civil society and media organisations. The study finds that actors’ tendency to interpret public engagement informally holds possibilities for strengthening formal LPE dimensions, seeing the disparate frameworks and diverse functions spread across legislative units and committees. The study also challenges extant narratives about LPE implementation, showing how a deeper focus on political leadership and categories of officials aids the understanding of why LPE is limited, ad-hoc, elite-focussed, traditional, and hierarchical. The study further shows that MPs’ individual preferences, rather than the influence of institutional incentives or the level at which the MP is elected, determine how constituency service is structured to support institutional LPE. Finally, the study’s novel dissection of external actors’ LPE role shows how their influence supports processes but limits institutionalisation. The study’s conclusion reaffirms the importance of rethinking the role of actors and the internal organisation that shapes practices as measures to enhance LPE outcomes.