Ideology and Inconsistency: The “Cross-Pressured” Nigerian Worker

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.After the nationwide general strike of June 1964, workers in Nigeria gained unprecedented political prominence. The timing of the strike had much to do with this, for only five months hence the Federal elections of December 1964 were to be held and Nigerian politicians became keenly aware of the labor movement. Two kinds of politicians began to compete for the labor vote. On the one hand, there were politically oriented labor leaders who wanted to take the opportunity of the strike and of the elections to form a Nigerian Labor party. They made their appeals to the class-consciousness and self-interest of Nigerian workers defined as workers, not as members of this or that ethnic group. On the other hand there were the politicians of the major political parties who made their appeals to the ethnic loyalties of the workers.2 Thus between June and December 1964, and for some months after, workers were crosspressured between their labor and their ethnic loyalties.3 Working against the effect of the 1 I have benefitted from suggestions made Wolpe. As research assistants, Platon Rigos and Ronald Stockton were most helpful. I wish to acknowledge also the assistance of the Department of Political Science and the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. in an Urban African Community (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956). For a recent application of the situational mode of analysis developed by the Rhodes-Livingstone group to the Nigerian scene, see Leonard Plotnicov, Strangers to the City: Urban Man in Jos, Nigeria (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967).'"Cross Pressures" are "combinations of characteristics which in a given context would tend to lead the individual to vote on both sides of a contest." Bernard cross-pressures were, first, the appeal to classconsciousness and labor interest of the ethnic parties themselves, and second, the climate of ethnic and national insecurity which raised the saliency of ones' ethnic membership over ones' membership in the working class.What I shall try to show in this analysis is that the Nigerian worker, like the worker in other countries, tends to support his ethnic group when that group is threatened. This is not surprising and was not surprising to Nigerian labor leaders. What was surprising was the fraction of workers who claimed to support a labor party while at the same time supporting ethnic parties. This fraction which we have called "inconsistent respondents" or for short, the "'Inconsistents," played an important role in allowing Nigerian labor leaders to count on more support than they actually had.4 Beyond that, it would seem that inconsistent respondents in transitional societies such as Nigeria make polit...

Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa

“…For every additional month closer a survey respondent is to a competitive presidential election, the salience of his or her class/occupational identity decreases by one percentage point—an effect that diminishes (as with the corresponding increased salience of ethnicity) with the declining competitiveness of the election. In keeping with case study findings (e.g., Melson 1971), our results thus imply that electoral competition causes ethnic identities to displace class/occupational identities.…”

Crossing the Line: Local Ethnic Geography and Voting in Ghana

“…A substantial literature in the study of African politics shows a broad correspondence between voters' ethnicities and vote choice (e.g., Horowitz 1985;Melson 1971;Posner 2005). Recent work views voting for co-ethnics as an instrumental action, as part of a larger model in which politicians mobilize voters along ethnic lines in pursuit of control over state resources, and voters seek targeted provision of state resources and other patronage from politicians in return for their support (Bates 1983;Chandra 2004;Ferree 2006;Posner 2005).…”

The Cross-Pressured Citizen in the 2012 Presidential Campaign

“…1 Variables Cross-pressures. Cross-pressured citizens were operationalized using measures of partisan identification and vote intent (Berelson et al, 1954;Boyd, 1969;Fiorina, 1976;Geer, 1988;Melson, 1971). Geer (1988) specifically operationalized those prospective voters who affiliated with one party, but intended to vote for the opposing party's candidate.…”

“…Internal inconsistency manifests as cross-pressures based on policy attitudes (Campbell et al, 1960;Treier & Hillygus, 2009), between party affiliation and policy views (Hillygus & Shields, 2009), or between party affiliation and candidate choice (Berelson et al, 1954;Boyd, 1969;Fiorina, 1976;Geer, 1988;Melson, 1971). A pro-choice Republican may have faced both policy and candidate cross-pressures in the 2012 election based on Mitt Romney and the GOP's opposition to abortion access.…”

“…Labeled "disloyalists" (Fiorina, 1976), "prescriptives" (Melson, 1971), and "defectors" (Boyd, 1969), these prospective voters are conflicted based on the specific circumstances, issues, and appeals in the campaign environment (Berelson et al, 1954). Their mere presence, according to Berelson and colleagues (1954), violates the general principle that citizens tend toward consistency during a campaign.…”