ABSTRACT
Finally, Horowitz's approach defined by the combination of electoral formula and federal arrangements that induce group elites to cooperate across group lines is not without promise in states with multiple ethnicity. It is more promising if legislative constituencies and state/provincial boundaries run around groups to provide clear ethnic fault-lines or strata that group elites have to reach across to take reconciliatory position on issues and make political marriages to produce parties whose elites cut across ethnicity. The Nigerian Fourth Republic has achieved some measure of success in using the electoral mechanism and ethnicity to generate political parties composed of a complex array of group elites from all sections of the country. The Alliance for Democracy (AD) began as a national pro-democracy party but sank into a sectional one, but is attempting to regain its image by broadening its elite membership. The outcome of the broad ethnic elite membership is political moderation and mutual accommodation. Juan Linz (1978, pp. 67-68) was right when he argued in the late 1970s that an electoral law that rewards efforts at cooperation diminishes political crisis and raises the prospects for stability. In the Nigerian case, moderation was furthered by President Obasanjo's sagacious inclusion of all the parties in his cabinet. Other deeply divided African states could emulate the Nigeria situation within the broader context of Horowitz's prescriptions.4
