Adjustment and Aftermath: Structural Conditionality, Social Contract Erosion, and the Political Economy of African Conflict

Structural adjustment programmes are often evaluated in terms of macroeconomic stabilisation and fiscal reform, yet their long-term political effects have been equally consequential. Across many African states, adjustment policies reshaped the institutional and distributive foundations through which governments had previously managed conflict, mediated social expectations, and maintained political order. This study examines how these transformations contributed to the erosion of social contracts and the reconfiguration of state–society relations from the 1980s to the present. Focusing on Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria, with comparative reference to Mozambique and broader sub-Saharan experiences, the study addresses a central question: how has adjustment-induced social contract erosion influenced patterns of political order and conflict over time? Drawing on dependency theory, the political economy of international financial institutions, social contract theory, and historical institutionalism, it explores the mechanisms through which externally driven reform programmes altered incentives, authority structures, and access to resources. Methodologically, the study combines historical comparative analysis of structural adjustment across African cases with panel-based analysis linking adjustment episodes to conflict onset, alongside process tracing of adjustment-to-conflict pathways in selected states. This approach allows for both cross-case generalisation and detailed examination of causal mechanisms. The findings show that the effects of adjustment are not adequately explained as discrete policy failures or short-term crises. Instead, they are reproduced through interconnected institutional and political processes that reshape state capacity, distributive arrangeme