DEMOPRENEURSHIP: A POLITICAL-ECONOMY FRAMEWORK FOR ELECTORAL INVESTMENT AND DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY IN NIGERIA

Eze Chidi Nwauba

The increasing cost of electoral competition raises a fundamental question for democratic theory: what happens when participation in public office begins to resemble a private investment decision? This article introduces Demopreneurship as a political-economy framework for analysing that problem in Nigeria. The concept describes a process in which political actors mobilise substantial private capital, sponsorship, loans, networks and organisational resources to compete for office, while the accumulation of political investment may generate expectations of recovery, influence or access after electoral victory. Drawing on institutional theory, scholarship on patronage and clientelism, research on monetised politics, Nigerian electoral evidence, and legal and policy documents, the article distinguishes Demopreneurship from corruption, prebendalism, rent-seeking and conventional political entrepreneurship. It proposes an analytical model linking five stages: political entry costs, capital mobilisation, electoral competition, post-election obligations, and governance incentives. The framework generates propositions concerning political exclusion, sponsor leverage, investment-recovery pressures, vote buying and the moderating role of institutional controls. The article argues that the analytical value of Demopreneurship lies not in assuming that every politician behaves corruptly, but in explaining how the financial architecture of electoral competition can systematically alter incentives before and after elections. It concludes with a research agenda for testing the framework across African democracies.