Capital city relocation and national security : the cases of Nigeria and Kazakhstan

Abstract

As an important tool of state- and nation- building, capital city relocation is a policy option that is currently considered in more than 30 states around the world, including South Africa. The project is especially appealing for post-colonial states. At its core, it involves a physical move of governing institutions to a new location a city that either already exists, or is constructed specifically for the purpose of serving as a capital. The relocation is likely to affect political, economic and societal status quo within a state including matters of national security. The latter is a sensitive matter for post-colonial states, but the link between capital city relocation and national security is not well understood. The study develops a framework that analyses the capital city relocation - national security nexus, to assess the overall impact of the project, as well as the specific benefits and drawbacks for security. The framework relies on Buzan's five-sector approach to security, and employs it to develop a list of indicators to track changes to national security of the post-colonial states post-relocation. Hence this study aims to contribute to the strand of the Security Studies literature and to fill (in part) an evident lacuna on capital city relocation, by exploring the cases of Nigeria (1991) and Kazakhstan (1997) from a security perspective.