Operation Feed the Nation was a national agricultural extension and

mobilization program instituted by the military government of Nigeria in 1976 as

a measure to achieve self sufficiency in food crop production and inspire a new
generation to return to farming.

Better Life Programme for Rural Women 

The Better Life Programme for Rural Women or BLP was a project in Nigeria
started in September 1987 by Maryam Babangida, the wife of President Ibrahim
Babangida. The programme was discontinued after a change in government. The
idea of BLP originated at a workshop organized by Maryam Babangida with the
scope of discussing the relegation of rural women in discourse affecting national
development and the invisibility of positive actions towards causes favoring rural
women. When the project started, the objectives were to reduce maternal and child
mortality rate by increasing basic healthcare facilities for women, provide income-
generating opportunities in agriculture and cottage industries, integrate rural
women into national development plans and develop educational training for
women.
However, the programme provoked criticism because funds allocated to many
projects were unaccounted for largely because there was no budgetary allocation to
fund BLP. Access to government funds by a first lady was challenged as
unconstitutional and some critics view the project as a means to increase the
personality of the first lady.
THE FAMILY SUPPORT PROGRAMME

The Family Support Programme (FSP) enables families to find solutions to the
parenting and relationships challenges they face and to grow in confidence to
manage future difficulties. The aim of the family support programme is to help
families build their own resilience and self-reliance. The FSP is a countywide
programme that supports families within their local communities. There are five
local teams across the county who coordinate help for families when they are
experiencing a range of interwoven problems that are impacting on their family
wellbeing. The service is delivered from our local district and borough council
offices. FSP provide one-to-one family support where family circumstances are
having a significant impact on the health, development or wellbeing of the child/
children. Families and practitioners working with families, for example, GPs,
health visitors, schools, early years settings can request support for families who
need targeted help.

The programme supports families in areas that they have identified for themselves
as being in need of support. Each family reflects on what might help them
overcome their concerns and difficulties. A tailor-made package is created to
support them in the best and most helpful way possible. Areas in which the
programme has helped families include: • Housing - budgeting, benefits, managing
debts, essential furnishings and repairs, hygiene and cleanliness and community
relationships. • Keeping families safe - looking after health and wellbeing,
overcoming stress and depression, managing disability, eating and exercise and
drink and drug use. • Couple relationships - co-parenting and managing conflict. •
Parenting - building good relationships, communicating, developing routines and
helping children to behave better. • School - helping children to get into school
regularly and do well. • Difficult life events - managing relationship breakdown,
supporting bereavement, trauma, loss, abuse and building a more positive future. •
Moving towards employment - providing training, CV and interview preparation,
voluntary work experience and preparation for work. • Creating new opportunities
- helping families take up community activities and make friends.

o sum up our core argument: In our view, a perennial problem in the dualization
debate is conceptual overstretching, which is a consequence of the fact that the
term dualization has been applied to describe different processes at the micro-level
of preferences and outcomes as well as at the macro-level of institutional change.
We believe that the notion of dualization is more powerful and convincing when
used to describe macro-level processes of institutional change. This is because
labor market structures have become more complex over time, contributing to the
formation of multiple socio-economic and political cleavages, which interact with
each other to create a much more differentiated politico-economic landscape than
the simple dichotomy between insiders and outsiders suggests. Hence, we have
argued in favor of going back to a narrower conception of dualization, which will
be helpful to understand the consequences of the institutional change on the micro
level.
In closing, we want to comment briefly on the political origins of dualization at the
macro level. As briefly mentioned above, the dualization of welfare state and labor
market policies should be regarded as an integral part of a general trend towards
liberalization, which cuts across many OECD countries (Streeck, Reference
Streeck2009; Thelen, Reference Thelen2014). In this sense, dualization seems
more the result of policy “drift” (Hacker, Reference Hacker2004) or institutional
erosion (Busemeyer and Trampusch, Reference Busemeyer and Trampusch2013)
rather than a deliberate strategy. From our perspective, although this is more of a
working hypothesis rather than a clear-cut finding, the causal chain begins with
liberalization pressures—as well as other factors such as increasing
individualization or technological change—contributing to dualization of welfare
state policies and institutions, which in turn affects labor market stratification in
complex ways.
If this narrative is correct, it will have important implications in the long run,
which are different from the original dualization argument. If labor market
institutions indeed created stark, dichotomous divides between clearly identifiable
insiders and outsiders, there might be significant potential for counter-
mobilization. The unemployed and precariously employed could organize, engage
in coalition building with other segments of the labor market and change the status
quo of existing policies or institutions. Established parties would then start to cater
more to the interests of outsiders (e.g., Lindvall and Rueda, Reference Lindvall and
Rueda2014). New parties would arise representing new electoral coalitions (see
Häusermann in this symposium).
If, however, labor market divides are not as dichotomous as expected and cross-
cutting rather than reinforcing cleavages abound, the likelihood that those most
affected by dualizing welfare state and labor market policies will indeed mobilize
is low. Rather, those experiencing the highest degrees of labor market risk are
often those with limited political influence. Increasing labor market inequalities
might reinforce this trend so that different kinds of privileged “insiders” become
even more influential in setting the priorities of policy-making in the future.
Furthermore, social democratic and other left-wing parties as well as trade unions
are reacting to liberalization rather than actively promoting dualization.