Reading the Democratic Writing on the Wall: Comparative Insights from Ghana's Democratic Trajectory
Year: 2014
Type: preprint
Abstract: The African continent experienced a period of significant change following the end of the Cold War, with no less than 28 countries experiencing democratic openings between 1990 and 1994. Nearly twenty years later, however, approximately half of these countries could still be listed as nominally democratic. Why is it that some countries remained democratic while others took different courses? The case of Ghana provides a puzzling yet insightful case of democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite experiencing an inauspicious democratic opening in 1992, the country has since developed into a widely-recognized liberal democracy. Although Ghana has previously been considered an idiographic case of democratization in Africa, the Ghanaian experience contains insights that aid in explaining the broader patterns of democratization on the continent after the Cold War. By combining structural conditions of domestic and international pressure with executive agency in the period following the democratic opening, the lessons from the Ghanaian experience provide a means for explaining the divergence of African regimes since their democratic openings after the Cold War.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Nicholas Knowlton
Institution: University of Florida
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2345525953