The poverty issues in South Africa is reaching unbearable levels. The land reform policy in place from 1994, which offered fair compensation for the land to be redistributed, had shown little results in dealing with the issue of poverty. In 2018 it was proposed that no compensation should be considered an option which eventually leads to the proposed bill to amend article 25 on property rights. The proposal saw a lot of outrage. This theory consuming study aims to give more context to the inclusivity of the proposal and how it contrasts to the original Article 25. By using inclusive institutions theory as a foundation, the study found that both the constitution under Article 25 and the proposed amendment can be explained and reasoned with inclusive institutions theory, but that the context of South Africa’s demographic and economic inequalities changes the justification for how radical the land reform should be according to the theory.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the correlation between economic development and inclusive political institutions. Research in the field of development economics highlights the importance of durable institutions for sustained economic growth. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson propose that we should consider inclusive political institutions are key drivers of economic development, but political inclusion is challenging to measure quantitatively. We investigate novel ways ways to operationalize political inclusion and economic development by using voter turnout as the independent variable while median income acts as the dependent variable to better reflects the living standards of the broad population. Our thesis is that increased voter participation as a percentage of voting age population should correlate to a higher median income. Our bivariate regression shows a clear relationship but low explanatory power since linear regression doesn’t explain significant variations in the data. Multivariate linear regression results show a weaker correlation than expected but explains our data better by highlighting a clear tendency for high income democracies to enjoy high voter turnout whereas low income countries have varied outcomes. A high degree of data variability raises doubts about the validity of comparing voting participation between different political systems.

Post-civil war democratization is a critical element of building sustainable peace in the post-civil war states. At the same time, studies of democratic transition and survival suggest that the post-civil war environment is not hospitable to either the transition to or survival of democracy. The post-civil war environment is contentious. Former protagonists are fearful about their security and at the same time they want to protect their political and economic interests. The central argument of this study is that former rivals can agree to a transition toward democracy to the extent that a stable balance of power exists between the government and rebel groups, a balance that eliminates the sort of security dilemma that would encourage one or both to resume armed conflict. And the balance should ensure access to political power and economic resources. This study identifies factors that contribute to the establishment of such a balance of power between former protagonists and factors that affects its stability. These factors should affect the decision of former protagonists on whether or not they can achieve their political and economic interests if they agree to a transition toward democracy once civil war ends. Factors that are conducive to a transition toward democracy are different from factors that sustain that transition in post-civil war states. Post-civil war democracies are fragile. The side that won the democratic election can dismantle institutions of democracy and repress oppositions. The fear of being repressed could create stronger incentives for the opposition groups to return to conflict. To address this puzzle, I develop a conceptual framework that explains how costs of the previous civil war, the establishment of inclusive institutions and the higher level of economic development create incentives for the former rivals to sustain democracy. Hypotheses derived from the theoretical implications are tested by using survival analysis.