This thesis is the result of a comparative study utilizing qualitative evidence regarding the democratization process and history in Ghana and Nigeria. As a whole, this thesis seeks to exemplify some of the potential outcomes of democratization since independence in sub-Saharan African states. I analyze the strength and condition of democracy and the democratization process through the electoral histories of Ghana and Nigeria. In my argument, neopatrimonialism encapsulates corruption via patronage, clientelism, and godfatherism. These three theories are the primary areas of concern within this study regarding neopatrimonialism. I assert that democracy is measured in this region as a reflection of the quality of free and fair elections, a key (but not sole) determinant of democratization. The quality or maturation of democracy is measured through the degree to which neopatrimonialism has impacted the integrity of the electoral process. Thus, instances elite clientelism through predatory prebendalism and violent corruption by political elite represent a very troubled democracy under which power structures serve the personal interests of the political elite. Comparatively, evidence of a more distributive form of neopatrimonialism indicates a stronger democratic regime, and is indicated by mass clientelism in the electoral systems of the state.

Underdevelopment has plagued Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), since independence the post-colonial African states have experienced extreme poverty, unemployment, and other economic ailments that have persisted in the region. The aim of this thesis is to critique the null hypothesis of dependency theorists that it is structural factors that cause underdevelopment instead this study proposes an alternative hypothesis through Neo-Classical Realism to explain that it is in fact state-level actors and domestic issues that are the true culprit of causing the dependent variable. The methodological approach is a single embedded case-study with an explaining-outcome process-tracing. The thesis found that the cause of the underdevelopment in Nigeria is firmly rooted in the domestic sphere and that it delves much deeper than the main factors; resource dependence, lax institutions, prebendalism, and Sino-Nigerian relations, but it is the socio-political culture that has produced the norms which the elites operate on and possibly contributing to the exasperation of the negative aspects of the main factors that have perpetuated and sustained underdevelopment in Nigeria and SSA.