Most Sub-Saharan African countries are not yet considered democracies, but it is worth noting that almost all of them are fighting for democracy, and some countries have successfully crossed the threshold of democracy. However, the pace of democratization across the African region is uneven. In some countries it seems that the commitment to democratic norms and practices has deepened, but in other countries, whether it is the political elite or the general public, this commitment has proved to be weak. Although citizens now have greater opportunities to participate in the political process than before, in some countries only one party remains in power and there is no peaceful and successful transfer of power to the opposition. In this research I intend to find answers to the following question: Why are the levels of democratic development among these African countries in the Sub-Saharan region very different, even though their democratic transitions take place almost simultaneously. The three main approaches that explain democratization - modernization, social capital, and party systems are tested by empirically analyzing data related to political development among countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The results of the analysis indicate that social capital (trust) is most important for democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa, which may be due to the fact that the party system (including the proportion of women, etc.) has not yet stabilized in many places and therefore can not be a "decisive" factor. The lack of suitable and alternative operationalisations in the form of the lack of valid values regarding party system variables has also affected the result for this particular theoretical area. There was a connection between modernization factors and democracy in the bivariate analyzes, but the corruption index / social trust had a much stronger connection in the multivariate analyzes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-82681 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Swami, Ronny |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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