Assessing democracy in Ghana and South Africa: a comparative study of electoral, liberal, and participatory dimensions

Abstract

As analysts point to a period of a global democratic recession, this project extends the discourse to two “beacons of democracy” in Africa—Ghana and South Africa. Using Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) as a framework, it explores the state of democracy in these two countries comparatively, and specifically on electoral, liberal, and participatory dimensions. The democratic assessment further theorizes the strengths of Ghana and South Africa, as well as potential areas of democratic erosion. The author concludes that, upon conceptualizing democracy as a disaggregation of three components, erosion is occurring in some areas while not in others. Specifically, in both countries liberal democracy is declining due to endemic corruption and state capture, while electoral democracy remains steady and robust. The divergence comes with participatory democracy wherein Ghana’s civil society and consistent voter turnout proves beneficial, whereas South Africa’s precipitous declines in electoral participation are deleterious. The project also demonstrates the utility of qualitative research, and particularly for interrogating concepts like “democracy” which inherently contain great depth and nuance.