The tug of war between democracy and dictatorship in Africa : A comparative case study on Ghana’s and Zimbabwe’s democratization

This thesis aims to examine Ghana's and Zimbabwe's democratization process and why the outcome is so different in each country, what are the central factors that have played a role in the country's success or defeat? The theoretical framework is based on Juan j. Linz and Alfred Stepan’s work on how a state becomes democratically consolidated and what constitutes as a consolidated democracy. The essay is a theory-consuming comparative case study focusing on Ghana’s and Zimbabwe’s democratization and why one of them succeeded and the other didn’t. The results shows that Ghana have come a long way towards consolidating their democracy based on the demands of the theories and that because of their peaceful transition their democracy had a bigger chance of succeeding. Zimbabwe lacks a lot of the democratic procedures and have had a hard time transitioning to a democratic system