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This study investigates (1) whether democratization drives sovereign credit ratings (SCR) changes (the “democratic advantage”) or whether SCR changes affect democratization, (2) whether the degree of democratization in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries affects the associations and (3) whether the associations are significantly affected by resource dependence.

This study investigates the effects of SCR changes on democracy in 22 SSA countries over the period of 2000–2020 VEC Granger causality/block exogeneity Wald tests, and impulse responses and variance decomposition analyses with Cholesky ordering and Monte Carlo standard errors in a panel VECM framework.

The full sample impulse responses find that a SCR shock has a long-run detrimental effect on the democracy and political rights but only a short-run positive impact on civil liberties. Among the sub-samples, it is found that the extent of natural resource dependence does not affect the magnitude of SCR shocks on democratization mentioned above but it is found that a SCR shock affects long-run democracy in SSA countries that are relatively more democratic but is more likely to drive democratic deepening in less democratic SSA countries. The full sample variance decompositions further finds that the variance of SCR to a political rights shock outweighs the effects of all the macroeconomic factors, whereas in more diversified SSA countries, the variances of SCR are much greater for democracy and political rights shocks, which suggests that democratization and political rights in diversified SSA economies are severely affected by SCR changes. In the case of the high and low democracy sub-samples, it is found that the variance of SCR in the relatively higher democracy sub-sample is greater than in the low democracy sub-sample.

These results have three implications for democratization in SSA. First, the effect of a SCR change is not a democratically agnostic and impacts political rights to a greater extent than civil liberties. Second, SCR changes have the potential to spark a negative cycle in SSA countries whereby a downgrade leads to a deterioration in socio-political stability coupled with increased financial economic constraints that in turn drive further downgrades and macroeconomic hardship. Finally, SCR changes are potentially detrimental for democracy in more democratic SSA countries but democratically supportive in less democratic SSA countries. Thus, SSA countries that are relatively politically sophisticated are more exposed to the effects of SCR changes, whereas less politically sophisticated SSA countries can proactively shape their SCRs by undertaking political reforms.

This study is the first to examine the associations between SCR and democracy in SSA. This is critical literature for the Africa’s scholarly work given that the debate on unfair rating actions and claims of subjective rating methods is ongoing.

The purpose of this paper is statistical analysis for the democracy index data of 167 countries for the period 2006 to 2012 to investigate whether democracy index is progressing day by day? Does democracy make any significant improvement in public life and public trust in political institutions? What are the implications for future progress of democracy? Democracy index is a measure of democratic performance introduced by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU calculated democracy index since 2006 for 167 countries covering almost the entire population of the world.

As democracy index varies from country to country and over time, the author considers randomized complete bock design for the analysis of variance to test whether there are significant variations among the countries and between time (years). The author also applied Friedman’s test, which is a non-parametric distribution-free test.

It was found that democracy did not make any significant progress in the study period. Popular confidence in political institutions continues to decline in many full democratic countries. Violence and drug-trafficking have a negative impact on democracy in some countries. Some countries had democratic progress, while some other countries had regression. However, these changes in democratic performances are not statistically significant. As a result, democracy becomes stagnant all over the world.

The analysis is based on only five years of available data.

As democracy becomes stagnant all over the world and the public trust on political institutions and politicians is declining, it is essential to find out the root cause.

Democracy is a popular alternative to hybrid or authoritarian regimes, but the nations’ recent democratic transitions had brought no improvements to their lives in the society. God has created us in this world with the rest of creation for a very good reason which was explained in all main religious books. To increase our honesty, character, trust and understanding for becoming a good human, we should follow the divine rules and guidance. Eventually everything will work properly, including democracy.

The author analyzed democracy index data produced by the EIU using statistical techniques, analysis of variance and non-parametric Friedman’s test. Statistical analysis, discussion and conclusion are the author ' s contribution.

The contribution starts out from the question whether the political legitimacy of the Third Wave democracies has suffered in the wake of the Great Recession. The expectation of a damaging effect of an economic or political crisis on legitimacy is based on Lipset’s assumption that established democracies with a high degree of political legitimacy are better capable of coping with such crises than young democracies. The database includes two surveys of members of parliament conducted in 2007 and 2013 in Sweden, Germany and five Third Wave democracies located in different world regions (Chile, South Korea, Poland, South Africa and Turkey). Waves 5 and 6 of the World Values Survey that were conducted at about the same time were used for comparing the legitimacy beliefs among MPs and citizens. The data show that the scores for all indicators of political legitimacy are higher among MPs than among citizens and that the differences between the two groups of respondents are considerably larger in the five young democracies. Confidence in political parties is fairly low, especially among citizens, while the evaluation of the quality of democracy in the respondents’ country is much higher. Both evaluations have been rather stable over time. In the two established democracies, support for democracy among citizens is nearly as high as among MPs. In the five young democracies, the MP-citizen differential is larger and support for democracy in the population shows a steady increase only in Chile, while it has remained low in Poland and Turkey and even decreased in Korea and South Africa. This indicates that democracy has not taken deep roots in four of the five new democracies included in the study. In Korea and South Africa, the decline in support for democracy started already before the onset of the economic crisis and therefore cannot be attributed to the recession. This is confirmed by the lack of a statistical relationship between political legitimacy on one side and economic evaluations on the other side. A multiple regression analysis shows strong country-specific effects, while individual-level variables have only minor effects.

Studies on trajectory and trends of democratic growth frequently dominate scholarly debates. These studies are led by two distinct points of view. On the one hand, scholars believe that the prevalence of democracy is inevitable and thus marks an era of prosperity and of human rights. Such an era is dominated by the cultural values of independence, individuality, and freedom (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005) and leads to the end of the world's history and the end of the last man (Fukuyama, 1992; Mandelbaum, 2008). A contrasting point of view, on the other hand, is expressed by scholars who studied the crises of modern liberal democracies believing that democracies are failing and hence, the time of worldwide democratization is coming to an end (Mouffle, d’Angerville, 1994, The private life of Louise XIV. Cited in Thomas, Vagueness in law and language the concept of despotism. Oxford: Oxford University Press). This study adds to the ongoing debate by determining which of the trends prevails worldwide across the past two centuries and especially in the beginning of the 21st century. Moreover, it sheds light on existing knowledge about democratic paths and trends by suggesting that a comprehensive investigation of democratization processes requires both regional and worldwide analyses, and investigations of historical events and regional characteristic effects are more beneficial for long-term longitudinal studies.

This chapter discusses differences and similarities between democracy and populism with regards to their definitions, main goals, types of actors, structures, and main constituencies. Special focus is devoted to the functions democracy and populism play in the politics of sovereign countries. As the chapter argues, democracy calls for the implementation of political freedoms, rights, and political inclusiveness. In contrast, the spontaneous actions of populism appeal to popular agendas and often use disfranchised populations to achieve political goals.

This study systematically addresses an important yet neglected question pertaining to the potentially time-varying effects of economic development on political democracy. Building on Huntington's insightful observations of alternating “waves” and “reverse waves” of democracy in world history, we deduce research hypotheses subject to empirical falsification and find, through a systematic analysis of the experiences of 87 countries from the 1960s to 1990s, that the impact of economic development on democracy shifted from the well-known U-shaped relationship to an inverted U-curve. These shifts occurred around 1980, a time point that corresponds to Diamond's classification of the end of the “second reverse wave” and beginning of the “third wave” of democratization. The finding thus demonstrates that the “wavy” progression of democracy in the world reflects historically changing dynamics of economic development and their impacts on political democracy over time.

One common feature of different variants of participatory and action research is rejection of technocratic, undemocratic elements in science and inquiry, aiming to break the dominance of traditional academic views of science. These variants open up broader participation of people, and emancipate knowledge creation for the production of actionable knowledge with transformative potentials. The purpose of this chapter is to recognize and clarify a striving for knowledge democracy in these explicit or implicit democratizing ambitions and tendencies in the sense of broadening the participation of concerned parties in research and development work on open and equal terms. This recent concept, still in the process of formulation, has been proposed as a global mobilizing and unifying thinking for distributed networks and movements for participatory oriented research. The concept and movement had an initial embedding in the First Global Assembly for Knowledge Democracy in June 2017, Cartagena, Columbia. The purpose of the chapter is to elaborate on the meaning of knowledge democracy as a vision for the participatory and action research community. Particularly I will distinguish between different orientation to knowledge democracy, and the character of the logic of a more, open, democratic and coproductive science that can be a carrier of it.

Social movements, justice campaigns and civil activism have gained recent scholarly attention among non-Western democracies since the end of the Cold War. Yet the meaning and practical implications of civil activism remain contested especially in contexts linked to militarised democracy and the criminalisation of civil activism. Importantly, the broader political terrain within which militarised democracy is situated is increasingly changing, bringing new challenges to its understanding. This chapter builds on liberal democratic theory and discusses militarised democracy in Nigeria to critique state-centric notion of criminology. It draws on two case examples, namely the proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in 2017 by the federal government against its organised protests for self-determination and the state repressive response to the nation-wide protest against police brutality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) known as the #End SARS protest in 2020. Both provide on-the-ground evidence of the criminalisation of civil activism. In the alternative, this chapter reflects on how transforming democracy can redress state repression and offer a better understanding of civil activism, which can strengthen developing democracies, including addressing questions of political marginalisation, distributive justice, police brutality, inequality, repressive state response and unequal state structure accounting for organised protests.