Democracy in rebound : a comparative study of democratic resilience in Ghana and Senegal, 2016-2024

Abstract

Widespread threat to democracy has become a major concern in comparative politics, yet democratic decline does not produce even outcomes across political systems. This indicates that while some democracies experience constitutional rupture or military intervention, others absorb the political stress while maintaining constitutional continuity and competitive politics. This study examines why some democracies remain resilient despite sustaining political stress by comparing Ghana and Senegal between 2016 and 2024. The study draws on the democratic resilience literature by conceptualizing resilience as the capacity of political systems to generate institutional and societal constraints that limit executive overreach during periods of sustained political stress. Employing a qualitative comparative case study and most different systems design, the research relies on process tracing and document analysis using data from government reports, court decisions, civil society observers' reports, the Afrobarometer survey, international organizations, and secondary scholarly sources. Using two stress episodes each and analysed under three resilience mechanisms- institutional constraints, societal accountability, and political norms- the findings suggest that resilience is not something produced by formal institutions alone. It comes from the interactions of all the mechanisms, where each compensates for one another's weaknesses, especially in the case of Senegal, and also reinforces each other more directly in the case of Ghana. By comparing Ghana and Senegal, the study advances the literature on democratic resilience by proposing an interactive framework: institutional constraint, societal accountability, and political norms operate as mutual mechanisms of democratic survival when stress is in motion.