  In accordance with "Democracy's Effect on Development: More Questions than
Answers", we seek to carry out a study in following the description in the
'Questions for Further Study.' To that end, we studied 33 countries in the
Sub-Saharan Africa region, who all went through an election which should signal
a "step-up" for their democracy, one in which previously homogenous regimes
transfer power to an opposition party that fairly won the election. After doing
so, liberal-democracy indicators and democracy indicators were evaluated in the
five years prior to and after the election took place, and over that ten-year
period, we examine the data for trends. If we see positive or negative trends
over this time horizon, we are able to conclude that it was the recent increase
in the quality of their democracy which led to it. Having investigated examples
of this in depth, there seem to be three main archetypes which drive the
results. Countries with positive results to their democracy from the election
have generally positive effects on their development, countries with more
"plateau" like results also did well, but countries for whom the descent to
authoritarianism was continued by this election found more negative results.

Econometrics;General Finance