Power Sharing And Sub-saharan Africa's Democratic Consolidation: A Comparative Study Of Benin And Togo

Since the end of the1980s and the dawn of the1990s, the third wave of democratization began to spread in sub-Saharan. After experiencing nearly20years of development, only a small number of countries have achieved the consolidation of democracy whereas the most countries are still considered to be authoritarian regime. Generally speaking, the democratic consolidation consists of two types of factors, the first are congenitally non-institutional factors and the other are acquired institutional factors. A nation’s democratic consolidation is the outcome of the inter-coordination of those two types. The under-development of democratic consolidation in Sub-Saharan Africa makes the institutional construction to be increasing important.In this article, two cases, Benin and Togo are selected prudently to study. There are substantially analogically non-institutional factors whereas different institutional factors between these two countries. By the research of these two sub-Saharan countries, it enables us to analyze the relationship between the different consequences of institutional differences and democratic consolidation. It is found that the power-sharing institutional structure has promoted Benin towards the democratic consolidation; by contrast, the concentration of power system makes Togo have more obstacles on the road of democratic consolidation.