Level of Socio-Political Stability, Income Distribution and Democracy in Africa

[enteThe question of the links between inequality and democraty is still the subject of an intense academic debate. We revisit this question by taking explicitly into account the interactions between the level of of socio-political stability and inequality in order to measure their impact on democraty in Africa. More precisely, we use the dynamic panel GMM-system technique on a sample of 30 african countries for the period 1996-2019. It appears, in accordance with the theory of modernity, that the level of wealth of a country has a positive impact on democratization. Inequalities negatively impact the level of democracy. However, this impact is mitigated by the level of socio political stability. From a certain level of socio-political stability, inequalities have a positive impact on democratization. Similarly, socio-political stability negatively impacts democratization. The greater the inequalities in a country, the more this effect will be attenuated until it becomes positive. The sociopolitical acceleration variable has a positive effect on democracy. For countries with a low level of inequality, the effect of political instability is negative.r Abstract Body]