Abstract
<p>At independence in 1957, Ghana’s per capita income was comparable to South Korea’s, yet decades later the two countries occupy vastly different positions in the global economy. What explains this divergence, and what role has democratic governance played in Ghana’s economic trajectory? This study investigates the relationship between democracy and economic development in Ghana from 1950 to 2022, a period marked by cycles of military rule, economic decline, and democratic transition. While the existing literature extensively debates whether democracy causes development or development enables democracy, far less attention has been given to testing this relationship within a single-country time series that spans both authoritarian and democratic eras. I argue that democratic consolidation in Ghana has had a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset and a bivariate regression model with GDP as the dependent variable and the V-Dem democracy index as the independent variable, the analysis reveals that a one-unit increase in democratic quality corresponds to a 2.056-unit increase in GDP, with democracy explaining approximately 41.6% of the observed variation in economic output.</p>