Elites and democracy in Ghana: A social network approach
本文运用社会网络分析检验Higley和Burton的精英理论，发现加纳议员形成跨越族群和政党分歧的紧密网络，支持精英整合有利于稳定民主的观点。
This article presents new theoretical and empirical insights into democratization in Africa, using the typology developed by John Higley and Michael Burton to understand elite interaction in Ghana.Social network analysis (SNA) is used to test the main proposition of the Higley/Burton theory, namely that a 'liberal democracy is impossible without a consensually united elite'.Empirical evidence is provided from a unique data set that maps the interaction patterns between Members of Parliament elected to the Ghanaian legislature in 2012.The article shows that MPs in Ghana form a dense and strongly interconnected network bridging ethnic and party cleavages, and that MPs from different parties have developed a measure of trust in one another.These findings not only support Higley and Burton's claim that elite integration is conducive to stable democracy, but also point to new directions in African Studies by demonstrating the capacity of actor-centric approaches to explain processes of democratization in countries that lack the classic structural preconditions for consolidation.THE QUESTION OF WHY SOME COUNTRIES become more democratic than others has been a constant issue in political science.Two main explanatory approaches can be distinguished: structural and actor-centric.Structural explanations consider wealth, urbanization, industrialization, and education as factors that are positively related to the emergence of stable democracies. 1 Actor-centric conceptions, in contrast, reject the idea that democracy rests on a set of economic and social preconditions, 2 instead emphasizing