Reform Durability under Democratic Stress: A Comparative Analysis of Sequencing, Legitimacy, and Institutional Capacity

This article examines a central puzzle in the political economy of reform: why do some reform sequences become durable under conditions of democratic stress, while others fragment into contestation, policy drift, or reversal? Focusing on Ghana, Egypt, and Argentina, the paper develops and tests a comparative framework that explains reform durability as the outcome of interactions between reform sequencing, distributional legitimacy, and institutional capacity.

The study employs a methodology of structured, focused comparison of reform episodes, drawing on evidence from International Monetary Fund programmes, World Bank reports, and peer-reviewed scholarship.

The findings show that reform durability varies systematically across cases. In Ghana, reforms persist but remain politically fragile; in Egypt, reforms are sustained through strong institutional capacity despite constrained legitimacy; and in Argentina, weak legitimacy and low institutional continuity produce recurrent policy instability and partial reversal. Across cases, sequencing shapes the timing and visibility of welfare shocks, legitimacy conditions compliance and contestation, and institutional capacity determines whether reforms are routinised into stable policy regimes.

These results demonstrate that no single factor is sufficient: durable reform emerges only where sequencing, legitimacy, and institutional capacity reinforce one another. The paper contributes to the literature by advancing a configurational approach to reform durability, reconceptualising legitimacy as a constraint on institutionalisation, and identifying scope conditions for reform persistence in politically contested environments. The findings underscore that reform success depends not only on policy design but on the alignment of political and institutional processes over time.