This book examines the relationship between development economics, social protection and democratization in the specific context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Moving existing theories of transformation into a new terrain, it sheds light on the exclusive origins of dictatorship and democracy. The book explains how development, social protection and democracy-enhancing policies have been produced by existing institutional frameworks and contingent responses to emergency events, and that these have themselves been shaped by the actions of actors and by their embeddedness in the surrounding political, economic, cultural and social environment. The book also draws attention to the most relevant institutional and social mechanisms, with associated elite strategies and power politics relations in the creation of politically-induced conflicts. In doing so, it highlights the important role of welfare institutions in the reduction and reproduction of vertical and horizontal inequalities as well as their repercussion in the emergence of social conflicts.