Ghana has become a two-party state by default, with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) emerging as the only political parties with sufficient national appeal to win elections and form governments. Through the power of the ballot, each of them has had the chance of being in government as well […]
A large literature has described the years after independence from colonial
rule as a period of ‘departicipation’. Africa’s new rulers – whether driven by
personal venality or a sincere commitment to nation-building – swiftly gave
up on elections, or at best held elections that, by denying choice, left violence
as the central dynamic of African politics. This article draws on the cases
of Kenya, Ghana and Uganda in the late 1960s to argue that the emphasis
often placed on the ‘speed and ease’ of this process has been overstated.
Instead, Africa’s politicians and civil servants valued elections as a means to
educate and discipline the public, even as they feared their possible outcomes.
Building on a literature that focuses on the individual experience of elections
rather than the presence or absence of parties, we argue that the rhetoric of
politicians and civil servants shows that they saw elections as ‘exercises’ – a
revealing term – that would train and test their new citizens. Yet this is not
the whole story: voters understood their participation in their own terms
and played a role in how early experiments with elections played out. The
political closures of these years were real, but their course was unplanned
and contingent, shaped partly by popular involvement. These points are not
only of historical value, but also provide important insights into the extent to
which contemporary elections are instruments of elite power or the drivers
of democratisation.
Seven successive elections have been held in Ghana since 1992, most recently in 2016 when the country made a fourth attempt to embrace constitutional rule. A burgeoning literature provides explanations for the outcome of the 2016 election, which saw the defeat of the erstwhile incumbent National Democratic Congress and a landslide victory for the New […]
Since the advent of multi-party elections in 1992, Ghana has successfully held six free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections, including the peaceful alternation of power on three occasions. Despite this impressive record, transparent and peaceful elections are never a guaranteed outcome in Ghana. General elections in the country are highly competitive and tightly contested […]
Ghanaian scholars often argue that ethnicity is the leading factor shaping the electoral choices of voters in Ghana, and that voting in Ghana, like that of many other African countries, is ethnic-based. This paper seeks to test the validity of these perceptions. Voters in three key constituencies were selected and asked about considerations that shaped […]
Ghana is now seen as a thriving African democracy after having gone through seven presidential and parliamentary elections, resulting in three overturns of political power in 2001, 2009 and 2017. The 2016 election was another crossroad for Ghana’s maturing democracy. In this election, the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) lost to the opposition New Patriotic […]
In African elections, the period between polling and announcement can be protracted and tense. In the best cases, this intermission is marked by hopeful candidates urging tense supporters to stay calm. In the worst cases, such periods are used by politicians to hurl accusations of fraud back and forth to work up partisanship and devalue […]
The end of the Cold War ushered the world into a new era of democratic governance. Citizens in developing countries began to actively contribute to the democratic process, by demanding probity and accountability in existing governance structures. The international donor community added to these efforts by responding to the challenge of the new wave of […]
In the run-up to Ghana’s 2012 general elections ‘gutter politics’, the kind of politicking that focuses on mudslinging, vituperation, personal attacks and character assassination, which usually characterises the nation’s election campaigns, gave way to issue-based politics. The contents of the manifestos of the two main political parties, the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic […]
