Parliamentary primaries in Ghana’s National Democratic Congress: Explaining reforms to candidate selection and their impact

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dc.contributor.authorDodsworth, Susan
dc.contributor.authorAlidu, Seidu
dc.contributor.authorBauer, Gretchen
dc.contributor.authorAlidu Bukari, Gbensuglo
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-08T12:41:45Z
dc.date.available2024-04-08T12:41:45Z
dc.date.issued2021-12
dc.description.abstractCandidate selection procedures play a crucial role in shaping parliaments and influence the quality of democracy. Yet our understanding of how and why political parties reform their candidate selection mechanisms over time is surprisingly limited – especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where a number of parties have begun to shift towards more inclusive procedures. To address this gap, we examine the experience of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress, which reformed its selection procedures in 2015 allowing all party members to vote in primary elections for its parliamentary candidates. We identify four motivations that drove these reforms: making the party more democratic by expanding participation, reducing the cost of the primary process, building the organizational capacity of the party, and keeping up with the party’s main competitor. Each motivation mattered more to some within the party than others; almost all ended up disappointed due to a substantial divergence between actual and intended effects that ultimately led to the reversion of the reforms in 2019. Our findings leave us better placed to understand both why political parties in sub-Saharan Africa’s more democratic regimes have shifted towards more inclusive candidate selection mechanisms over time, and why the pace of that change has been slow and uneven.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipfunding from the Maria Sibylla Merian Centres Programme of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (under grant no. 01UK2024A-D), co-funding from the University of Ghanaen_US
dc.identifier.citationMIASA Working Paper 2021(1). Susan Dodsworth, Seidu Alidu, Gretchen Bauer & Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari. 2021. Parliamentary primaries in Ghana’s National Democratic Congress: Explaining reforms to candidate selection and their impact. Online: hyperlink.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://ugspace.ug.edu.gh:8080/handle/123456789/41463
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherMerian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA)en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesMIASA WP;2021(1)
dc.subjectDemocracyen_US
dc.subjectPrimary Electionen_US
dc.subjectPolitical Partyen_US
dc.subjectCandidate Selectionen_US
dc.subjectReformsen_US
dc.titleParliamentary primaries in Ghana’s National Democratic Congress: Explaining reforms to candidate selection and their impacten_US
dc.typeWorking Paperen_US

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