Democracy and Security
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fdas20
An Evaluation of the Quality of Democracy of
Ghana
Abdulai Kuyini Mohammed
To cite this article: Abdulai Kuyini Mohammed (2023): An Evaluation of the Quality of
Democracy of Ghana, Democracy and Security, DOI: 10.1080/17419166.2023.2220140
To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.1080/17419166.2023.2220140
Published online: 07 Jun 2023.
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DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY                            
https://doi.org/10.1080/17419166.2023.2220140
An Evaluation of the Quality of Democracy of Ghana
Abdulai Kuyini Mohammed
Department of Political Science, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS 
This paper assessed the quality of Ghana’s democracy along Ghana; demand; supply; 
eight dimensions of democratic quality. The empirical basis of democracy; democratic 
the study is information from 80 interviews and secondary quality; democratic 
sources. The evidence showed that there are intra-dimension backsliding
and inter-dimension differences, in Ghana’s democratic quality 
performance and the dimensions do not co-vary. It also found 
that there is a gap between the demand for democracy and the 
supply of it. It further established that the causes of the demo-
cratic quality deficits are both internal and external. These find-
ings speak of democratic backsliding and democratic careening 
in the literature – where the political involvement of citizens is 
limited to voting which is declining in quality, while they are 
ignored between elections, and they have little possibility of 
controlling corruption, or abuse of citizens’ rights or misgovern-
ment; and where democracy is such that it lurches, swerves, 
sways, and threatens to tip over. Suggestions for resolving the 
democratic deficits are proffered, failing to implement which, 
Ghana’s fledgling democracy, which has shown signs of dete-
rioration, will worsen.
Introduction
The process of democratizing Africa occurred at the end of 1989. Occurring 
simultaneously with the East European revolutions and liberalization in South 
Africa, a wave of political opposition and regime change stampeded Africa.1 At 
the end of the democratic wave, an array of outcomes was witnessed, ranging 
from democratic strengthening in Ghana and Botswana to democratic transi-
tion in Zambia and Benin to civil catastrophe in Rwanda and Burundi and 
state collapse in Somalia.2
A little over three decades later in 2022, a mixed picture of bright demo-
cratic spots and imperiled democratic blots is discernible in Africa. In terms of 
bright spots, in April 2021, Niger witnessed its first democratic transfer of 
power. The Seychelles saw its first electoral turnover in late 2020, and in 2019 
Sudan weaned itself off the long ruling despot, Omar al-Bashir. In 
February 2020, Malawi’s Constitutional Court invalidated the results of the 
country’s flawed 2019 presidential election because of pervasive transgressions 
CONTACT Abdulai Kuyini Mohammed Zaayura@hotmail.com; mkabdulai@ug.edu.gh Department of 
Political Science, University of Ghana, P. O. Box LG 64, Legon, Accra, Ghana
© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 
2 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
and illegalities that involved the use of correction fluid to alter tally sheets. 
A new election was held in June 2020.3
As regards the black spots, Guinea’s 82-year-old Alpha Condé disobeyed 
two-term constitutional limit to have a third term through a violently disputed 
October 2020 election in which 20 people were killed. Similarly, President 
Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire defied a two-term limit and won a third 
term in October 2020 via an election that was not only boycotted by the 
opposition but also marred by serious irregularities and violence that claimed 
85 lives.4 Earlier in February 2020, the Eyadema family continued its dynastic 
reign in Togo following another flawed election. In January 2021, Yoweri 
Museveni prolonged his 34-year reign in Uganda through an election that 
was characterized by widespread irregularities and brute repression. In 
March 2021, a botched coup in Mali preceded the swearing in of a new 
president. In August 2020, the military overthrew President Ibrahim 
Boubacar Keïta, dissolved the National Assembly and Constitutional Court, 
and replaced them with a junta.5 These events suggest that across Africa 
democracy is increasingly coming under siege or is in retreat.
Nevertheless, Ghana’s democracy appears to be consolidating. The country 
has made tremendous gains in its democratic forward march since 1992.6 
Despite transition difficulties: packing of transition bodies with regime parti-
sans; late lifting of 11-year-old ban on political party activities; prevalence of 
residual culture of silence; and government near monopoly over the print and 
electronic media, Ghana’s democracy has steadily improved since the inaugu-
ration of the new Republic on January 7, 1993.7 Consecutive multi-party 
elections, particularly since the second transition elections in 1996, have 
been highly competitive, and their outcomes generally trustworthy. This was 
especially true of the 2000, 2008, and 2016 elections, which culminated in 
power transfers from incumbents to opposition parties. This made Ghana 
somewhat inimitable among African democracies.8 Giving that John Evans 
Atta Mills, by a hair’s breadth won the run-off presidential election against the 
candidate of the incumbent NPP party in 2008 with less than half a percentage 
point, and for the fact that power was actually handed over on schedule in 
January 2009, it is a testimony to the great strides Ghana has made in achieving 
electoral democracy.9
So as Ghana has witnessed significant progress in her democratic forward 
march, the questions that arise for investigation are as follows: 1) how does 
Ghana’s democracy fare in quality? 2) What challenges bedevil the attainment 
of quality democracy in Ghana? 3) How can the challenges bedeviling the 
attainment of democratic quality be resolved?
This article is so organized such that after the introduction the literature on 
democracy and democratization is reviewed in section two. Section 3 devotes 
to exposition on the democratic trajectory of Ghana, whereas section four 
explicates the methodology used to gather data for the study. The fifth section 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 3
examines the quality of democracy in Ghana, whereas the sixth section allots 
to the discussion of the findings of the study, with the final section concluding 
the study.
Literature review
Extant works on democracy and democratization comprise at least three key 
strands: (a) scholarly work on democratization, including consolidation and 
crisis, which stresses the need to look behind the smokescreen of institutions 
(i.e., that examines the substance and real performance of newly established 
democratic institutions); (b) research by academics in established democra-
cies, particularly those in the tradition of common law countries (the UK, 
Canada, and Australia), who devote to examination of supposed democratic 
auditing to evaluate their democracies; and (c) data banks, such as those of 
Polity IV, Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the World Bank, 
and the Bertelsmann Index, which make assessment of categories connected to 
democratic performance, governance, and the quality of democracy.10
These three categories of researchers and organizations have contributed, 
and some are still continuing to contribute significantly, to the study of 
democracy. The first category comprises O’Donnell with his idea of “delega-
tive democracy”11 and, Lijphart12 with his proposition on the preeminence of 
consensual democracy versus majoritarian democracy in regard to the imple-
mentation of democratic quality, and Altman and Pérez-Liñán,13 who articu-
late three dimensions that are informed by Dahl’s notion of polyarchy (civil 
rights, participation, and competition).14 In this category Ringen,15 Roberts16 
Levine and Molina,17 and Sáez18 should also be accorded considerable atten-
tion. Ringen suggests strength, capacity, security, and trust as the four key 
yardsticks for gauging democratic quality in 25 countries and craftily stresses – 
that democracies have to be assessed in regard to what they successfully 
provide to citizens. Roberts describes an idea of quality as associations and 
examines a set of East European countries quantitatively and qualitatively 
from three angles: electoral accountability, mandate responsiveness, and pol-
icy responsiveness. The research by Levine and Molina also merits special 
attention for their procedural definition of democracy, emphasizing five 
qualities: electoral decision, participation, accountability, responsiveness, and 
sovereignty. Sáez offered a unique way of analysis, which Juan Linz had cited 
but which no one had examined until then, that sees the quality of politicians 
as a possible apposite and autonomous variable accounting for the quality of 
a democracy and as a way of examining democracy.19
In the second category, Weir and Beetham20 advanced a qualitative analysis 
that they describe as “democratic auditing”: “a systematic assessment of 
institutional performance against agreed criteria and standards, so as to 
provide a reasonable authoritative judgment as to how satisfactory the 
4 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
procedures and arrangements of the given institutions are.” Their auditing 
approach contains four stages: identify suitable criteria for assessment; deter-
mine standards of good or best practices that provide a benchmark for the 
assessment; gather the relevant evidence from both formal rules and informal 
practices; and appraise the evidence against the audit criteria and defined 
standards to attain a systematic assessment. A number of researchers adopted 
Beetham’s approach by carrying out the proposal for auditing in the United 
Kingdom and other countries.21
The third group comprises numerous international institutions, such as the 
World Bank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, 
and others that have developed dissimilar databases. Great works abound that 
furnish scores and rankings for a large number of countries or in some cases 
(for example, Freedom House) for key facets such as freedom and rule of law 
in all independent countries. From a strategic angle, these data sets are also 
tremendously significant for those who are intending to concentrate in 
a specific jurisdiction or are selecting where to begin an industrial 
initiative.22 Rothstein, Holmberg, and others23 at the University of 
Gothenburg’s Quality of Government Institute integrated and polished almost 
all existing databases to create a meta database. PoliLat’s index on democratic 
development among these institutions stands out. Since 2002, with requisite 
financial support from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, PoliLat proposed an 
index of democratic development for 18 Latin American countries (IDD-Lat). 
The index is a product measuring a series of fields (primarily civil and political 
rights, corruption, party participation in the legislatures, accountability, gov-
ernmental stability, implementation of welfare policies and economic effi-
ciency). Most of the data are sourced from other institutions, such as the 
World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, the Economic Commission 
for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
In a nutshell, upon reviewing this literature, it is discernible that quantita-
tive analysis follows a path in which what sits at the back of numbers and 
rankings is not available to the reader. On the other hand, in adopting 
a qualitative approach one faces the insurmountable challenge of dealing 
with comprehensive qualitative analysis often missing in adequate theoretical 
substantiation. Moreover, in both types of analysis, the explanation – the main 
thrust of every scientific endeavor – is overlooked.24 The approach in this 
paper avoids these limitations by attempting to integrate quantitative and 
qualitative analysis, empirical descriptions, and explanations of all the princi-
pal aspects of democracy.
In the developing context of Africa generally and Ghana in particular, 
scholars and think tanks have researched and continue to research diverse 
aspects of democracy. Some of the scholars have conducted researcg on: 
democractic transition, democratic consolidation and democratic deteriora-
tion or backsliding25; democracy and stability26; demand and supply of 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 5
democracy27; democracy and conflict resolution28 rule of law and democracy29 
electoral reforms30 activism and democratic quality31 democratic ruptures32 
electoral democracy33 electoral violence34 civil society organization and demo-
cratic consolidation35; quality of democracy and governance36; election man-
agement and democracy37 biometric technology and voter identification38; 
and biometric technology and elections and democratic quality39
In terms of democratic transition, consolidation, and backsliding, Gyimah- 
Boadi and Rothchild (1982) and Gyimah-Boadi40 particularly, among others, 
have expounded on Ghana’s slippery transition from authoritarianism to 
democracy and the efforts made and the challenges faced in consolidating 
the country’s democracy. They argue that the efforts paid off because the 
country’s strengthening democracy is epitomized by the eight successive 
elections she has had, which culminated in three alternations of power in 
2001, 2009, and 2017. However, as Gyimah-Boadi41 and Ayelazuno42 note, the 
recent backsliding of democratic norms and values is real and worrying.
With regard to demand for and supply of democracy, Mattes43 argues that 
Ghanaians, like many Africans across the continent, want to be ruled demo-
cratically, but the picture varies greatly across individuals, across regions, and 
across time. Pertaining to the supply of democracy, Mattes,44 found that while 
seven in 10 Ghanaians (70%) both think they live in a democracy and are 
satisfied with the way democracy works, fewer than one-third of the public 
think they are being supplied with democracy fully in half of all countries 
surveyed, including fewer than two in 10 people in Cabo Verde (19%), Sudan 
(15%), São Tomé and Príncipe (13%), Togo (12%), Madagascar (7%), and 
Gabon (6%).
On Ghana’s democratic stability, Boafo-Arthur45 contends that it is 
a function of three factors: 1) a strong adherence to the rule of law by political 
actors; 2) the independence and integrity of the legal system; and 3) a highly 
effective electoral management system. Nevertheless, he identified a number 
of threats to democratic projects, including poverty, ethnocentrism, corrup-
tion, and overdependence on donors.46
On the issue of electoral reforms, Gyampo47 investigates election petitions 
at the Supreme Court, especially those relating to the 2012 presidential election 
and the electoral reforms that were recommended by the court alongside its 
verdict. He investigates the formidability of implementing electoral reforms in 
Ghana, the causes for lack of implementation progress and ways of dealing 
with them.
Pertaining to rule of law and democracy, Frimpong and Agyeman-Budu48 
analyzed how Ghana has performed in terms of adhering to the rule of law 
during each of the four periods of democratic rule in the political history of the 
country, which are namely, the immediate post-independence period (1957– 
1966); the Second Republican period (1969–1971); the Third Republican 
period (1979–1981); and the present Fourth Republican constitutional period 
6 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
(1993–date). They conclude that most of the post-independence successive 
governments have not lived up to the expectation of the people to deliver good 
governance and the rule of law. This, they argue, has undermined efforts at 
entrenching the rule of law as the basis of democracy in Ghana.
Relating to electoral violence, Bob-Milliar49 elucidates how competitive 
politics are contributing to electoral violence in Africa in general and Ghana 
in particular. He argues that scholarly works have over-concentrated on large- 
scale organized political violence or high-intensity electoral violence and, in 
the process, have overlooked low-intensity electoral violence, which consider-
ably also affects electoral quality.
From the above exposition, the works on Ghana’s democracy have covered 
diverse dimensions of the subject ranging from the challenges of transiting 
from authoritarianism to democracy to growing and consolidating the democ-
racy to democracy’s impacts on the country’s socio-economic development 
and then to the threats of the democratic project backsliding. Most of these 
dimensions of the Ghanaian democratic literature align with the international 
literature, the exceptions being the violence that has characterized the demo-
cratic processes, as well as the disrespect of the tenets of the rule of law and 
probity and accountability.
Conceptualizing democracy and democratic quality
The narrow definition of democracy suggests that such a political system 
has at least universal adult suffrage; periodic free, competitive, and fair 
elections; more than one political party, and more than one source of 
information.50 A much broader form of democracy is liberal or full democ-
racy that refers to a political system in which most of the country’s leading 
government officials are elected; there is nearly universal suffrage; elections 
are largely free of fraud and outside manipulation; opposition party candi-
dates have a real chance of being elected to important national offices; and 
minority rights as well as general civil liberties are respected, including free 
speech and a free press.51
A quality democracy is a good democracy, that is, “a stable institutional 
structure that realizes the liberty and equality of citizens through the legitimate 
and correct functioning of its institutions and mechanisms.”52
This implies that a good democracy is:
a broadly legitimated regime that completely satisfies citizens (quality in terms of result); 
in which the citizens, associations and communities of which it is composed enjoy liberty 
and equality, even in different forms and degrees (quality in terms of content); and in 
which the citizens themselves have the power to check and evaluate whether the 
government pursues the objectives of liberty and equality according to the rule of law 
(quality in terms of procedure).53
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 7
Framework for assessing the quality of democracy
This study adopts the theoretical framework offered by Morlino,54 who iden-
tified eight different dimensions on which democracies vary in quality. The 
first five of these dimensions are procedural in nature. They include the rule of 
law, electoral accountability, inter-institutional accountability, participation, 
and competition. The next two, freedom and equality, are more substantive, 
emphasizing fundamental values that any democracy should endeavor to 
promote and protect. The last dimension, the desire of citizens, represented 
by responsiveness, pertains to the degree to which the policy outcomes of the 
democratic process are in accord with citizens’ demands and preferences.55
Tracing the democratic journey of Ghana
The political culture that was developed in the colonial retro in Ghana was one 
which construed the government’s power as imposed, total, and ruthless, as 
well as unaccountable. The alien regime established a stranglehold on the Gold 
Coast through the creation of a highly centralized administrative and bureau-
cratic structure headquartered in the colonial capital and controlled by the 
colonizers. The policy process began and ended with the governor.56
This imposed political culture was a legacy that post-colonial administra-
tions inherited. Dr Kwame Nkrumah fought for independence for the then 
Gold Coast in 1957, placing it as the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to do 
so under a fresh name of Ghana. Dr Nkrumah regarded the independence of 
Ghana as a springboard for the complete emancipation of the Africa conti-
nent. His most famous refrain was that Africans should “seek ye the political 
kingdom and all other things shall come” (perhaps foretelling the inclination 
of using political authority for economic gain). Dr Nkrumah bequeathed with 
Ghana a good start in her developmental drive. Many prestigious projects and 
programs like the construction of the Akosombo Hydro Electricity Dam and 
construction of the industrial township of Tema were introduced. Yet, his 
government quickly worsened into totalitarianism with the decree of a one- 
party state in 1964 and a growing personality cult.57
Predictably, Dr Nkrumah was overthrown by a military putsch by the 
National Liberation Council on February 24, 1966. From then onwards until 
the end of 1992 Ghana had been governed by a string of military dictatorships 
(1966–1969, 1972–1979, 1981–1992) interspersed by two brief periods of 
democratic rule (1969–1972 and 1979–1981).58
Protuberant happenings that led to the birth of the Fourth Republic in 
Ghana were as follows: the military rulers’ decision to return the country to 
democracy; the lifting of the ban on political parties; the conduct of multi- 
party elections in 1992; and the start of the Fourth Republic on January 7, 
1993.59 Multi-party democratic rule has thrived in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, 
8 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
notwithstanding its fairly gloomy early development.60 Formidable difficulties 
and deficits have continued, but the country has made tremendous improve-
ments in democratic development since 1992. Whereas other freshly demo-
cratizing African states have suffered reversals or stagnated since the third 
wave of democracy swept Africa, Ghana’s democracy has gained in strength.61 
The remit of this article is therefore to assess the extent to which Ghana's 
democracy has progressed, that is, the quality of democracy the country has 
achieved.
Methodology
The study employed a qualitative approach in data collection and analysis. 
One important motivation for the use of the qualitative approach in this paper 
is that the author desired to be endlessly creative and interpretive. Unlike the 
quantitative approach, the author did not just leave the field with piles of 
empirical information and then easily compiled this report. This qualitative 
approach enabled the author construct interpretations using various techni-
ques such as content analysis, grounded theory62 thematic analysis,63 and 
discourse analysis to make sense of the data. Due to qualitative approach’s 
close researcher involvement, the author gained an insider view of the field. 
This permitted him to find issues that are often missed (such as subtleties and 
complexities) by the scientific, more positivistic inquiries. For example, the 
scores of Ghana on certain international indices for measuring democratic 
qualities such as election quality, freedoms, and responsiveness did not tally 
with respondents’ experiences and evaluations of the said indices.
This paper is based on primary information from elite (20) and non- 
elite (60) respondents and secondary information. The elite respondents 
were purposively drawn from parliament, the media, and think tanks 
including the Center for Democratic Governance (CDD), the Institute 
of Economic Affairs (IEA), and the Institute for Democratic Governance 
(IDEG), as well as IMANI-Ghana and academia. Respondents were drawn 
from middle and senior management of the selected organizations 
because they have roles and expertise connected to the development, 
implementation, and evaluation of policies on Ghana’s democracy. 
Respondents were identified and selected in three main ways. First, con-
tact details of those in senior and middle management positions in the 
respective organizations were obtained from the entities’ websites or 
through friends who are acquaintances of those officials. Second, phone 
calls were placed to those officials inviting them to participate in the 
study. Upon accepting to participate, the author then scheduled a face-to- 
face interview meeting with each one of them. Third, negotiating access 
and participation of respondents from academia was the easiest as those 
enlisted were senior colleagues and peers with whom the author has 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 9
a good working relationship. They therefore readily accepted to be inter-
viewed. Thus, in addition to answering the general questions, the author 
went back to the elite respondents from November 30 to December 29, 
2022, and persuaded them to answer additional questions, which the 
author thought were technical in nature
The non-elite respondents were randomly selected from three parts of 
Ghana: southern, middle, and northern. In each part, 20 respondents made 
up of 10 interviewees each were selected from the regional capital and a rural 
settlement. Accordingly, Accra and Abokobi were selected in the southern 
part, Kumasi and Kuntanse were picked from the middle part, and Tamale and 
Zabzugu were chosen from the northern part. The choice of the settlements 
was to ensure regional balance and obtain the perspectives of both rural and 
urban dwellers. The use of elite and non-elite interviews enabled the extraction 
of salient and diverse information pertaining to key domains of the quality of 
democracy in Ghana.
The interviews provided a means for exploring the complexity and detail of 
processes that could not be examined by alternate, more structured instru-
ments, such as questionnaires, or analyzed using quantitative methods.64 The 
questions in the interviews centered on perceptions about democratic quality, 
as well as the participants’ experiences with the practice of democracy includ-
ing the challenges in Ghana. Each interview lasted about 45 minutes.
The secondary information was sourced via Desktop reviews collated from 
published documents on the democratization process in Ghana including 
reports from parliament, democracy aid agencies, and scholarly works on 
democratization, as well as databanks such as those of Polity IV, Freedom 
House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the World Bank, and the Bertelsmann 
Index, which provide measurements of categories related to democratic per-
formance, governance, and the quality of democracy. The secondary informa-
tion enabled a better understanding of the historical context of the 
democratization process and performance of Ghana. This information was 
distilled from data collected at different times across similar democratic 
quality dimensions, and this afforded the opportunity to describe, compare, 
and explain change. Such comparison enlarged the scope of generalizations, 
provided additional insights, and allowed for triangulation, increasing the 
validity of the research findings obtained from the primary data.
Data analysis: assessment of democratic quality of Ghana
The democratic quality of Ghana is assessed on all the eight dimensions of 
Morlino’s65 framework. Primary data were thematically analyzed, and themes 
were extracted along the lines of Morlino.66 Secondary data, including docu-
ments on democratic processes, practices, and performance were examined 
together with primary data from the interviews. The findings therefore mirror 
10 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
the key themes of the interviews as well as diverse information from secondary 
sources.
Results and discussion
Rule of law
Aspects of the rule of law dimension that are discussed here include: an 
organized society on the basis of clearly defined laws; independent and 
politically neutral judiciaries; respect of the law; effective fight against corrup-
tion; and respect of citizens’ rights by security forces.
Respondents were asked: Do you think there is rule of law in Ghana? In 
response, 51% answered in the affirmative, 43% replied in the negative, 
whereas 6% said they did not know. Those who answered in the affirmative 
were further asked: Which aspects of the rule of law do you think are being 
upheld? The responses in descending order of popularity were: society struc-
tured by clearly formulated laws (68%); independent and politically neutral 
judiciary (45%); public obedience of the law (41%); Government obedience of 
the law (40%); fight against corruption (21%); and security forces respect of 
citizens’ rights (17%). These responses suggest that Ghana is good at designing 
laws but is poor at implementing them. It also showed that the gap between 
guarantees of the rule of law and reality is wide especially in the area of fighting 
corruption and security forces’ respect of citizens’ rights.
In terms of an independent and politically neutral judiciary, the secondary 
evidence seems to support the primary finding noted above. In regard to the 
positives for the judiciary, the first prominent case occurred in 1993, when the 
court ruled in the case of New Patriotic Party (NPP) v. Inspector General of 
Police (IGP) that the provision under the Public Order Decree, 1972 for 
authorization to mount demonstrations suffered inadequacies in guidelines 
and effective control and was in violation of Article 21(1) (d) of the 
Constitution. It also ruled that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ 
Rights (ACHPR) could be besought without formal integration into local laws. 
The NPP v. IGP case caused the revocation of the Public Order Decree and its 
substitution with the Public Order Act, 1994 (Act 491).
This ruling bolstered the freedom of assembly, association, and organiza-
tion and freedom of thought and expression elements of the freedom dimen-
sion of democratic quality. They also speak of the participation dimension of 
democratic quality. The importance of protests and demonstrations in pro-
moting democracy is summed up by Douglass as follows: “power concedes 
nothing without a demand.”67 He made this statement on the occasion of the 
“Black Lives Matter” protest marches in the US. Public protests are 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 11
manifestations of dissent and an expression of the urgent need to change 
policy. By driving media coverage, accelerating legislative action, and shifting 
public opinion, nonviolent protests have been a force behind positive social 
change. For example, the massive protests against the introduction of the value 
added tax (VAT) in Ghana in 1996 led to its withdrawal.68 Thus, protests and 
demonstrations can force governments to undertake or refrain from under-
taking some action including removing issues vehemently opposed by the 
public from the agenda.
Second, in NPP v. Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), the court ruled 
solidly that the GBC was in contravention of the requirements to give equal 
access to state media (Article 163) and the right to information granted under 
Article 21(1) (f) by not affording equal opportunity to the opposition to 
discuss its views on that year’s budget.
The ruling actualized the freedom of thought and expression elements of 
the freedom dimension of democratic quality. This is because it is currently 
generally acknowledged that news coverage is one of the most significant 
political agenda-setters,69 influencing not only symbolic parliamentary 
agendas70 but also more substantive agendas such as government 
decisions.71 The implications of the ruling for democracy are at least three. 
First, the opposition was able to use GBC to report the exchanges between 
parliament and the executive as they influenced each other through respond-
ing to external events. Second, the GBC played a role as a moderator of effects, 
since the potential of parliamentarians to push issues in the budget onto the 
government agenda or remove them from it, depended on the extent to which 
they generated media attention for those issues. Indeed, politicians often 
respond to issues simply because of their media attention.72 Third, the opposi-
tion sought the public broadcaster’s coverage of their views on the budget as 
a means of expanding the scope of conflict and enticing other stakeholders to 
participate in the appropriation deliberations, which hitherto had been the 
exclusive preserve of the legislature.
In addition, in the case of JH Mensah v. Attorney-General, the court served 
the rule of law when it mandated that all government ministers occupying 
such offices prior to the 1996 elections to submit to legislative screening in 
accordance with the constitution. This ruling endorsed the plaintiff ’s chal-
lenge to the effect that it was unconstitutional for the government to ostensibly 
permit such ministers to remain in their positions after the 1996 general 
elections and the later swearing in and commencement of the second term 
of office of President Rawlings.73 This decision reaffirmed the court’s resolve 
to be independent of political control – a posture that was emboldened by the 
country’s return to constitutional rule.
The decision also speaks of the inter-institutional accountability dimension 
of democratic quality. This is because it mandates public officeholders, espe-
cially elected officials, to be vetted for suitability for their positions by the 
12 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
people’s representatives, parliament. This is in line with the democratic model 
of accountability, which espouses that a contemporary representative democ-
racy can be described as a principal–agent relationship.74 The citizens repre-
sent the principals in a democracy, whereas the elected representatives are the 
agents who use the transferred sovereignty of the people to transact on their 
behalf. The latter, in turn, transfer the drafting and enforcement of laws and 
policy to the government.75
In the case of Amidu v. President Kufuor, the Supreme Court echoed its 
ruling first determined in the NPP v. Rawlings case, to the effect that, an action 
can be brought against the President in the execution of his responsibilities, in 
tune with the diktats of the rule of law. Yet, such action must be preferred 
against the Attorney-General in line with Article 88 of the Constitution as the 
symbolic defendant.76 The ruling affirmed that no one from ordinary citizens 
to the highest officeholder in the land is above the law – which addresses the 
equality dimension of democratic quality. The implications of equality before 
the law for democratic quality are as follows: it ensures that all citizens have 
their interests and perspectives expressed with equal force and effectiveness77 
and it guarantees that perceived inequalities, which challenge the legitimacy of 
the government, reduce consent, and require perhaps, a more coercive 
government,78 are checked. If the law favors any citizen on any unreasonable 
grounds such as class, status, and gender, the law is unfair and fails to perform 
its purpose, which is to uphold justice. Equality before the law is to fulfill the 
concept of the rule of law – principles of legality – which implies a government 
that is run by the principles of law and not by the arbitrariness of men who 
rule, which are the cornerstones of democracy.
The ruling also implied that structures ensuring separation of powers are 
essential but not sufficient to provide checks and balances. So, citizens’ action 
from below, as demonstrated in Amidu v. Attorney General, is needed to 
complement it. In Ghana, what are lacking are constitutionalism and suppor-
tive institutional conventions, political will, and commitment. As Mohidden79 
argues, “In many African countries constitutions contain eloquent proclama-
tion of intention, but the political will for action and adjudication is lacking.”
In the matter pertaining to Asare v. Attorney-General (citizenship case), the 
court ruled as null and void provisions of the Citizenship Act, 2000 (Act 591), 
which empowered the Minister of Interior with unconstrained discretion to 
prescribe offices that dual citizens are not eligible to occupy in Ghana, besides 
the offices that they are statutorily barred from holding.80 The ruling was a real 
check on executive power, which has a tendency of encroaching beyond its 
limits,81 which speaks of the rule of law dimension of democratic quality.
These progressive verdicts, however, were to be accompanied by a chain of 
rulings that overturned the encouraging pattern that was being shaped. In the 
notorious libel cases of Republic v. Tommy Thompson Books Ltd (No 2) & Ors; 
and The Republic v. Mensa-Bonsu & Ors, ex-parte A-G, the Supreme Court 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 13
validated laws that circumscribed the exercise of press freedom on the basis 
that they were “reasonably justified in a democratic society” under Article 164 
of the Constitution. These decisions were severely condemned, eventually 
culminating in the repeal of the laws.
The negative trend in the decisions of the Supreme Court continued in cases 
such as Abel Edusei v. Attorney-General. In Edusei, the plaintiff ’s request for 
a pronouncement that certain sections of the Passports and Travel Certificates 
Decree of 1967 were conflicting with, and in contravention of, the letter and 
spirit of article 21(1) (g) of the 1992 Constitution – on freedom of movement – 
was dismissed on grounds that the proper forum for the case was the High 
Court. Remarkably, this decision contradicted the court’s previous ruling in 
NPP v. A-G (The 31st December Case), regarding the jurisdiction of the court 
to entertain political questions. The general perception of such decisions 
generated at the time was that judicial independence and integrity of the 
Supreme Court had been compromised. However, the court bounced back 
to salvage its reputation in the case of J.H. Mensah v. Attorney-General, in 
which it held that it had jurisdiction to determine a political question.82
The above perceptions about the erosion of judicial independence were 
further given a blow following recent unanimous court rulings in cases invol-
ving the ruling NPP and the opposition NDC (e.g., the 2020 election petition 
case, the disenfranchising of the people of Santrofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi 
[SALL] in the 2020 election). In connection with the unanimous court rulings, 
therefore, elite respondents were asked: Do you think the recent several 
unanimous court rulings in cases involving the incumbent NPP government 
and the opposition NDC have had consequences for the rule of law? In 
response, 64% answered positively, 28% responded negatively, whereas the 
remaining 8% said they did not know. Those who answered positively were 
further asked: In which ways have the unanimous rulings impacted the rule of 
law? In reply, a parliamentarian said that: “a lot of allegations have been 
leveled publicly against the judiciary” and that “known NPP activist have 
been nominated to our courts, which has led to a phenomenon known as 
executive-minded judiciary who do the bidding of their masters.” However, an 
academic disagreed, positing that: “There is a perception that the trend is 
suggestive of judicial abuses, but it is difficult to prove by any evidence that the 
losing party had a good case and it was ignored.” Re-echoing the parliamen-
tarian’s stand, a CCD-Ghana respondent said that: “it is unrealistic that on 
more than four or five occasions the court ruled unanimously against the 
opposition NDC with not even one of them dissenting.”
In regard to respect of the law by government, since the reintroduction of 
democracy in 1993, the government in Ghana has, overall, obeyed the rule of 
law. The executive adheres to prescribed parliamentary procedures to bring 
policy into law, and it has complied with court judgments and decisions of 
constitutional oversight bodies given against it, including some made in 
14 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
difficult political situations. Government compliance with judicial decisions is 
attested in the following cases: NPP v. GBC and NPP v. IGP, as explained 
earlier, as well as NPP v. Electoral Commission, concerning the approval of 
government-appointed district chief executives in advance of elections, and 
National Media Commission v. Attorney General, on the appointment of the 
governing bodies of state-owned media.83
Nevertheless, there have been some concerns in specific cases where the 
government has refused to obey court rulings. For example, in one important 
policy matter that is, the “poultry farmers’ case,” the government introduced 
a law in Parliament to overrule the effect of a High Court decision that it must 
implement its earlier law imposing a tariff to protect domestically produced 
chicken.84 The action of the government not only offended the separation of 
powers doctrine but also undermined constitutionalism in Ghana – both of 
which undercut the rule of law dimension of democratic quality. Although the 
constitution of Ghana has vested in the legislature considerable powers, it has 
advertently or inadvertently given the executive leeway to undermine the 
influence of parliament. There are known facts about the causes of the 
legislature’s acquiescence or submissiveness to the executive in Ghana: candi-
dates vying for legislative office promising even things they cannot deliver; 
fusion of legislature and executive; government’s majority in parliament; 
power of the President in appointing parliamentarians as ministers; and the 
increasing stakes in elections due to keen political competition.85 It is therefore 
not surprising that legislators “remain vulnerable to cajoleries by the executive 
who can provide patronage goods and services – which has led to legislative 
capture thus stifling efforts at reforms”.86
Another case involved Mr Kojo Hodare Okae, former deputy director, 
Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) against the Minister of Interior and the 
A-G. His case of unlawful dismissal was upheld by the High Court, which 
ordered his reinstatement. However, this was not done. He subsequently 
instituted an action for contempt against the Minister for Interior and the 
A-G,87 which yielded nothing.
More recently, the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of Abdulai 
v. Attorney General, to the effect that deputy speakers of parliament can 
preside over sessions and at the same time can count for quorum and also 
vote to make decisions, has thrown to the rocks the long standing stipulation 
to the contrary in the Standing Orders of parliament. The ruling was declared 
as unconstitutional under Order 109 (3) of the Standing Orders of Parliament, 
which barred a Deputy Speaker, who is presiding over proceedings, from 
voting on any issue for determination. Consequently, it ruled as valid the 
passage of the 2022 Budget by Parliament on November 30, 2021, during 
which the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu, who was presiding, had 
counted himself as part of the quorum that made that decision.88
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 15
The verdict overturned a 30-year-old rule (standing order) in Ghana’s 
parliament as unconstitutional. Thus, the ruling strikes a chord with the 
questions: can the court intervene in the legislative process and the internal 
affairs of the legislature notwithstanding the principles of separation of 
powers, the rule of law, and supremacy of the Constitution? If it can 
intervene, then, on what ground(s) can such intervention take place? The 
recent divided decision by the Constitutional Court in South Africa in 
Mazibuko v Sisulu, Speaker of the National Assembly 2013 6 SA 249 
(CC) affirmed two approaches: the traditional common-law, noninterven-
tionist approach represented by the minority judgment, and the modern 
South African constitutional-interpretation approach shown by the judg-
ment of the majority. The conclusion inevitably was that the common-law, 
noninterventionist approach to the internal affairs of the legislature does 
not apply unconditionally [if democracy has to be safeguarded].89 This is 
because the courts have an obligation to ensure through the principle of 
legality that the other branches of government exercise their powers within 
the bounds of their constitutional authority. It is the duty of the court to 
enforce the rule of law; to ensure that the organs of state operate within the 
constitutional framework for the distribution of powers, while at the same 
time, refraining from intruding into territories mapped out for those other 
branches. The courts maintain this delicate balance by observing the prin-
ciple of separation of powers, on the one hand, and justiciability, on the 
other.90 Thus, the court’s ruling in Abdulai v. Attorney General affirmed the 
democratic principles of separation of powers, rule of law and judicial 
review. It also underscored the fact that parliament’s own rules were 
defective in that they barred a member from exercising his/her right 
under Order 109(3) of the Standing Orders of Parliament thereby violating 
the very essence of the principle of free speech and the debate doctrine, 
which is what parliamentary privilege sets out to protect. Parliamentary 
privilege denotes the long-standing principle of judicial nonintervention in 
the internal matters of the legislature or its legislative process, which is 
derived from English common-law.91
Concerning corruption, the canker is prevalent in all organs of government 
and society in general. They include: judicial corruption; political corruption; 
bureaucratic corruption; corruption in business; and police corruption. In 
terms of judicial corruption, upon a 2015 report by an investigative journalist 
into corruption in the judiciary, the chief justice established a five-member 
committee headed by a Supreme Court judge to investigate the allegations, 
causing the firing later that year of 12 high court judges, 22 lower court judges, 
and 19 judicial service employees. In May 2018, the President suspended four 
additional High Court judges who were implicated in the report. In 
December 2018, the President fired those four judges, three of whom had 
dockets pending before the Economic Community of West Africa Court. An 
16 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
administrative process of information-gathering was proceeding for ultimate 
prosecution.92
Political corruption appears to be endemic, covering a gamut of scandals: 
PDS deal, Agyapa Royalties Deal, AMERI Deal, just to mention a few. For 
example, the AMERI deal was withdrawn from parliament in December 2018 
after the media reported that the figures were bloated. The energy minister at 
the time, Boakye Agyarko, was consequently sacked and the deal 
renegotiated.93 A June 2019 report by the auditor-general revealed that wide-
spread corruption and waste of public funds remained pervasive problems. For 
example, the honorary consul general and the Ghanaian consulate in 
Washington DC were unable to account for visa fees totaling US$355,000. 
The Free Senior High School Secretariat squandered more than US$3.16 mil-
lion. A former minister of tourism kept three official vehicles for personal use 
after leaving office. The report gathered that corrupt practices caused US 
$340 million of financial wrongdoings, comprising misapplication and mis-
appropriation of funds, theft, and procurement irregularities.94
Those in power and their supporters often revel in extensive impunity.95 
Top officials and politicians still get away with their misdeeds without prose-
cution. Since the first special prosecutor took office in 2018, no corruption 
case probed by that office culminated in a conviction. Not surprisingly, the 
first Special Prosecutor against corruption resigned in 2020, citing political 
interference from the regime and a dearth of cooperation in fulfilling his 
duties.96
Ghana’s obstinately low ranking on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 
is worrisome due to the picture it frames and the long-term implications for 
democratic stability. Ghana placed in the 81st position out of 180 countries in 
Transparency International’s 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).97 In 
the 2006 rating of 163 countries, Ghana came in the 93rd position. Ghana’s 
score of 3.3 points out of 10 was lower than the 2005 score of 3.5 points. 
Corruption in the country has worsened into a persistent problem, especially 
with regard to high-profile cases, which has eroded public confidence in the 
government and is on track to have long term, adverse effects on public 
attitudes toward the democratic system.98
Pertaining to security forces' respect for citizens’ right, police brutality, 
corruption, negligence, and impunity have been reported.99 Reliable reports 
of police beating, raping, and abusing suspects and other citizens abound.100 
At the end of 2017, the Police Intelligence and Professional Standards Unit had 
investigated 33 reports of police brutality.101 Assaults on journalists have been 
the most ubiquitous form of violation in Ghana in the last 10 years, with the 
worst culprits being the security agencies steered by the military and the 
police. Security agencies have committed over 38% of all the atrocities against 
journalists (53 out of 138).102
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 17
Participation
The elements of the participation dimension that are discussed here include: 
the following right to vote; right to organize; right to protest; right to demon-
strate; and right to strike. To test the level of their involvement in the demo-
cratic process, respondents were asked specific questions. First, they were 
asked: Have you ever engaged in collective action by joining with others in 
the past year to raise an issue? In response, 40% said they did so either once or 
twice or several times, whereas 57% said they never did with the remaining 3% 
failing to respond. This is surprising given that the country’s new democratic 
dispensation has endured for three decades. One would have expected that 
Ghanaians would take advantage of their guaranteed fundamental rights to go 
far beyond the formal forms of participation to venture into more assertive 
modes of engagement.
To guarantee the right to vote and eliminate or reduce impersonation, 
biometric technology was introduced into the electoral system for the first 
time in 2012.103 In relation to biometric technology in elections, elite respon-
dents were asked: Do you think the introduction of biometric technology into 
the electoral system in Ghana has improved election quality? In reply, 72% 
answered in the affirmative, 24% replied in the negative, whereas the remain-
ing 6% said they did not know. Those who answered in the affirmative were 
further asked: In which ways has biometric technology improved election 
quality? They mentioned, among others, that: it has improved voter turnout; 
it has introduced powerful capacities; it has served as a single reference point 
for identity verification; and it has prevented crimes such as identity fraud and 
voter fraud. Those who responded in the negative cited its limitations: sus-
ceptibility to privacy violation; abuse by public officials; errors in data capture 
and verification; and lack of complete reliability. These responses suggest that 
the effectiveness of biometric technology in enhancing election quality, parti-
cularly in a developing context like Ghana, hinges on a number of factors 
including capacity, internet connectivity, biological characteristics of voters, 
disparity in development; and population diversity.
Respondents were further also asked: Have you ever participated in demon-
strations or protest? In response, 84% answered in the negative and 10% 
answered in the affirmative, with the remaining 6% declining to give an 
answer. These findings are consistent with Armah-Attoh and Robertson’s 
evidence that 95% of Ghanaians said they never participated in demonstra-
tions in 2013. This figure included 84% who said they would never do such 
a thing. The two scholars also intimated that since 2002, the rate at which 
Ghanaians participate in demonstrations has been unwaveringly lower than 
the rate at which Ghanaians come together with others to stake claims.104
Respondents were in addition asked: Have you ever worked for a political 
party/candidate or attended a campaign rally? In response, 83% said they had 
18 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
never worked for a political party or candidate, 13% said they ever did, 
whereas the remaining 4% failed to express an opinion. Also, 75% never 
persuaded others to vote for a preferred candidate or party, whilst 25% 
intimated that they did campaign for a particular party or candidate. 
Moreover, 77% revealed that they had never attended a campaign meeting 
or rally of a political party or candidate with a fifth (23%) agreeing that they 
participated in a political rally.
Respondents were further asked: Have you ever made contact with your 
formally elected representatives at the national and local levels such as 
Members of Parliament? The answers in the negative were 87% (for members 
of parliament), 91% (for local councilors), and 72% (for political party offi-
cials). Those who answered in the negative were further asked: Why have you 
not had contact with your elected representatives? An overwhelming 95% 
complained that the elected representatives, especially members of parliament, 
never listen to what ordinary citizens have to say. This is because of their 
perception that constituents will make demands to meet their personal finan-
cial circumstances. This evidence suggests that there is a significant gap 
between civil society and government and consequently, a potentially weak 
accountability relationship exists between government and the citizenry.
Competition
Elements in the competition dimension that are analyzed in this section 
comprise the following: regular, free, and fair electoral contests; access to 
electoral contests by different parties; ease and decisiveness with which incum-
bents can be defeated; pluralism in media ownership and viewpoints; and 
competition within political parties.
In terms of regular, free and fair electoral contests, each of the eight 
elections (held in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020) has 
been progressively freer, fairer and more transparent than the one that pre-
ceded it.105 Yet, in 2020, presidential candidates’ filing fees doubled compared 
to the 2016 amount. Voters and candidates continue to be threatened by 
vigilantism and politically inspired violence despite the 2019 promulgation 
of the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act, which outlawed all political and 
other vigilante groups NPP and NDC supporters clashed at several voter 
registration sites in 2020 – notwithstanding an accord between the two parties 
to desist from such disorderly pursuits – which resulted in one death.106 The 
two murders by security forces, not less than two deaths from civilian violence, 
as many as eight killings in total, and several injuries in the Greater Accra, 
Bono East, and Northern Regions during the 2020 voting and tallying process 
are indicative of an opaque, obstructed, and unfair electoral process.107 
Violence has also characterized previous elections. For example, from 1992 
to 2012 five categories of election-related violence were recorded in Ghana: 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 19
ballot box theft (142 cases); molestations/violent intimidation of voters and 
candidates (2,807 cases); seizure/public properties occupancy (1,812 cases); 
protests/public disorders (858 cases); and party property vandalism (88 
cases).108
The manipulation of electoral processes is aggravated by gerrymandering 
(the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries to create undue 
advantage for a party). In this connection, elite respondents were asked: 
Would you say that the habit of incumbent governments in Ghana creating 
new districts and new constituencies ahead of national elections amounts to 
gerrymandering? An overwhelmingly 87% answered in the affirmative, 11% 
replied in the negative, whereas 2% said they did know. Those who supplied 
the positive responses were in addition asked: Do you think such gerryman-
dering affects the electoral/democratic quality of Ghana? Replying that it 
undoubtedly does, a former IEA researcher stated that: “It has become explicit 
that gerrymandering has influenced the creation of new districts and consti-
tuencies.” A CDD responded concurred arguing that: “the an unabated crea-
tion of new districts and new constituencies, which does not make economic 
sense, nevertheless makes political sense as political parties use it to garner 
votes.” However, an academic disagreed, arguing that: “the evidence is not 
there to support the claim.” The academic’s point is countered by 
Mohammed109 who found that: “In 2004, 30 new constituencies were created, 
which benefited three political parties, namely the NPP, the NDC and the 
PNC, which won 16, 13 and one seat(s) respectively in the general election 
that year.”
Pertaining to internal political party democracy, the performance of parties 
is abysmal. The parties are controlled by a few persons; they have weak internal 
structures; and they generally exhibit poor organizational capacities. Strong 
individual personalities, usually described as “founding fathers,” who habi-
tually regard the parties as personal fiefdoms have hijacked the political party 
process.110 A few examples illustrate the point being made here. NPP national 
organizer, Alhaji Inusah switched camp to the NDC when during his attempt 
for the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency parliamentary seat in the 2000 
election was compelled to step down for a preferable candidate, Nii Amoo 
Addy. Similarly, in 2001, Professor Mike Oquaye was prevailed upon to 
relinquish his campaign to win the NPP national chairman seat for the reason 
that Harona Esseku, a less trendy candidate, was preferred by most of the party 
leaders, including President Kufuor. Professor Oquaye was subsequently 
appeased as Ghana’s high commissioner to India. Prior to the 2004 elections, 
the NPP rank and file in Sunyani East constituency favored the young candi-
date Nana Obiri Boahene over the experienced incumbent JH Mensah, who 
was then a senior minister. In the end, party executives settled on Mensah, 
whereas Boahene was atoned to fill the position of regional party chairman.111 
Coined as the “Swedru Declaration,” President Rawlings in 2000 nominated 
20 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
John Atta Mills as his successor without recourse to the NDC’s established 
selection procedure. This action generated considerable anger and disillusion-
ment within the party and led some members to break away to form the 
NRP.112
On the issue of pluralism in media ownership, current figures for opera-
tional media organizations in Ghana are about 426, of which 80% are radio 
stations.113 These are possessed by an amalgam of state, political, and business 
players, with private proprietorship being the most ubiquitous. Most of these 
private media are either allied to specific political parties or subscribe to 
particular ideologies.114 The contemporary multiplication of mobile telephony 
in Ghana as elsewhere across Africa has resulted in an increase in radio 
audiences as members of the public can now easily tune in to programs on 
their phones regardless of their location in the country.115 Via phone-ins, for 
example, talk radio allows audiences to contribute to public discourses, call 
government officials to account and receive (immediate) responses to their 
questions.116 The internet is now more accessible, and its use is more wide-
spread that many Ghanaian radio platforms generated online platforms to take 
advantage of the growing popularity of the internet among citizens.117 Radio is 
the channel that transmits most in local tongues, winning it the accolade as the 
more incorporating in regard to being accessible not only to the literate but 
also the illiterate.118
The proliferation of the media promotes democracy in several important 
respects although they are sometimes criticized for sensationalism, sleaze, and 
partisanship: they hold state officials to account (watchdog); they furnish 
citizens with reliable, impartial, and factual information to facilitate effective 
participation in democratic processes (information); and they afford 
a deliberative forum where different viewpoints can be canvased and 
buoyed.119 Thus, if media pluralism and an informed citizenry are key char-
acteristics of democracy, then the current media landscape in Ghana can be 
said to be on track for the consolidation of democracy.120
As regards funding of political parties, financing of political parties in 
Ghana is not public, unlike Tanzania that allocates 2% of GDP for political 
parties’ funding.121 However, in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, the electoral 
commission offered political parties vehicles to assist with their campaigns. 
In the 2004 election, it provided 35 vehicles to political parties and presidential 
candidates; presidential candidates were given two vehicles, whereas parties 
that presented parliamentary candidates received in proportion to the number 
of their candidates.122 Currently, political parties in Ghana rely on four main 
channels of funding. These are: (1) seed money provided by the founding 
members of the party; (2) membership dues; (3) donations by well-wishers; 
and (4) fund-raising activities.123 The universal accord is that these bases of 
funding are meager. Undeniably, the political parties themselves, particularly 
those in the opposition, usually complain of inadequate finance as the central 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 21
problem confronting them. Ostensibly, the financial quandaries of the parties 
are partly responsible for the lack of political party dynamism and buoys up 
the abuse of incumbency, political patronage, and corruption that, in turn, 
weaken political party competitiveness. The consequence of this is the botched 
system of alternation in governments through democratic elections.124
Electoral accountability
The items that are analyzed with respect to electoral accountability are as 
follows: fulfillment of electoral promises; voter decision to reward or sanction 
politicians at the poll; and abstention or voiding the ballot.
Respondents were asked: Do you use elections to hold governments accoun-
table for their promises to provide goods and services? In reply, 41% said 
either they voted for a particular party because their grandparents and parents 
before them voted for that party or that because the party’s ethnic origin 
aligned with their tribe. Thirty nine percent said they voted based on a party’s 
performance in providing goods and services, 11% intimated that they voted 
because of the perquisites they were given, whereas the remaining 9% either 
declined to respond or were unable to assign reasons. This evidence speaks of 
the prevailing wisdom – that African elections are solely about voting – and 
would add weight to a growing body of work that argues that performance 
evaluation does not have a role in determining voters’ choices in Africa.125 
However, this evidence is inconsistent with recent happenings where there 
have been several demonstrations and protests such as the Arise Ghana 
demonstrations and #FixTheCountry demonstrations across the country con-
cerning governments’ inability to provide a range of goods and services from 
fixing the roads and economy to curbing corruption, to halting the increasing 
armed robberies and crime generally and to arresting the deteriorating health 
care and education quality delivery.126 Not surprisingly, voters have punished 
incumbents by substituting them with the opposition party. There have been 
three alternations in power, as indicated earlier, in 2000, 2008, and 2016.127
Another mechanism for holding governments accountable is abstaining or 
voiding the ballot. Voiding the ballot comes in many guises all of which result 
in the rejection of the ballots. According to Herbert and Edwards,128 the term 
“rejected ballot” refers to a ballot paper that cannot be counted for which 
reasons, among others, the voter has left the ballot paper blank or has marked 
or thumb-printed it in such a way that it is not clear for whom they intended to 
vote. Following this definition, the number of rejected ballots in the eight 
successive elections held in Ghana in the fourth republic (1992, 1996, 2000, 
2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020) totaled 1,497,870 with a mean of 187,234. In 
absolute terms, the highest number of rejected ballots (313,397), which 
22 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
constituted 2.33% of the valid votes cast, was recorded in 2020. Whereas the 
lowest of 111, 108 which represented 1.53% was registered in 1996.129 High 
numbers of rejected ballots have implications for democracy because if the 
participation of the majority of eligible voters, including the marginalized 
groups in voting and decisions, represents an important precondition for 
democratic consolidation, then the subject of rejected ballots presents 
a grave impediment to democratic consolidation in Ghana.
A further mechanism for ensuring electoral accountability is abstention. 
Adams et al.130 distinguish between two types of abstention: alienation-based 
abstention and indifference-based abstention. Alienation-based abstention 
occurs when parties or candidates are too distant from a voter to justify the 
cost of voting. In contrast, indifference-based abstention happens when parties 
or candidates are too similar to justify the costs of voting.131 Respondents were 
asked: Did you abstain from voting in any of the eight successive elections in 
Ghana? In response, 27% answered in the affirmative, 65% answered in the 
negative, 3% could not remember whether they did, whereas the remaining 5% 
declined to respond. Those who answered in the affirmative were further asked: 
Why did you abstain from voting? Thirty-three percent said their evaluations of 
the candidates’ personal qualities such as competence and integrity were not 
favorable. A majority of 58% said the menu of policy alternatives offered by 
competing candidates and parties did not hold promise to improve their lot. 
Five percent said candidates and parties failed to keep their previous election 
promises, whereas the remaining 3% said they were either indisposed or could 
not make time as they were engaged in struggle for their daily bread. The 
highest number of abstention of 4,930,890 which represented 31.4% of regis-
tered voters, occurred in 2016, whereas the lowest number of 1,541,62 which 
constituted 14.9% was recorded in 2004.132 The mean number of abstentions 
for the eight successive elections is 3,255,162. Abstention and attendant low 
turnout in elections is a serious threat to democracy for a variety of reasons. 
First, politicians primarily serve the interests of those who (may) vote for them 
rather than those who (may not). This conflicts with the generally held norma-
tive belief that in a democracy each citizen should have equal influence.133 
Second, low turnout means low participation by less privileged citizens, who are 
already at a disadvantage in terms of other forms of political participation. 
Finally, unequal participation means unequal influence; who votes, and who 
does not, has important consequences for who gets elected for public policies134 
In other words; abstention may result in power-hungry, corrupt, and incom-
petent leaders, with sub-optimal policies being elected into office.
Inter-institutional accountability
The issues that are discussed here include the following: legal or constitutional 
authority to control and sanction the behavior of the government; monitoring 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 23
by the opposition in parliament; decisions and checks in the court system; 
Auditor General Reports; and ombudsman’s investigations of public officials’ 
misconduct.
In regard to judicial authority to control and sanction the behavior of the 
government, the judiciary’s performance include the following: the NPP v. IGP 
case mentioned earlier, relating to the outlawing of the requirement to seek 
police permission to demonstrate; NPP v. GBC – in which the court ordered 
the government to grant equal access to public TV; NPP v. Electoral 
Commission – in which the court nullified the move to approve government- 
nominated district chief executives ahead of district assembly elections; and in 
2001, a minister of sports appointed by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) 
administration that came into office in 2000 was prosecuted and convicted 
for fraud .135
In terms of monitoring exercised by the opposition in parliament, in 
a famous case emerging out of its first public hearing in October 2007, the 
Public Accounts Committee (PAC) ordered the Ministry of Tourism and two 
advertising agencies to refund 53 million Ghana cedis and US $2,500 dollars to 
the government including interest accruing on the amounts. The PAC sitting 
was prompted by an Auditor General’s report that revealed financial discre-
pancies in the accounts of the Ministry of Tourism since 2003. In 
a November 2008 news conference, the Chairman of the PAC reported that 
the committee had so far recovered $40 million. PAC’s activism in Ghana has 
continued into the 6th Parliament, whose mandate expired on January 6, 2017. 
The Chairman – Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu – revealed in a press briefing 
that his committee retrieved over Ghc20 billion from various public institu-
tions in the course of their work in 2014.136
Pertaining to the Ombudsman’s investigations of public officials’ miscon-
duct, the performance is creditable although there are also a few shortcomings. 
The ombudsman in Ghana is known as the Commission on Human Rights 
and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). On the positive side, CHRAJ investi-
gated: corruption allegations against government officials of the Provisional 
National Defense Council (PNDC) era; corruption allegations against 
President Kufuor; corruption allegations in the “Hotel Kufuor case”; and 
Richard Anane’s (Member of Parliament) case on charges of corruption, 
conflict of interest, and abuse of office.
With respect to corruption, CHRAJ investigated allegation of the Minority 
NDC against President Kufour, for accepting ¢40 million from a farmer for the 
renovation of his private residence in Accra. The allegation was that part of the 
money for the renovation was siphoned from public funds. However, the case 
was discharged for the unwillingness of the complainant to continue with the 
case.137
Regarding the “Hotel Kufour case,” President Kufour was accused of front-
ing his son for the purchase of a hotel and for compelling the original owner of 
24 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
the property to sell it. CHARAJ investigated the allegation and released its 
report, which vindicated the president. Reactions to the decision focused on 
whether CHARAJ’s decision was right. More importantly, the concern was 
whether due process was adhered to and the rule of law was served.138 The 
assertiveness of CHRAJ is underlined here because it mustered courage to 
investigate the case, mandated the president’s lawyers to make submission, 
and made the findings public. This made the commission to stand out as 
a watchdog and a bulwark of democracy.
On the Richard Anane’s (Member of Parliament and Minister of Road 
Transport) case, the charge was that while formerly serving as Minister of 
Health under the Kufour administration, he engaged in corruption, conflict of 
interest, and abuse of office. CHARAJ’s investigation found the minister to be 
in contravention of the last two but vindicated him on the first. Nevertheless, it 
ruled that a sum of $79,000 which was remitted to his American mistress by 
his “special assistant” could not have been executed on a charitable basis by the 
assistant without the minister’s instruction. The commission therefore recom-
mended, among others, that the president fire the minister and also demand 
that he apologizes to Parliament and the people of Ghana for lying under oath. 
The minister resigned on his own accord a few weeks later and then challenged 
the CHARAJ’s decision in the High Court. In the application for judicial 
review on March 13, 2007, it was determined that CHRAJ usurped its jurisdic-
tion in the Anane’s case. Accordingly, CHRAJ’s decision on the case was 
struck down and expunged from the record. CHRAJ appealed the decision 
to the Court of Appeal.139
Freedom
The elements that are analyzed in this section include the following: freedom 
of thought and expression; freedom of assembly, association, and organiza-
tion; right to information; freedom of religion; and freedom of movement.
As regards freedom of assembly, although the government generally 
respects freedom of association, it circumscribed freedom of assembly 
especially in 2020. The Ghana Police Service regularly obstructs demonstra-
tions. Police used tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets on opposition 
demonstrators protesting the December 2020 election results. The demon-
strators had not provided police the obligatory five days’ notice prior to the 
demonstrations. Prior notice to the policy had already been outlawed in 
NPP v. Ghana Police and Attorney-General. Yet, the police secured 
a restraining order against the NDC, barring protests between 
December 20, 2020, and January 10. Authorities effectively suspended 
rallies and protests through May. On June 25, authorities detained 11 
members of the #FixTheCountry Movement while they protested outside 
the Accra High Court as it considered an application to extend indefinitely 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 25
a previously approved injunction against the public assembly. The Supreme 
Court finally discharged the case on the grounds that the Accra High Court 
exceeded its jurisdiction by approving the indefinite injunction against 
lawful political protests and rallies.140
In late June, unknown attackers killed #FixTheCountry supporter Ibrahim 
Muhammed in the town of Ejura. Protesters in Ejura assembled the day after 
Muhammed’s death; police and military personnel used live ammunition in 
later clangs, killing two people and injuring at least four more.141
Pertaining to freedom of expression, at a Press Freedom Award Dinner in 
Accra on May 3, 2018, President Akufu Addo avowedly promised to uphold 
press freedom by his powerful statement: “I will say again that I much prefer 
the noisy, boisterous, sometimes scurrilous media of today, to the monoto-
nous, praise-singing, sycophantic one of yesteryear.”142 Unfortunately, he has 
not honored this promise. Just hours after the speech, a member of the 
president’s political party, NPP, assaulted a journalist at the party’s head-
quarters. Neither the party nor the government condemned the attack. Two 
years after the awards dinner, investigative journalist Ahmed Suale, a lead 
investigator for Tiger Eye Private Investigations, was gunned down in Accra. 
By 2019, the Media Foundation for West Africa had recorded over 31 attacks 
on 40 journalists over an 18-month period.143 Ghana placed 52nd in the 
Annual Global Media Freedom Report Ranking.144 Yet, within the last decade, 
the Media Foundation for West Africa registered 138 incidents of assaults of 
journalists in Ghana, representing an average of 14 attacks per year.145
As regards religious freedom, it is constitutionally and legally guaranteed, 
and the government largely respects these protections in actuality. Yet, public 
schools inserted compulsory religious education courses into their curricular 
which are informed by Christian and Islamic teachings. Muslim students have 
supposedly been obligated to participate in Christian prayer sessions and 
church services in some publicly funded Christian schools.146
Regarding freedom of movement, it is generally respected by the govern-
ment. However, underdeveloped road networks and banditry can make travel 
outside the capital and tourist areas a risky pursuit. The police are notorious 
for mounting illegal checkpoints to extort bribes from travelers.147
In areas without a significant or enduring presence of public security 
officers, civil rights are often determined and protected on the basis of tradi-
tional law, which does not necessarily conform to the letter of public law. This 
specifically pertains to individuals and groups whose real or perceived actions, 
misdeeds, or misconduct are deemed socially unacceptable or are accused of 
spiritual crimes that are hard to prove (e.g., “witches”). In terms of personal 
liberty and security, many elderly women in northern Ghana flee their homes 
to seek refuge in “witch camps” to escape physical harm or even death. In 
2020, Akua Denteh, a 90-year-old woman, was murdered by lynching in 
Kafaba (northern Ghana) after she was accused of witchcraft. The protection 
26 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
of civil rights is disadvantaged by the judicial system’s inadequacies and the 
unwillingness of community members to aid investigations.148
The gross violations of civil liberties, as noted above provoked a question: 
How would you respond to criticisms in some quarters that Ghana’s democ-
racy is backsliding? Forty-seven percent of respondents believed democracy 
was backsliding, 38% thought it was not, whereas the remaining 15% could 
either not express a view or said they did not know. Those who said it is not 
backsliding were further asked: Why do think Ghana’s democracy is not 
backsliding? In reply, an academic contended that the democratic backsliding 
“argument is usually made in references to media freedom and judicial 
decisions but, the assessment depends on where one stands . . . not winning 
a case is not the same as denial of justice.” A parliamentarian who thought 
otherwise argued that: “I think criticisms of our democratic process are part of 
our democracy. As long as those criticisms are grounded on evidences I do not 
have any problem with that.” An IMANI-Ghana respondent could not agree 
with the parliamentarian more when he said that: “there is government 
corruption everywhere, civil liberties are being curtailed, government policies 
are not responsive to citizens’ needs and the law appears to discriminate as 
people in power get away with grievous crimes.”
Equality
Equality is analyzed in relation to: equal rights and legal protection for citizens; 
reasonable and prompt access to justice; and prohibition of discrimination on 
the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, and religion.
In terms of equal rights, notwithstanding equal rights under the law, women 
face societal discrimination, especially in the countryside, where their oppor-
tunities for education and employment are circumscribed. However, women’s 
enrollment in universities is increasing. The 2020 parliament of 275 members 
comprises 40 women, up from 37 in the last parliament, the highest number 
achieved in the history of Ghanaian parliaments.149 People with disabilities 
face societal discrimination.150
LGBT+ people confront substantial discrimination. Same-sex sexual rela-
tionships stand outlawed, incentivizing license for violence and harassment 
against LGBT+ people. LGBT+ Rights Ghana, which established the country’s 
first LGBT+ community center in January 2021, encountered stiff disapproval 
from political and religious leaders as well as violent threats. The center was 
ransacked by security officers in February and was shut by the police later that 
month.151 In May, police detained 21 people partaking in a permitted training 
workshop organized by Rightify Ghana, claiming that they sought to promote 
homosexuality. The participants, who were charged with unlawful assembly, 
were bailed in June.152
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 27
Economic development, in general, is still unevenly distributed. Ghana 
lost 28% of its standing on human development as measured by the HDI in 
2018, due to inequality, and scored 43.5 on the Gini Index in 2016. This 
high level of inequality is also mirrored in regional development. The 
northern part of the country is noticeably marginalized, which unfortu-
nately draws a parallel with the truth that most Muslims reside in the 
north. This reflects inequalities with regard to income as well as access to 
education, and infrastructure is better developed in southern Ghana. 
Urbanization, at a rate of 56.7% in 2019, which causes rural–urban migra-
tion, is a major, continuing trend.153
The above stated equality deficits prompted a further question to elite 
respondents: Do you think the use of international indices such as those of 
Polity IV, Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the World Bank, 
and the Bertelsmann Index in the measurement of the performance of democ-
racies around the world including Ghana is adequate? In answer, 41% of 
answered in the affirmative, 56% responded in the negative, whereas 4% said 
they did not know. Those who answered in the affirmative were further asked: 
Why do you think the indices are adequate? One academic responded that: 
“Ghana’s democracy is modeled on the Western model and therefore, the 
standard of measurement must be based on values of that system – that have 
become the acceptable standard for all liberal democracies.” Another academic 
disagreed, arguing that: “Democracy grows successfully within a country’s 
culture but the indexes fail to take into account the country’s culture and 
values that tend to influence their attitude toward Western democracy.” 
A respondent from the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) corrobo-
rated, explicating that: “the indices of democratic quality are mathematical 
averages of scores of different variables that fail to take into account the 
nuances and subtleties of different contexts in a polity.” A parliamentarian 
agreed, arguing that: “Ghana scores on the Freedom House indices are always 
high yet on the ground there are increasing restrictions to freedom of assem-
bly, freedom of expression and the right to vote.” He cited an example of these 
restricted freedoms as the gunning down of eight Ghanaians who protested 
fraudulent result tallies at Techiman in the 2020 elections. Another example he 
mentioned was the prevention of the “AriseGhana Movement” from protest-
ing on the principal streets of the capital, Accra, against the harsh economic 
conditions Ghanaians are currently living under.
Responsiveness
Elements of the responsiveness dimension that are examined here include: 
policies are at the center of public interest; services are guaranteed to the 
individuals and groups represented by the government; and goods (material 
and symbolic) are distributed to citizens.
28 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
In reference to policies being at the center of public interest, respondents 
were asked: Do you think government is responsive to your needs through the 
policies it mounts? In response, a majority of 73% answered in the negative, 
22% replied in the affirmative, whereas the remaining 5% either declined to 
provide a response or said they did not know. Those who answered in the 
negative were further asked: Why do you say government is not responsive to 
your needs? In reply, 71% pointed to unemployment as a policy problem it has 
failed to address. About the same proportion of respondents (69%) believed 
that health care delivery was poor, whereas 67% thought that the many 
challenges in the agriculture sector (lack of fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, post-
harvest losses, lack of ready markets for produce) are increasing food insecur-
ity. Sixty-five percent pointed to mobility and haulage challenges arising from 
bad roads, whereas 62% complained that a lack of infrastructure, textbooks, 
and equipment have reduced the quality of education, especially at the basic 
level.
These findings corroborate CDD-Ghana’s 2002 Afrobarometer study, 
which evidenced that a majority of Ghanaians (51%) emphasized the need 
for governments to deal with unemployment as their top priority. However, 
the survey showed that only 22% believed governments are responsive to the 
needs of the people.154
Nevertheless, the policies successive Ghanaian governments introduced 
seemed to have yielded some desirable outcomes. The 2000s witnessed 
Ghana crosses into a new growth stage, posting an extraordinary increase in 
the size of its economy in less than a decade and becoming a lower-middle- 
income country.155 The growth trend continued with the country recording 
7% rate of growth from 2017 to 2019 only to be halted by the COVID-19 
pandemic when in March 2020, a lockdown led to a shrill reduction in 
commodity exports with an overall GDP as low as 0.4%.156 The economic 
meltdown had an impact on households as the poverty rate climbed from 25% 
in 2019 to 25.5% in 2020.157 This implies that the 2020 poverty level was still 
better than the less than 30% reached in 2007 (from nearly 40% in 1998–1999) 
and the 30% in 2016, when Ghanaians lived below the poverty threshold of 
$3.2 (PPP) a day.158 The country is also on target to reach the UN Millennium 
Development Goals. As well, it has undertaken impressive human resource 
development initiatives (including national health insurance, capitation grants 
for students in basic schools, and a pilot school feeding program) and sub-
stantial investments in infrastructural development (including a new dam and 
hydro-electricity project).159 Ghana ranked 138 out of 189 countries in the 
2019 Human Development Index (HDI), moving up two ranks from the 
previous survey. This rank places the country in the group of countries with 
“medium human development” with a score of 0.611, a slight improvement 
from 2018.160
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 29
Challenges in attaining quality democracy
Respondents were asked: What domestic factors do you think are responsible 
for Ghana’s inability to achieve good quality democracy? The responses as 
recorded in descending order of popularity are: declining election quality 
(89%); residual one-party and military political culture of authoritarianism 
(87%); the “Big Man” cult (85%); lack of respect for constitutionalism and 
supportive constitutional conventions (81%); fusion of the executive and the 
legislature (77%); and vast appointment powers of the executive (73%). The 
respondents’ views were corroborated by secondary evidence. For example, in 
regard to weak institutional convention, not enough time has been permitted 
for governance conventions to develop in Ghana, or for political commitment 
to thrive. Conventions are born by a long historical process, of people sharing 
experiences, fostering trust and nurturing national consensus. It is such con-
ventions that avert disproportionate use of a political majority in parliament. 
As Mohiddin161 avers, it is the conventional wisdom of people that defines 
notions of personal responsibilities – what is wrong and right – and differ-
entiates theft from possession. In Ghana, as elsewhere in some African coun-
tries, disdain of constitutions and constitutionalism makes leaders to want to 
have their way by disobeying court rulings and firing judges and capriciously 
extending their term limits as well as using extra-legal means to crush opposi-
tion. Together, this culminates in an excessively powerful executive that 
threatens the legislature, intimidates the courts and overawes civil society.162
Respondents were also asked: What external factors do you think are respon-
sible for Ghana’s inability to achieve good-quality democracy? In descending 
order of popularity, the responses were as follows: the impact of COVID-19 
(91%); risks from digital technology (84%); the recent decline of democracy in 
the West (80%); inadequate ECOWAS and AU mechanisms (71%); the absence 
of champions of democratic governance (63%); and less dependence on foreign 
(especially Western) aid. These challenges are consistent with what is found by 
other scholars. For example, in terms of the impact of Covid-19, it: brought 
about excessive coercion in the enforcement of public health measures; com-
pelled the introduction of repressive legislation and curbed civil liberties and 
media freedoms; overrode institutional checks and balances (e.g., bypassed 
democratic processes such as legislative approval); spurred corruption (such as 
fraud in the procurement of sputnik V vaccines from a Dubai Sheik); and 
reduced election quality due to holding the 2020 elections amid the pandemic.163
Discussion
The implications of the findings for the eight dimensions of democratic quality 
are analyzed in this section. In the case of the rule of law dimension, there is no 
doubt that Ghana is structured by clearly formulated laws under the 1992 
30 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
Constitution: provided for a degree of separation of powers between the 
executive, judiciary, and legislature; entrenched bill of rights anchoring an 
independent judiciary; established human rights and anti-corruption commis-
sion, created an election management body; and imposed presidential term 
limit, which together show the degree of constitutionalism in the new demo-
cratic dispensation. Yet, in practice, for example, the courts oscillated in the 
continuum between judicial resurgence, judicial entrenchment, and judicial 
inconsistency. The Judiciary resurged in the democratic transition period 
(1993–1999) because its newfound constitutional guarantees in the democratic 
transition period emboldened it to rule against the government in cases 
brought before it. The judiciary entrenched its assertiveness in 2000–2016 
when it even heard and ruled that a case can be brought against the President 
in the performance of his functions, a move that was unthinkable in the 
military regime period. The judiciary has exhibited inconsistency in its rulings 
from 2017 to date due largely to the direct attempts to control the Supreme 
Court through packing it with sympathetic judges or with active members of 
the governing party.164 Thus, on the rule of law dimension, whereas perfor-
mance on the criterion – independent and politically neutral judiciary, is 
mixed, performance on the criteria of – corruption, and security forces' respect 
for citizens’ rights, are abysmal. In fact, the primary and secondary evidence 
showed that the former is increasing, whereas the latter is rapidly deteriorat-
ing. Corruption and the perception of corruption have had one of the most 
significant influences on the degree of trust that Ghanaians feel toward public 
institutions. This evidence showed that Ghana places different weights on the 
elements within dimensions of democratic quality.
In regard to the participation dimension, the right to vote is the most 
respected – eight competitive multi-party national elections with near uni-
versal adult suffrage (from 1992 to 2020) and nine local government elections 
(from 1988/89 to 2020). Nevertheless, while the ballot box has remained a key 
mechanism for selecting leaders, election quality is declining, as evidenced by 
the co-optation of the election management body by partisan hacks, numerous 
election irregularities, and various guises of voter intimidation.165 The right to 
protest and the right to organize and demonstrate were the elements in the 
participation dimension, which were found to be the most assailed. These 
participation deficits harm democratic quality because: they weaken the 
checks on elite power; they permit the rise of civil oligarchies and the capture 
of democratic institutions by privileged groups; and they ensure democratic 
structures are reformed in ways that result in the systemic exclusion of non- 
elites over the longer term.166 Woodford and Preston167 also argue that as 
a democratic tool, participation is a contradictory process. On the one hand, 
the state encourages citizens to get engaged. On the other, it [prevents them 
from participation through many guises] and leaves them dependent on 
government officials for access, information, and action. This lack of 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 31
meaningful opportunity to participate in ways that many democratic theorists 
require168 enticed Parvin169 to reject the idea that the future of democracy lies 
in encouraging more widespread participation. Rather, he argues that an 
alternative approach is needed: “a regime which can continue to produce 
democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equal-
ity, in the absence of widespread participation by citizen.”170
As regards the competition dimension, the element of regular electoral 
contest fared best, whereas competition within parties performed abysmally. 
Pluralism in media ownership and viewpoints, and the ease and decisiveness 
with which incumbents can be defeated, had median performance. 
Nevertheless, manipulation of the electoral process is common and although 
opposition parties persist they are intimidated. For example, the people of 
Santrofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi, which are opposition NDC strongholds, 
were deliberately denied the opportunity by the incumbent government to 
vote to select a parliamentarian under the guise that the yet-to-be-created 
Guan Constituency where they would be re-designated in the newly created 
Oti Region could not be created.171 For the second time (first in 2012 
and second in 2020) in Ghana’s Fourth Republic, the opposition rejected the 
presidential results. Likewise, both the ruling and the main opposition parties 
rejected the 2020 election results of 16 parliamentary seats (the NDC is 
disputing 8 and the NPP is contesting 8).172 In addition, there are ethno- 
regional divisions that lead to the mobilization of voters along sectarian lines. 
Together these democratic infractions are diluting the quality of Ghana’s 
democracy.
On the issue of electoral accountability, unfulfilled promises, characterized 
to different extents, the tenures of the NDC and NPP governments, which led 
to three alternations of power. Reward and sanction at the polls can be 
interpreted in two ways: the voter made an informed decision to either reward 
or sanction the incumbent government; or the election result was secured 
through vote buying, voter intimidation, or other forms of irregularities such 
as ballot box stuffing. The evidence showed that in Ghana, the latter usually 
obtains which delegitimized government and eroded democratic quality. 
Voter abstentions and voiding of the ballot were found to have increased at 
increasing rates in the eight successive national elections. Among the reasons 
for abstention and ballot voiding, disillusionment with the performance of 
government topped the list and this led to what Svolik173 described as a “trap 
of pessimistic expectations” – an expectation-driven failure of accountability 
in which after recurrently disappointing government performances, voters 
reasonably conclude that “all politicians are crooks” and stop discriminating 
among them – a state of affairs that may precipitate the breakdown of 
democracy.174
With respect to inter-institutional accountability, the criterion, ombuds-
man’s investigations of public officials’ misconduct, was the highest 
32 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
performer. Auditor General Reports ranked second and decisions and checks 
in the court system placed third, whereas monitoring exercised by the opposi-
tion in parliament came in the fourth position. Opposition monitoring in 
parliament performed worst because the present fusion of the executive and 
the legislature has endangered the co-optation of the latter by the former with 
the consequence that the former can always have its way even if that way 
undermines the public interest.175 This contradicts the classic view of the 
opposition’s role in a democracy, that is, it should be a watchdog – and 
inevitably a critic – of government, checking the activities of public officials 
and holding them politically accountable.176 However, it aligns with 
Afrobarometer survey, which indicates that in Ghana 61% of survey respon-
dents and an even higher percentage in Botswana (82%) and Senegal (82%) 
rather prefer opposition parties to “cooperate with the government and help it 
develop the country.”177 This speaks of Logon178 who found that a non- 
confrontational role for opposition parties in Africa is consistent with 
a widespread cultural preference for consensus politics.
The freedom dimension appears to have outperformed the other seven 
dimensions. This is because citizens do assert their rights and freedoms such 
as the right to: expression; vote; stand for elected office; and organize political 
parties and campaigns. These freedoms have been guaranteed under the 1992 
Constitution and cannot be wished away. Yet, there are growing government 
efforts to crush dissent and trample civil liberties: vocal journalists are increas-
ingly being killed and brutalized; demonstrations and protests are violently 
being clampdown; election campaigns including primaries and other polls are 
monetized, manipulated and characterized by violent conflicts, and the voices 
of the people are negated by concentration of political and economic power in 
the executive and ruling party. Accordingly, in this context of corruption, elite 
capture, and political funding by wealthy interest groups in Ghana, the utility 
and quality of representative democracy is limited. Critics of purely represen-
tative models of democracy charge that “in inequitable societies representative 
systems will inevitably reproduce social, economic and political inequities in 
terms of who can [wield political and economic power] and engage with and 
influence decision-making.”179 Consequently, the more socially and econom-
ically unequal a society is, the less politically engaged is its citizen body [and 
the less the quality of its democracy is].180
In terms of the equality dimension, although the constitution provides that 
citizens have the same rights and legal protections, wide gaps exist especially in 
financial terms. Having implemented neoliberal economic policies for more 
than three decades and practiced liberal democracy for 29 years, Ghana is 
a miniature of the terrible inequality of our contemporary world system.181 
The gap between the poorest 10% and the wealthiest 10% of Ghanaians has 
been widening between 2006 and 2013 and beyond. Whereas the “wealthiest 
10% consume around one third of all national consumption . . . the poorest 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 33
10% consume just 1.72%.”182 This speaks of the contradictions in liberal 
democracy that have not yet resolved the dilemma between being free and 
equal in the political sphere and unequal and caught in poverty in the 
economic sphere.183 This is not surprising since we live in a world that is 
dominated by democratic governments; yet equality of wealth between 
regions, countries, and people is widening. For example, in 2016, the 10% 
top income earners possessed 37% of the wealth of Europe, 41% of the wealth 
of China, 46% of the wealth of Russia, 47% of the wealth of the US and Canada, 
and around 57% of the wealth of sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, and India.184
The analysis of the responsiveness dimension showed that there is a gap 
between popular aspirations for material welfare and adequate fulfillment. 
Whereas successive government policies have enabled Ghana to graduate 
from a low income country to a middle income one and reduced poverty 
somewhat, a litany of bad policies has eroded much of the achievement. Since 
2017, when the new Akufo Addo government came into power, it initiated and 
caused the legislature to ratify under “certificates of urgency” a number of 
international agreements – of dubious value for development but endemic 
with kickbacks.185 These include the 2018 Sino-hydro bauxite-mining deal 
with China; an arrangement concluded notwithstanding the risk that mining 
could damage the Atewa Forest, where three of Ghana’s major rivers originate. 
Another, the Agyapa Gold Royalties deal, was approved hastily in 2020 even 
with an opposition boycott and vehement objections from Ghanaian and 
international media and anti-corruption groups.186 A perverse agreement 
bestowed monopoly control of the port of Tema, the country’s largest, on 
a French billionaire. The agreement breached procurement laws, exaggerated 
planned investments, and defrauded Ghanaians by halving the country’s 
equity in the port and giving up billions of dollars in fees.187 The implications 
of these responsiveness deficits are at least four. First, they speak of, on the one 
hand, leaders whose policies are at the center of public interest – one of the 
manifestations of responsiveness,188 and on the other hand, leaders whose 
policies are self-serving. Second, they underscore the fact, as Morlino et al.189 
argue that elected leaders do not always seek to understand and respond to 
citizens’ perceptions and positions. Rather, they work to optimize their own 
independence and influence citizens’ perceptions and understanding of what 
constitute the most important issues. Third, whether a government can 
respond adequately, if at all, to the needs of its citizens is a function of the 
resources at its disposal. Limited resources and economic constraints on 
public spending affect the responsiveness of even the wealthiest countries.190 
Finally, the tenacious problems presented by unemployment and immigration 
also illustrate the formidability of finding generally satisfactory, legitimate, and 
responsive solutions in contemporary democracies.191 These four implications 
individually and together are conditions that contribute to a de-legitimization 
of democratic systems and encourage different forms of populism.
34 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
Pertaining to the gap between the demand for democracy and the supply of 
it, comparison between the level of satisfaction with democracy gleaned from 
the interviews and Ghana’s score on many of the quality of democracy indices 
is revealing. There is a mismatch between the two sides, suggesting that all the 
indexes of the quality of democracy, regardless of how they are composed, 
have limitations and do not always tell us the whole story.192 In 2019, 76.5% of 
Ghanaians surveyed by Afrobarometer preferred democracy to any other kind 
of government.193 This means that there are popular expectations and pre-
ferences of Ghanaians for democracy – freedom, socio-economic need for 
jobs, health care education, security, just to mention a few. However, these 
expectations are not being met. For example, the domestic political economy is 
perverse because whereas growth has been realized this is not matched by 
more jobs and its benefits are not shared evenly among citizens.194 This can 
potentially fuel political discontent and instability, as witnessed in the 
#FixTheCountry demonstrations across the country and the lethal Ejura 
demonstration shootings.195 Another point is that while objectively the gov-
ernment can propose policies and processes of high democratic quality, 
citizens may still object to these policies and approaches.196 For example, the 
NDC government’s Value Added Tax (VAT) Bill, which was touted as having 
the capacity to plug recurrent annual revenue shortfalls and raise money for 
development, was passed into law in 1995. However, they were rejected with 
violent street demonstrations and protests by the NPP in opposition then and 
a majority of Ghanaians as portending more hardships for the people.197 Yet, 
in operation, VAT is one of the leading revenue earning sources for Ghana 
today.
The causes of deteriorating democratic quality are categorized into internal 
and external factors.
Some of the internal challenges can be resolved through constitutional 
amendments. For example, changing the constitution to permit for separation 
of powers will guarantee that any arm of government does not encroach on the 
powers of the others. The current hybridization of the executive and the 
legislature has imperiled the co-optation of the latter by the former with the 
consequence that the former always has its way even if that way is inimical to 
the interest of the generality of the population. However, structures ensuring 
separation of powers are essential but not sufficient to provide checks and 
balances. In Ghana, what are missing are constitutionalism and supportive 
institutional conventions, political will, and commitment. As Mohidden198 
notes, “In many African countries constitutions contain eloquent proclama-
tions of intention, but the political will for action and adjudication is lacking.”
The external factors can be dealt with by, among others: engendering 
capacity building to strengthen actors and democratic institutions; 
entrenchment of constitutionalism; promotion of vertical accountability; 
addressing pervasive inclusion deficits; and investments in the creation 
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY 35
and sustenance of democratic citizenship. For example, constitutional-
ism can be entrenched in the constitution by promoting reforms to 
particularly strengthen the independence of the judiciary, election man-
agement body, human-rights and anti-corruption bodies, and supreme 
audit bodies. Special emphasis should be placed on the mode of 
appointment and removal of the leadership of these bodies, as well as 
their funding.
Conclusion
This paper sets out to evaluate the quality of Ghana’s democracy using 
Morlino’s eight- dimensional framework for assessing democratic quality. 
The evidence showed that there are both intra-dimension and inter- 
dimension differences in the performance of democracy. This indicates that 
Ghana places different weights on the dimensions and elements within the 
dimensions. The rule of law dimension, which provides the basis for the 
realization of the other seven dimensions, was expected to outperform the 
others. However, this was not the case as the slippages in the dimension 
allowed for the infraction of elements in other dimensions. For example, the 
oscillation of the courts in the continuum between judicial resurgence, judicial 
entrenchment, and judicial inconsistency has not only allowed corruption to 
fester but also for security forces to violate citizens’ rights with impunity. 
Consequently, elements in other dimensions such as free, fair, and transparent 
elections in the competition dimension, and the right to organize and to 
protest in the participation dimension are harmed. And since participation 
and competition represent the heart of a democracy, it is not surprising that 
there is now talk about Ghana’s democratic backsliding and democratic 
careening – while the ballot box remains the main mechanism for choosing 
leaders, election quality is declining, and although political competition in 
Ghana is real, it nevertheless remains flawed and unfair; and Ghana’s democ-
racy is such that it lurches, swerves, sways, and threatens to tip over. The 
causes of deteriorating democratic quality are both internal and external. 
Some of the internal challenges can be resolved through constitutional amend-
ments. However, some other internal factors together with external ones may 
not be resolved by simply amending the constitution or legislation. Measures 
to deal with these factors include, among others: capacity building to 
strengthen actors and democratic institutions; entrenchment of constitution-
alism; promotion of vertical accountability; addressing pervasive inclusion 
deficits; and investments in the creation and sustenance of democratic citizen-
ship. Without instituting these reforms, Ghana’s democracy will remain 
a poor-quality democracy, where the political involvement of citizens will be 
limited to voting, while they are ignored between elections, and they will have 
little possibility of controlling corruption or misgovernment.
36 A. KUYINI MOHAMMED
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.