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| Title: | Ghana's Political Parties: How Ethno/Regional Variations Sustain the National Two-Party System |
| Authors: | Morrison, Minion K.C. Woo Hong, Jae |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
| Volume: | 44 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Period: | December |
| Pages: | 623-647 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | multiparty systems elections 1990-1999 Politics and Government |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/4486706 |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses Ghanaian electoral geography and its accompanying political party variations over the last decade. After re-democratization in the early 1990s, the Fourth Republic of Ghana has successfully completed multiple elections and party alternation. Due to its single-member-district-plurality electoral system, the country has functioned virtually as a two-party system, privileging its two major parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). However, close examination of election results in the last parliamentary and presidential elections reveals that notwithstanding the two-party tendency, there is a dynamic and multilayered aspect of electoral participation in Ghanaian politics. Ethnic-based regional cleavages show much more complex varieties of electoral support for the two major parties, especially in light of fragmentation and concentration. Electoral support in the ten regions varies from strong one-party-like to almost three-party systems. Yet this lower, regional level tendency is not invariable. Regional party strengths have shifted from election to election, and it was just such shifts that made the party alternation possible in 2000. Employing traditional and newly designed indicators, this paper illustrates the patterns of electoral cleavage and regional party organization, and how these ultimately sustain the party system at the national level in Ghana. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
