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http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01b2773z47h| Title: | Issues in Ghana's Electoral Politics |
| Contributors: | Ninsin, Kwame Akon |
| Keywords: | Elections Ghana democracy plutocracy |
| Issue Date: | 2016 |
| Publisher: | CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) |
| Place of Publication: | Dakar, Senegal |
| Series/Report no.: | CODESRIA book series |
| Description: | The essays in this volume are essentially about elections in Ghana. In a wider sense they are about elections as an academic discourse. In the narrower sense they are about the fact that elections give practical expression to the sovereignty of the citizens of Ghana. Both of these perspectives converge where the democratic rights of citizens become central to governance. Our interest lies in both, because underlying both perspectives is the centrality of elections to democracy and the role of citizens as key participants in governance, particularly in the policy-making process where alternative policy choices regarding what is good for society are made. Existing discourse on elections tends to focus on formal institutional structures by which the electorate choose their representatives, and thereby participate indirectly in the decision-making process. Explanations of why people vote have been based on responses to questionnaires as well as trends in voting behaviour leading to formal explanations of the highly complex relationships between voters and their representatives, and the attribution of rationality to voters. Yet electoral politics is mediated by a number of social, political and economic factors as well as developments within and outside the immediate environment of the voter and which affect the processes leading to electoral outcomes and the meaning of representation. A study of elections that takes into consideration the environmental factors that affect the choices made by the voter promises to further give an insight into the nature of the contribution of the electorate, if any, to the policy process. A contrary approach to the study of elections is bound to raise questions about whether the electorate are able to make a sound and reasonable judgement via their vote? The nine chapters in this volume seek to give a better understanding of the relationship between the electorate and their representatives. In a large measure they depart from the study of formal structures by which the electorate choose their representatives and instead apply a methodology that does ‘a more abstract and normative evaluation of the institutional forms’ that representation may take. This makes it possible for the authors to study elections outside the specific institutional form that democratic theory presumes as mandatory to arrive at the actual nature of the relationships that are formed between the voters and their representatives, and ‘to judge them in terms of their contributions to democracy’ (Castiglione and Warren 2006:3). |
| URI: | http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01b2773z47h |
| ISSN: | 978-2-86978-6943 |
| Related resource: | http://www.codesria.org |
| Appears in Collections: | Serials and series reports (Publicly Accessible) - CODESRIA |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_prelim_contributeurs.pdf | 137.17 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 1issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_daddieh_and_b-in_search_of.pdf | 146.39 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 2issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_maame-_civic_election_observation_and_general_elections.pdf | 167.93 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 3issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_iddi_the_regional_balance_of_presidential_tickets.pdf | 129.92 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 4issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_ayee_manifestos_and_agenda_setting.pdf | 281.01 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 5issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_ninsin_elections_and_representation.pdf | 167.44 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 6issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_anaman_impact_of_democratic_political.pdf | 340.75 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 7ninsin_political_transitions_electoral_mobilization_and_state_institutions.pdf | 82.71 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 8issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_owusu_democracy_without_development.pdf | 149.05 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 9issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_quashigah_ghana_s_2008_elections.pdf | 127.99 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download | |
| 10issues_in_ghana_s_electoral_index.pdf | 217.37 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Download |
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