On Dec. 7, Ghanaians will go to the polls to vote for a president and 275 members of the national legislature.* While there are 39 aspirants for the highest office, the real contest will be between the two political parties that have alternately run the country since the end of military rule in 1993: the incumbent New Patriotic Party, or NPP, and the opposition National Democratic Congress, NDC.
Regardless of which one of them wins, Ghana will be heralded in Western capitals as a rare “model democracy” in West Africa, a region whose democracies are currently suffering from a series of coups and long-standing insurgencies. In some ways, this is understandable and deserved. Ghana’s two leading parties have a solid record of peaceful transfers of power between them since the return of democracy. However, under the surface, fragility fueled by Ghana’s political and electoral system is threatening the foundations of the country’s democracy.
Ghanaian activists and civil society groups have long decried how both the NDC and NPP use state resources to cultivate clientelist networks for partisan benefit. A recent report from the Clingendael Institute builds on this criticism by analyzing in particular two divisive tactics both parties use that contribute to undermining stability across the country: intervening in local chieftaincy disputes and engaging political vigilantes.