Candidate Selection in Ghana

(with Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari, University for Development Studies - Tamale Ghana), MIASA Tandem Fellowship 2021, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra (2.500 €)

Begin planned for October 2021

Our project with the title “Candidate Selection in Ghana: An Experimental Study of Delegates’ Preferences in Party Primaries” is a political science project that studies the choice of parliamentary candidates in primary elections at the party level. The main research question is: What determines party delegates’ voting preferences in primary elections? The few existing studies on this topic suggest that vote-buying and patronage are prevalent in the African context. However, there is also some reason to believe that a candidates’ track record in taking care of the community, his or her social status, connections to power brokers like chiefs, or descriptive criteria like ethnicity, religion, or gender play a role. Moreover, internal factional rivalries often play out at the local level. To provide a first answer to the relative importance of these different factors, we will design an experimental survey that allows us to assess the preferences of party delegates.