Voting and Democratic Citizenship in Africa

Voting and Democratic Citizenship in Africa

Author: Michael Bratton

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 9781588268945

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How do individual Africans view competitive elections? How do they behave at election time? What are the implications of new forms of popular participation for citizenship and democracy? Drawing on a decade of research from the cross-national Afrobarometer project, the authors of this seminal collection explore the emerging role of mass politics in Africa¿s fledgling democracies.


Why Do Elections Matter in Africa?

Why Do Elections Matter in Africa?

Author: Nic Cheeseman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-02-18

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 110841723X

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A radical new approach to understanding Africa's elections: explaining why politicians, bureaucrats and voters so frequently break electoral rules.


Political Economy of Elections and Voting Behaviour in Ghana’s Fourth Republic

Political Economy of Elections and Voting Behaviour in Ghana’s Fourth Republic

Author: Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2023-08-02

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1527526291

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This book brings to the fore the interplay between economics, elections and politics in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. It examines the determinants and consequences of voting with an explicit emphasis on elections and the economy, and explains the state of academic understanding of how voters’ respond to economic stimuli, attribute responsibility and hold political parties and elected representatives electorally accountable. In addition, the book reveals the consequences of voting, and how regularities in voting behaviour influence policy making, redistribution and specific policy making. Economic development-related issues have consistently ranked among the most important issues in elections, meaning that the economic vote is the strongest evidence that citizens’ actually hold those who govern them accountable in the new democracies. This book, therefore, provides one of the first analyses of the relationship between elections, economic development-related issues and voting behaviour by providing an empirical analysis within the multi-party democratic framework of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.


Democratic Transitions

Democratic Transitions

Author: Sergio Bitar

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 1421417618

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Thirteen former presidents and prime ministers discuss how they helped their countries end authoritarian rule and achieve democracy. National leaders who played key roles in transitions to democratic governance reveal how these were accomplished in Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Spain. Commissioned by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), these interviews shed fascinating light on how repressive regimes were ended and democracy took hold. In probing conversations with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Patricio Aylwin, Ricardo Lagos, John Kufuor, Jerry Rawlings, B. J. Habibie, Ernesto Zedillo, Fidel V. Ramos, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, F. W. de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, and Felipe González, editors Sergio Bitar and Abraham F. Lowenthal focused on each leader’s principal challenges and goals as well as their strategies to end authoritarian rule and construct democratic governance. Context-setting introductions by country experts highlight each nation’s unique experience as well as recurrent challenges all transitions faced. A chapter by Georgina Waylen analyzes the role of women leaders, often underestimated. A foreword by Tunisia’s former president, Mohamed Moncef Marzouki, underlines the book’s relevance in North Africa, West Asia, and beyond. The editors’ conclusion distills lessons about how democratic transitions have been and can be carried out in a changing world, emphasizing the importance of political leadership. This unique book should be valuable for political leaders, civil society activists, journalists, scholars, and all who want to support democratic transitions.


Deepening Democracy in Ghana: Thematic studies

Deepening Democracy in Ghana: Thematic studies

Author: Joseph R. A. Ayee

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13:

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An authoritative and comprehensive study of electoral politics by a leading professor specialising in public service reform at the University of Ghana. This two volume study of Ghana's 2000 presidential and parliamentary elections addresses multiple issues in the country's continual attempts to consolidate the achievements since 1992; and the democratic, political culture and practices to which they gave rise.


Values, Identity, and Sustainable Development in Africa

Values, Identity, and Sustainable Development in Africa

Author: Ezra Chitando

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-04

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 3031129385

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This book contends that Africa’s sustainable development must be built on African identity and values. Contributors reflect of the role of values in Africa’s effort to overcome poverty, the focus of SDG 1. The volume reflects on how indigenous values such as Ubuntu constitute a critical resource in addressing poverty. It reiterates the importance of positioning the response to poverty in Africa on the continent’s own, home grown values. Contributors also interrogate how values such as integrity, hard work, tolerance, solidarity, respect and others serve to position Africa strategically to overcome poverty. The volume focuses on how values can help Africa to overcome challenges such as corruption, violence, intolerance, competitive ethnicity, xenophobia, misplaced priorities and others. It provides fresh and critical reflections on the role of values and identity in anchoring Africa’s development in the light of SDG 1.


Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa

Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa

Author: Wale Adebanwi

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-05-24

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0472128736

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Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa examines the ways that accountability offers an effective interpretive lens to the social, cultural, and institutional struggles of both the elites and ordinary citizens in Africa. Each chapter investigates questions of power, its public deliberation, and its negotiation in Africa by studying elites through the framework of accountability. The book enters conversations about political subjectivity and agency, especially from ongoing struggles around identities and belonging, as well as representation and legitimacy. Who speaks to whom? And on whose behalf do they speak? The contributors to this volume offer careful analyses of how such concerns are embedded in wider forms of cultural, social, and institutional discussions about transparency, collective responsibility, community, and public decision-making processes. These concerns affect prospects for democratic oversight, as well as questions of alienation, exclusivity, privilege and democratic deficit. The book situates our understanding of the emergence, meaning, and conceptual relevance of elite accountability, to study political practices in Africa. It then juxtaposes this contextualization of accountability in relation to the practices of African elites. Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa offers fresh, dynamic, and multifarious accounts of elites and their practices of accountability and locally plausible self-legitimation, as well as illuminating accounts of contemporary African elites in relation to their socially and historicallysituated outcomes of contingency, composition, negotiation, and compromise.


Issues in Ghana's Electoral Politics

Issues in Ghana's Electoral Politics

Author: Ninsin, Kwame A.

Publisher: CODESRIA

Published: 2017-05-05

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 2869786948

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Ghana attained independence in 1957. From 1992, when a new constitution came into force and established a new – democratic – framework for governing the country, elections have been organized every four years to choose the governing elites. The essays in this volume are about those elections because elections give meaning to the role of citizens in democratic governance. The chapters depart from the study of formal structures by which the electorate choose their representatives. They evaluate the institutional forms that representation take in the Ghanaian context, and study elections outside the specific institutional forms that according to democratic theory are necessary for arriving at the nature of the relationships that are formed between the voters and their representatives and the nature and quality of their contribution to the democratic process.


Democracy in the South

Democracy in the South

Author: Brendan M. Howe

Publisher: UN

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13:

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Democracy in the South is the first international collaboration that draws attention to the complex problems of democratic consolidation across the majority world. Nine case studies, three each from Africa, Latin America and Asia, shed light on the contemporary challenges faced by democratizing countries, mostly from the perspective of emerging theorists working in their home countries.--Publisher's description.