Getting to the Roots: Constitutional Rules and the Zero-Sum Politics of Winner-Takes-All in Ghana

Abstract

Ghana's democracy is plagued by zero-sum politics usually described as winner-takes-all. Winner-takes-all is political behaviour involving post-election distribution and redistribution of public resources to reward political loyalists, with or without considerations for competence and merit. A key mechanism for this is the appointment of such loyalists to public offices that control key national resources. Although winner-takes-all is seen as a cancer cell in the country's democracy and politics and has often been condemned by the citizenry and civil society organizations alike, it has become behaviour of choice for all political parties once they win the mandate to govem. This study analyses the institutional basis of contemporary democratic politics in Ghana, focusing on the rules, and argues that winner-takes-all is a rational response by political actors to the incentives and opportunities offered by specific formal and informal rules of the country's democracy. The argument is shaped by a careful analysis of specific legal provisions that incentivize political actors to act in that manner. The study makes two important contributions to our understanding of contemporary Ghanaians politics. First it provides an altemative perspective that suggests that winner-takes-all is an effect and not a cause of the country's govemance challenges, and second it draws attention to the centrality of rules and their design in shaping political behaviour.