Presidential election petitions in Ghana: A catalyst for democratic maturity

Abstract

Ghana’s multiparty democracy continues to attract global attention. While every election comes with its dynamics, it also provides valuable lessons for the country’s democratic maturity. Drawing mainly from desk study and using Linz and Stepan’s three dimensions of democratic consolidation, the study examined how the two presidential election petitions, 2012 and 2020, have catapulted the democratic drive of the country. The paper unearthed that the Ghanaian political demagogues are largely willing to stick to the rules of the game for democratic maturity. In addition, the judiciary in their rulings upheld the results of the two respective elections as declared by the Electoral Commission. However, the actions and the inactions of the jurists and rulings in the two cases have different implications for electoral reforms and democratic maturity in Ghana. Stepan‟s how the two petitions, 2012 catapulted the democratic drive of It case study type of qualitative research methodology. and 2020 petitions were both test cases for establishing the nexus between presidential election petitions and democratic maturity in the country. The study predominantly made use of secondary source of data such as the Supreme Court rulings on the two presidential election petitions, journal articles, chapters in text books and recorded behaviour and responses of the key actors before and after the petitions as the basis of analysis within Linz and Stepan (1996)‟s three dimensions of democratic consolidation (behavioural, attitudinal and constitutional). The study also capitalized on the growing popularity of online websites and the traditional media in Ghana, and gathered additional information on the two presidential election petitions and the data were analyzed qualitatively.