Author: Dr. John Osae-Kwapong, Democracy and Development Fellow, CDD-Ghana, and Project Director, the Democracy Project
Last Wednesday, my column discussed political detachment in Ghana — specifically, the decline in the share of Ghanaians who say they “feel close to a particular political party.” I argued that detachment carries both an upside and a downside.
One of the downsides, I suggested, is that detachment does not make partisanship disappear; it simply shrinks the number of people carrying it. The more I look at Ghana’s democracy, the more it feels less like one shared democracy than two very different views of the same one.
If you probe Ghanaians who are partisan on how our democracy is doing, two very different answers are likely to emerge and generally reflect whether their preferred political party sits in government or in opposition.
This will not surprise many, but we can now measure it with empirical data thanks to Afrobarometer’s twenty-five years of surveying Ghanaians on these questions. In this piece, I examine how partisans of the two main political parties – National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) have answered certain key questions about the country’s democracy.
The Partisan Gaps
I begin by first comparing two presidencies on six key items. In the most recent Afrobarometer survey (2024), during the Akufo-Addo presidency, below is the margin of how NPP partisans felt (higher) than their NDC counterparts – support for elections (+3.3); free to join any organization (+7.7); support for democracy (+16.0); freedom to say what you think (+19.3); satisfaction with democracy (+22.4); and Ghana is a full democracy (+22.4).
Now contrast it with Afrobarometer Round 6 (2014) during the first presidency of John Mahama and how NDC partisans felt (higher) than their NPP counterparts on the same six key items – freedom to join any organization (+1.7); freedom to say what you think (+2.2); Ghana is a full democracy (+10.2); and satisfaction with democracy (+22.8).
There were two anomalies – support for elections among NDC partisans was lower (-4.3) and support for democracy (-3.8) compared to their NPP counterparts, although their party was in power.
Second, on overall satisfaction with democracy across ten rounds of the survey, NDC partisans have expressed, on average, higher satisfaction (74%) when their party was in power and lower satisfaction (59%) when in opposition. When in power, NPP partisans have expressed higher satisfaction (80%) and lower satisfaction (54%) in opposition.
Third, in 2014, by a margin of 32% – 15%, more NPP partisans felt the president ignores parliament “often/always” compared to NDC partisans. In the survey year (2017) at the start of the Akufo-Addo presidency, by a margin of 21% – 13%, more NDC partisans felt the president ignores parliament “often/always” compared to NPP partisans.
In the survey year (2024) at the end of the same presidency, the margin was 55% (NDC) to 32% (NPP). Essentially by the end of the Akufo-Addo presidency, the percentage of NDC partisans who felt the president ignores parliament “often/always” grew significantly by as many as thirty-four percentage points.
These patterns deserve more attention than they get in our public conversation, because it suggests something uncomfortable: our conversations about the state of our democracy are partly two separate conversations, happening past each other. What does this all mean then for Ghana’s democracy?
A Concern for Ghana’s Democracy?
Ghana has experienced thirty-threes of stable democratic practice. Over the period, the country has held nine elections and survived four peaceful transfers of power — a genuine achievement whose importance to democratic stability we cannot understate.
But the Afrobarometer data forces us to confront a more difficult question – why do partisans, in general, feel so differently about their lived experiences under Ghana’s democratic dispensation? And more importantly, should the emerging patterns give us concern? I have no answers to the first question.
Perhaps there is a certain security that comes with one’s preferred political party being in power. Or perhaps how our two political parties govern using our democratic institutions truly gives partisans a different feeling when their party is in power compared to when their party is in opposition.
Or is it all just perception, simply colored by partisan attachment — that democracy may be going well, but for the mere fact that my party is not in power, I must, as a partisan, express negative feelings and attitudes?
Whichever way we answer the first question, we must be concerned that whichever party holds power, its identifiers consistently feel more positively about Ghana’s democracy. That is what makes it worrying: it means neither side’s vigilance during opposition, in my opinion, can be trusted to hold steady once their own party is in office.
I often say that Ghanaians have made their peace with democracy, given the overall support (73%) in the 2024 Afrobarometer survey, but we cannot remain complacent. To deepen our democracy, we need greater convergence among our partisans.
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