Completed Project:
To Vote or Not to Vote: Understanding the Ghanaian Voter
Publication:
The dissertation was published in 2021 under the same title.
Ghana since her return to electoral democracy in 1992, has gone through six elections of which the voter turnout recorded have been relative high. The “relative” term is used within the context of comparative empirical approach where turnout rates are compared across countries within the sub-Saharan region, as well as across internal elections within Ghana (longitudinal). An observation which somehow contradicts findings by Bratton et. al. (2005) which noted a decline in voter turnout between founding and subsequent elections across sub-Saharan African countries. The proposed study therefore seeks to get an in-depth understanding into what accounts for the high interest in Ghana’s electoral process during national level election, looking at possible motivating factors among group properties, regional and ethnic differences, as well as parties´ strategies. An integrative theoretical approach which combines the rational choice model with the group-based model is employed to help explain the phenomenon. Additionally a mixed method design will be used to provide a better understanding of the problem, as well as serve the purpose of triangulation.