Jeffrey W. Paller

Defending the city, defending votes: campaign strategies in urban Ghana

Rapid urbanisation in African democracies is changing the way that political parties engage with their constituents, shifting relations between hosts and migrants. This article examines the strategies that parties use to maintain and build electoral support in increasingly diverse contexts. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research in Accra, Ghana, we find that some urban political parties rely on inclusive forms of mobilisation, promoting images of cosmopolitanism and unity to incorporate a broad grassroots coalition. Yet in nearby constituencies, parties respond to changing demographics through exclusive forms of mobilisation, using narratives of indigeneity and coercion to intimidate voters who ‘do not belong’. Two factors help explain this variation in mobilisation: incumbency advantage and indigene dominance. In contrast to most scholarship on ethnicity and electoral politics in Africa, we find that these varying mobilisation strategies emerge from very local neighbourhood-level logics and motivations.

Political Struggle to Political Sting: A Theory of Democratic Disillusionment

Why do residents in new democracies become disillusioned with democracy, despite significant improvements in the development of liberal-democratic institutions, the extension of political rights and freedoms, and peaceful turnovers of power? This article advances a theory of democratic disillusionment, which is based on the concept of political sting: feelings of betrayal, insult, and disrespect among ordinary citizens stemming from a government’s failure to protect and provide for its population. In new democracies, political sting motivates and propels collective action and provides a basis for future claims for social justice. Building from the redistribution-versus-recognition debate between Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth, and their critics, this article extends that analysis to include conditions in the political realm—in particular, problems of political accountability. The article illustrates its theoretical claims through references to South Africa’s recent history of democratization.