How Legislators Represent Constituents in Ghana's Parliament

• In Event: Elite Politics in Africa (Panel I)

Abstract

Our knowledge of the nature, causes, and consequences of legislator activity in African legislatures is limited. In this study, I contribute to the growing attention to the behavior of parliamentarians in Parliament by examining the nature of legislator activities (attendance in Parliament, floor speeches, and committee membership) in one of the stable democracies in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana. I focus on the impacts of the quality of party candidate selection processes and the general elections on the frequency and nature of legislator behavior in Parliament. I leverage records of parliamentary debates (Hansards) between 2000 and 2018 and observational and experimental designs to examine the causal relationship between party selection and election quality on parliamentarians' behavior in the legislature. I also examine whether the nature and intensity of these activities impact reelection rates of legislators.

Author

• George Kwaku Ofosu, London School of Economics and Political Science