Why Ghana’s political parties should institutionalize candidate debates in primaries

Ghana’s main opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), held its presidential primary on January 31, 2026. On this date, more than 211,000 delegates voted across 333 polling centers to select a flagbearer for the country’s 2028 elections. The contest, which went largely smoothly, marked a pivotal moment for a party seeking to unite and rebuild after a significant defeat in the 2024 general elections. It also followed a major internal reform: in July 2025, the NPP adopted changes that expanded its Electoral College to include additional national- and regional‑level party elites as well as grassroots members. 

The expansion of the Electoral College reflects a broader trend in African political parties—growing recognition that internal democracy has become essential for legitimacy, cohesion, and electoral competitiveness. Research suggests that such party primaries can promote inclusion and help parties gain more votes in national races through their impact on grassroots incentives to mobilize on the party’s behalf. But expanding the number of voters is only the first step towards inclusive primary decisionmaking—and there is a need for further expansion beyond delegates to all party members. However, if political parties are to deepen internal democracy, they must also reshape how delegates make decisions. And that requires institutionalizing structured candidate debates in these primaries.

Participation without deliberation

Expanding voter participation answers a basic procedural question—who gets to vote? —but leaves a fundamental substantive question unresolved: How should delegates decide whom to support? As currently practiced in Ghana, internal elections give delegates a voice but seldom equip them with the information and opportunities needed to shape their party’s policy positions and exercise meaningful judgment.

Without mechanisms encouraging candidates to clarify and defend policy positions, internal elections risk amplifying personality politics, clientelism, and monetized campaigning. In fact, as in previous contests, the latter part of the NPP primary veered in that direction, with some campaigns promising new welfare systems for party members, including databases to target grassroots supporters with state resources and strengthening welfare packages to ensure that delegates’ needs are catered for “both in and out of government.”  A few delegates also reported receiving cash for their votes from several candidates during voting in television interviews (see here and here)—although these claims were rebuffed by officials as false and framed as a normal party practice of providing transportation allowance for delegates.

However, in my recent engagement with party leaders in Ghana’s Parliament, they lamented the enormous burden vote buying places on candidates in parliamentary and presidential elections. They asked for intervention to mitigate the practice. I believe institutionalized debates stand a chance of reorienting the reasons for which party grassroots actors select their leaders.

In recent Brookings research based on focus groups and surveys with 58 local NPP and NDC executives, my co-authors and I found that grassroots actors are not merely motivated by material incentives. Many cite loyalty, family tradition, and a commitment to national development as primary drivers of political participation. They view themselves as intermediaries between citizens and party elites—an accountability function that requires genuine information and policy clarity. 

For these delegates, primaries should not just be moments of nominal participation. They should be moments of learning and informing party policy strategies ahead of the national polls.

A debate deficit that weakens internal democracy

This year’s NPP primary featured five candidates with distinct experience and messages: continuity and experience from former vice president Mahamudu Bawumia; unconventional, pragmatic, and results-oriented (“job-creation-not handout”) leadership from Kennedy Agyapong; technocratic competence from Bryan Acheampong; human capital-centered reform from Yaw Osei Adutwum; and party‑administrative expertise from Kwabena Agyei‑Agyepong. 

But these messages reached delegates largely through town halls, personal visits, and informal interactions—spaces that often required personal networks and/or resources to access. What is missing is a forum where all candidates must defend their records, articulate trade‑offs, and respond under scrutiny to alternative visions.

In Ghana’s national elections, debates are widely recognized as a democratic necessity. They promote transparency, force candidates to clarify their positions, and elevate policy comparison. Yet debates are often absent from internal party contests—the stage at which leadership is first chosen, and party direction is shaped. 

This absence has real consequences: It constrains policy learning, reinforces opaque, individualized campaigning, and weakens accountability. It also allows candidates to make expansive promises without reconciling them with fiscal realities, party ideology, or their own past performance.

In an environment where monetized mobilization and vote buying are already acknowledged features of primaries, informational deficits deepen vulnerabilities.

Debates as tools of inclusion and legitimacy

Institutionalized debates wouldn’t weaken grassroots participation—in fact, they would strengthen it. Well-designed, party‑organized debates built around shared policy themes would give delegates a clearer sense of what each candidate stands for and would encourage delegates to evaluate candidates on ideas rather than personal ties. Research from Ghana, Malawi, Uganda, and Sierra Leone show that debates can genuinely inform voters and even persuade committed partisans to rethink their choices. They also set an important expectation: Anyone seeking to lead must be ready to explain their ideas clearly and answer tough questions. In this way, debates can deepen political representation and shift party members’ attention toward meaningful policy choices long before the general elections.

Debates also serve a unifying function. When delegates feel that leadership choices emerge from open and substantive contestation, outcomes—even disappointing ones—carry greater legitimacy. In closely fought primaries, this legitimacy can be essential for party cohesion heading into national elections. Finally, debates can build alignment and preparation for national-level governance where policy efficacy is essential for performance.

From widening the franchise to deepening democracy

The institution of party primaries in Ghanaian elections reflects some commitment by party elites to democratize internal processes and prioritize electoral mobilization. But internal democracy requires both participation and deliberation. Political parties are not merely electoral machines; they are schools of democracy that shape national political norms. 

If Ghana’s parties aim to advance issue‑based politics and loosen the grip of patronage, reforms must go beyond widening the franchise. They must create conditions in which delegates can make informed, accountable choices, and in which leadership selection reflects public purpose rather than material inducements or expectations about how state resources will be disbursed among faithful party members.

Institutionalized debates can transform party parliamentary and presidential primaries into genuine engines of democratic choice and accountability in Ghana and across sub‑Saharan Africa. For more than three decades, government agencies responsible for civic education and civil society organizations have successfully organized national-level debates across the world, including in Africa. Political parties can build on this existing expertise by integrating structured primary debates into the work of their election oversight committees. Doing so would not only strengthen internal democracy but also signal to voters that parties are committed to transparent, issue‑based leadership from the very first stage of candidate selection.