Post-Incumbency Political Decay: The Metamorphosis of Ghana’s New Patriotic Party and the Dynamics of Party Fragmentation in Africa
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) faces significant post-incumbency challenges following its 2024 electoral defeat in Ghana, reflecting broader patterns of political decay in African democracies. Tracing the NPP’s evolution from the United Gold Coast Convention (1947), this paper highlights how historical path dependencies, elite factionalism, and weak institutional mechanisms drive cycles of cohesion in power and fragmentation in opposition. A novel “Post-Incumbency Political Decay” framework integrates party institutionalization, elite competition, and historical institutionalism to analyze the NPP’s crises, marked by leadership struggles and Alan Kyerematen’s defection to form a rival entity. Using process tracing (2023–2025), interviews, document analysis, and surveys, the study links resource scarcity and personalized contests to institutional fragility. Comparative African cases enhance the framework’s applicability. The NPP’s future hinges on balancing its liberal-democratic roots with reinvention for Ghana’s shifting demography, particularly youth voters, contributing to understanding party sustainability and democratic resilience.