article · Howard Journal of Communications
Analysis of ten presidential election manifestos from Ghana's National Democratic Congress and New Patriotic Party between 2008 and 2024 reveals significant convergence in national priorities. Both political parties consistently highlight employment, education, healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, and poverty reduction. However, their underlying development philosophies diverge. The National Democratic Congress frames progress around social justice, equity, welfare, and state-led recovery. In contrast, the New Patriotic Party prioritises enterprise, digitalisation, individual opportunity, and private-sector-led growth. Despite employing rhetoric focused on the people, both organisations largely portray citizens as passive beneficiaries, voters, or economic actors rather than active partners in development. Additionally, while narratives regarding the social contract and accountability have grown, specific structures enabling citizen participation and ongoing post-election monitoring remain uneven across both political traditions.
Electoral manifestos shape how governments define public priorities and national progress. Demonstrating how political parties frame citizenship reveals whether development strategies treat the public as active participants or passive recipients. These insights help civic groups, journalists, and voters scrutinise political commitments, measure party accountability, and advocate for deeper public participation in democratic decision-making beyond regular election cycles.
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Political party manifestos are important instruments through which competing visions of development are communicated and democratic legitimacy is negotiated. This article examines presidential election manifestos of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) from 2008 to 2024 as development communication texts. Drawing on participatory development communication and framing theory, the study employs qualitative comparative content analysis of ten manifestos to analyze how the two parties frame development, construct citizen roles, and communicate accountability. The findings reveal considerable convergence in policy priorities, with both parties consistently emphasizing employment, education, health, agriculture, infrastructure, governance, and poverty reduction. However, the NDC generally frames development through social justice, equity, welfare, and state-led recovery, whereas the NPP foregrounds enterprise, digitalization, individual opportunity, and private-sector-led transformation. Despite their people-centred rhetoric, both parties predominantly position citizens as voters, beneficiaries, or economic actors rather than as active co-producers of development. The study further identifies a growing emphasis on social-contract and accountability narratives, although mechanisms for citizen participation and post-election monitoring remain uneven. The article contributes to African electoral studies by demonstrating that manifestos function not merely as campaign documents but as communicative arenas where development, citizenship, accountability, and democratic legitimacy are constructed and contested.
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DOI: 10.1080/10646175.2026.2714889
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