Place and party organizations: party activism inside party-branded sheds at the grassroots in northern Ghana

ABSTRACT

Socio-environmental conditions influence party organizations and political behaviour in the different ecological zones of Africa. Party-branded sheds serve as a lens for understanding electoral politics in Ghana. Sheds are local spaces of political contestation and forums of political representation. They connect party and community symbolically by demonstrating the different ways the party will represent the people. The framework of the politics of place allows this paper to delineate the forms of informal political behaviour mediated by territoriality to explain party activism at the grassroots. It argues that political behaviour at the grassroots is affected by the character of the local environment as well as a number of sociocultural and economic factors. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with party activists and ethnographic observations to analyze political behaviour. It finds that locality affects party organizations; activism in the sheds is informal, transient and structured by personal ties; inter- and intra-party disputes are common among the sheds; and male-dominated shed culture is typical of the northern savannah belt and other migrant-dominated Muslim communities in southern Ghana.

KEYWORDS:

• northern Ghana
• party activism
• sheds
• environment
• party organizations
• political behaviour
• grassroots

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author thanks Isidore Lobnibe, Jan Erk, Rachel Sigman, Ernest Plange Kwofie Emmanuel Sowatey, Jeffrey W. Paller, Kathleen Klaus, Lyn Joanne-Victoire Kouadio and the workshop participants at the American Political Science Association (APSA)/Research Development Group APSA 113th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, USA, for comments. The author also thanks two anonymous referees and the editors for helpful feedback. All shortcomings are mine.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

George M. Bob-Milliar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7374-1369

Notes

1 Sheds are multipurpose built houses or the front or verandah of a house. They are different from the garden sheds common in the West.

2 A local alcoholic beverage produced from sorghum.

3 The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this important point.

4 The two groups were formed in the early 2000s after the US invasion of Afghanistan popularized the two names.

5 Also known as awari or wari, it is a board game played in southern Ghana.

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges grant support from the A. G. Leventis Foundation, which made his fellowship at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, possible.