What do voters want from their legislators? Evidence from Ghana

Ofosu, George ORCID: 0000-0003-4112-0749 (2024) What do voters want from their legislators? Evidence from Ghana. African Affairs, 123 (491). 165 - 192. ISSN 0001-9909

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Abstract

Legislators make trade-offs when allocating their time and resources to their multiple tasks of representation, legislation, executive oversight, and constituency service. Furthermore, they must decide how much effort to exert or the balance to strike when undertaking a specific function. Existing research provides limited insights into citizens’ preferences over these officeholder multifaceted decisions in sub-Saharan Africa. I offer novel insights into citizens’ preferences using a conjoint survey experiment of Ghanaians to address this knowledge gap. My findings are threefold. First, I find that citizens put more ‘weight’ on constituency-related activities than parliamentary work. Second, in the constituency, citizens value political representation activities more than constituency services. Third, they weigh public-good-oriented constituency services higher than private ones. The research contributes to our understanding of citizen–legislator accountability relationships in sub-Saharan Africa.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	J Political Science
Date Deposited:	28 May 2024 09:42
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 01:48
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123661

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