Candidate selection procedures play a crucial role in shaping parliaments and influencing the quality of democracy. Yet, our understanding of what motivates parties to reform candidate selection mechanisms at specific points in time is limited. To address this gap, we examine the experience of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC), which reformed its selection procedures in 2015 allowing all party members to vote in primary elections for parliamentary candidates. We ask what triggered these reforms and identify four motivations—the confluence of which explains why the reforms were adopted in 2015. These motivations were: making the party more democratic by expanding participation, reducing the cost of the primary process, building the party’s organizational capacity, and keeping up with the party’s main competitor. Together, these led NDC leaders to believe that reforms would benefit the party. However, a divergence between actual and intended effects meant some of these benefits were not realized, so the NDC reversed its reforms. This case suggests that the current shift towards more inclusive candidate selection mechanisms across parts of Africa will not be linear: party leaders will adopt such reforms when they believe it is in their party’s interest.

中文翻译：

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民主过渡后的议会初选：解释加纳候选人选择的改革

候选人选择程序在塑造议会和影响民主质量方面发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，我们对促使各方在特定时间点改革候选人选择机制的原因的理解是有限的。为了解决这一差距，我们研究了加纳全国民主大会 (NDC) 的经验，该大会在 2015 年改革了选举程序，允许所有党员在议会候选人的初选中投票。我们询问是什么触发了这些改革，并确定了四个动机——这些动机的汇合解释了为什么在 2015 年通过改革。这些动机是：通过扩大参与使党更加民主，降低初级过程的成本，建设党的组织能力，并跟上党的主要竞争对手。一起，这些使 NDC 领导人相信改革将有利于党。然而，实际效果和预期效果之间的差异意味着其中一些好处没有实现，因此 NDC 扭转了其改革。这一案例表明，目前非洲部分地区向更具包容性的候选人选择机制的转变将不是线性的：政党领导人将在他们认为符合其政党利益的情况下采用此类改革。