“Let’s Use Our Thumb and Demonstrate on the Paper”: Populism as Political Resistance in Nana Kwame Bediako’s 2024 Presidential Campaign in Ghana.

Sammanfattning

Populism has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years, with researchers exploring both its regional specificities and universal features. In the African context, existing literature reveals that populism is a political tool often deployed by opposition parties seeking to gain or regain political power. In countries with entrenched party systems monopolized by one or two dominant parties, there is the need to investigate how third-party candidates use populism in such a restrictive environment. This thesis therefore investigated the use of populism as a form of political resistance by a third-party candidate within Ghana’s entrenched two-party (NPP-NDC) system, focusing retrospectively on the 2024 presidential election and the candidacy of Nana Kwame Bediako. The central research question was: How effective was Nana Kwame Bediako’s use of populism in resisting the NPP-NDC duopoly in the 2024 Ghana election? It was addressed through a case study design while employing qualitative content analysis to analyse the corpus. Drawing on campaign documentaries available on Bediako’s X account and his policy document, the study applied a cumulative conceptual framework combining concepts of populism as well as of resistance. The findings reveal that Bediako’s campaign employed populist discourse and practices not only to gain visibility and electoral support but also as a means of resisting entrenched political norms, practices, and policies. His resistance included using subtlety, confrontation, and proposing alternative policies and practices that were aimed to undermine the existing ones. Although Bediako did not win the presidency, he outperformed all other third party candidates. This result, the study argues, was due to his strategic use of populism. The finding is consistent with previous elections in Ghana, where third party candidates who adopt populist approaches tend to outperform their nonpopulist counterparts. Moreover, this study contributes to the literature by highlighting a distinct manifestation of African populism that incorporates Pan-Africanist ideals, anti-neocolonialism discourse, and Africa integration and unity advocacy. This offers a contrast to more exclusionary and anti-integration populist movements in Europe.