86 AJPSDG | Vol 5 (1) 2022 https://journals.co.za/journal/ajpsdg DOI: 10.55390/ajpsdg.2022.5.1.4 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ELECTIONS AND VOTING BEHAVIOUR IN GHANA’S FOURTH REPUBLIC, 1992- 2020 Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari 1 INTRODUCTION The so-called “Third Wave” of democratisation that swept through the world during the 1990s re-introduced political competition in Africa as well as in various other developing economies (Huntington 1991). With more open multi-party democratic systems and political contestation, scholars began to explore the question of voters’ behaviour and the economics of elections in the new democracies. While many of the earlier studies emphasised African democratic experiments, others focused on salience of ethnicity and clientelism (Bratton and Van de Walle 1997; Ayee 1998; Nugent 1999; Ayee 2001; Gyimah-Boadi 2001; Nugent 2001a). Later studies on elections in Africa and democracy on the continent considered a greater variety of explanatory factors like ideological positions, retrospective voting, prospective or rational voting (Lindberg and Morrison 2005; Lindberg and Morrison 2008). However, beyond the macro-level and party system- based dynamics, politics and economics of election (defined as political economy of electioneering for the purposes of this article) also play an important role in a majoritarian electoral system in new democracies like Ghana. 1 Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari (PhD) is a political economist and lecturer at the Department of Politics and Governance, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana. Email: gbensuglo@yahoo.com