Strategizing for Quality Elections in Africa: Party Capacity and the Politics of Vigilance In Ghana
研究了加纳新爱国党在2016年大选中采用的创新反舞弊策略，包括全国部署政党代理人、数字化平行计票和新型筹款方式，认为这种选举警惕系统需要大规模同步实施才能产生实质民主影响，且只有组织能力强的政党在有利政治环境下才能成功。
Abstract In 2016, Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) adopted innovative anti-rigging strategies as part of its successful campaign to defeat its main rival. This electoral vigilance system included a nationwide deployment of party agents, digitized parallel tabulation of results, and novel fundraising schemes. The move has been recognized in media and scholarly discussions. However, we still lack a deeper understanding of the NPP’s strategy and the conditions that enabled the party to implement it successfully. Analysing the key logistical, organizational, and procedural aspects of the NPP’s efforts, I argue that electoral vigilance can best be understood as a bundle of tactics that must be adopted and implemented simultaneously on a large scale to have substantive democratic impacts. The NPP honed and fully deployed its already extensive organizational capacities to support its vigilance interventions. This suggests that only parties with established bureaucratic structures, large membership, and professionalized staff, among other features, can translate their existing organizational resources into effective electoral vigilance interventions. Moreover, the NPP’s efforts worked because Ghana’s democratic environment supported these attempts to improve electoral quality. This shows that effective strategizing against manipulation is a product of organizationally complex parties operating in favourable political settings.