Debating Concepts displays the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments e book collectionpublishing engaged, typically radical, scholarship, unique and activist writing from throughout the African continent and past. It provides debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and evaluations and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It’s edited and managed by the Worldwide African Institute, hosted at SOAS College of London, the homeowners of the e book collection of the identical identify.
What does it imply to carry out democracy relatively than practise it?
Performative democracy is a system the place the looks of democratic participation is cultivated to fulfill exterior expectations, whereas the substance of redistribution, accountability, and structural transformation is evaded. It isn’t merely a weak or partial democracy–it is a intentionally crafted phantasm of reform. The efficiency consists of elections that don’t disrupt elite energy, consultations that don’t inform selections, and insurance policies that proclaim fairness with out enabling it. This efficiency is strategic: it protects dominant pursuits whereas signalling alignment with world democratic norms. In Ghana, it’s enacted via legal guidelines with quotas however restricted attain, conferences with ladies however no gendered affect, and paperwork thick with progressive language however skinny on enforcement. Understanding performative democracy means recognizing the distinction between being seen to act–and appearing.
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In lots of postcolonial states, democracy now not alerts a redistribution of energy however relatively alerts alignment of pursuits. Elections are being held. Consultations are staged. Ladies are appointed. Insurance policies are drafted with the appropriate phrases. However the underlying hierarchies stay largely untouched. In these settings, governance begins to imitate transformation. Energy wears a masks of reform.
Ghana isn’t any exception. The rituals of democracy are fastidiously noticed, however the outcomes they promise are deferred. Behind the general public spectacle of gender fairness and participatory governance lies a cussed continuity of exclusion. Illustration is displayed, not enforced. Reform is enacted in symbols, not in construction. That is what I name a performative democracy system wherein democratic gestures are carried out to appease worldwide frameworks, native constituencies, and donor expectations, whereas evading the price of actual political change.
Staging fairness
Within the efficiency of democracy, coverage turns into theatre. Ghana’s parliament presently consists of solely 43 ladies out of 275 seats–just 14.5%. This statistic has hovered across the identical stage for over a decade, regardless of a revolving door of fairness insurance policies and political commitments. Within the 2016 common elections, ladies held solely 37 seats; that quantity rose barely to 40 within the 2020 elections, and once more to 43 by 2025. These incremental features masks stagnation.
The legislative physique that ought to lead in modelling nationwide fairness stays structurally male-dominated. Regardless of many years of public commitments to inclusion, political events not often nominate ladies in winnable constituencies, and inner occasion buildings stay unwelcoming to feminine management. Illustration is confined to ladies’s wings and symbolic appointments, relatively than significant legislative energy. But each main coverage on governance and growth for the reason that Nineties has claimed a dedication to gender inclusion. From the Ghana Shared Development and Improvement Agenda to the Nationwide Gender Coverage, fairness is a recurring motif. However many years of promise have yielded few materials outcomes. Ladies stay underrepresented in decision-making our bodies throughout practically each sector.
This hole between narrative and actuality is just not a failure of capacity–it is a perform of political design. Symbolic inclusion is way much less threatening than structural transformation. It permits elites to say progress with out surrendering management. In Ghana, the aesthetics of illustration have come to substitute for precise redistribution. As one feminine civil society chief informed me, “They allow us to converse, however the selections had been already made.”
The lengthy highway to nowhere: affirmative motion as ritual
In performative democracy, insurance policies perform like marionette theatre–suspended by strings of symbolism and managed by the unseen hand of elite energy. Each speech, reform, and gender quota turn out to be a part of a fastidiously orchestrated stage play, the place the objective is just not transformation however spectacle. Illustration is choreographed for applause. Affirmative motion targets are waved like wands, to not redistribute energy however to take care of the phantasm of motion. The hand is visible–the legal guidelines are real–but the strings stay in management. This metaphor reveals the underlying logic: what seems as progress is usually the rehearsal of inclusion, scripted to fulfill an viewers whereas leaving the construction untouched. When governance is choreographed relatively than enacted, we’re now not witnessing democracy–we are watching a efficiency.
Traditionally, Ghana has taken methodical steps in the direction of formal gender inclusion–beginning with the Illustration of the Folks Act in 1960, which appointed ten ladies to the Nationwide Meeting shifting via a 1998 administrative directive concentrating on 40% feminine illustration in public our bodies, and culminating within the Affirmative Motion (Gender Fairness) Invoice handed on 30 July 2024, which mandates phased quotas–30% by 2026, 35% by 2028, and 50% by 2030–in public workplace, political appointments, and the non-public sector. However the measure of impression will relaxation on what occurs past the script.
Ghana’s coverage commitments to gender fairness are embedded in a number of key legislative and strategic paperwork. Chief amongst them is the long-delayed Affirmative Motion (Parliament passes Affirmative Motion Gender Fairness Invoice 2024 | Ghana Information Company), formally handed in 2024 as Act 1121. This Act mandates progressive gender quotas throughout public establishments: 30% illustration by 2026, 35% by 2028, and 50% by 2030. It establishes compliance committees, monitoring frameworks, and authorized sanctions–including fines and as much as one yr of imprisonment–for establishments that fail to fulfill the targets. The Act goals to appropriate the persistent underrepresentation of girls in decision-making roles and aligns with broader frameworks such because the United Nations Sustainable Improvement Aim 5 (Aim 5 | Division of Financial and Social Affairs)the African Union’s Agenda (Agenda 2063: The Africa We Need. | African Union), and Ghana’s personal 2015 Nationwide Gender Coverage (Ghana Nationwide Gender Coverage – AGGRC platform).
As of 2025, ladies maintain solely 21.5% of management roles throughout governance sectors–a important hole from the 50% objective. Bridging the 28.5-point deficit in lower than 5 years would require not solely strict enforcement of the legislation however a basic restructuring of political events, candidate nomination programs, and public sector hiring practices.
Whereas the 50% benchmark is normatively formidable, it stays structurally susceptible. With out daring institutional reforms and resource-backed implementation, the goal dangers functioning as one other symbolic gesture–more about worldwide alignment than home fairness. It raises the uncomfortable however vital query: is that this legislation a real roadmap to justice, or yet one more act within the long-running efficiency of democracy?
The lengthy highway to the Affirmative Motion Act’s passage reveals as a lot about Ghana’s political calculus because it does about its democratic efficiency. It’s laws caught between mandate and mimicry–drafted to advertise fairness however born right into a system extra practised in look than transformation. The lengthy highway to the Affirmative Motion Act’s passage reveals as a lot about Ghana’s political calculus because it does about its democratic efficiency. For example, the invoice’s origins date again to 1998, but it solely handed into legislation in 2024 after years of revisions and wavering political will, suggesting procedural inertia overshadowed substantive intent.
The price of a two-decade delay?
The reply could lie much less in political will than in political optics. Ghana has confronted rising scrutiny over its gender fairness document, significantly contemplating its commitments below worldwide frameworks just like the UN’s Sustainable Improvement Objectives and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. The 2025 Act arrived simply because the nation ready to host a number of regional governance forums–an opportune second for legislative symbolism.
Critics fear that the invoice, whereas extra strong than its predecessors, should still fall brief in observe. Though the 2025 Affirmative Motion Act consists of political sanctions and monitoring provisions–marking a notable departure from earlier fairness framework, questions stay about whether or not these sanctions shall be activated and enforced persistently throughout ministries and areas. Implementation challenges persist, significantly round sustained funding for oversight our bodies and the executive attain of the legislation past Accra.
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Breaking the script
When democratic legitimacy is judged by look relatively than outcomes, efficiency turns into strategy–not accident. On this context, performative democracy is just not flawed–it is ineffective by design. It mimics the gestures of reform whereas defending the structure of exclusion. From worldwide growth frameworks to nationwide laws, Ghana’s gender fairness agenda more and more displays this rigidity between look and alteration. The 50% parity objective, the quota mandates, the affirmations of inclusion–all could also be vital parts of reform, however additionally they threat serving as its alternative. In my analysis, what emerged most sharply was not simply the absence of energy redistribution, however the presence of a meticulously curated democratic efficiency. Performative democracy is just not sustained by ignorance. It’s sustained by plausibility of establishments to look democratic whereas resisting redistribution. This efficiency persists as a result of it satisfies a number of audiences: donors, voters, and elites. But when fairness is to maneuver from image to construction, this script should be damaged.
Swani R. Keelson is a Physician of Worldwide Affairs and a semiotician whose analysis examines the symbolic structure of worldwide governance. Her current doctoral thesis, Paper Tigers: Deconstruction and Semiotics of Gender Fairness as Signifier in Water Governance Insurance policies – A Case Research in Ghana (Johns Hopkins SAIS, 2025), introduces a pioneering framework that applies Derridean deconstruction and semiotic principle to interrogate how coverage language performs gender fairness with out implementing it. Keelson’s work bridges post-structuralist principle, crucial coverage evaluation, and African growth research, providing new instruments for decoding performative governance and the semiotics of institutional reform.
