Reconstructing the Nation in Africa: the politics of nationalism in Ghana (review)

This book is a PhD thesis reworked for publication. Its main focus is on what the author calls 'the politics of nationalism in Ghana'. The book contains three main foci of interest: theories of nationalism; nationalism in Ghana; and the outcome of the 2000 and 2004 general elections. They do not fit together that well. Each is fine in its own right, but the overall thrust and import of the book is rather unclear. Yet the book is well written, except for the introduction (Chapter 1) – in which both style and content are problematic – and the brief conclusion (Chapter 10), which is whimsical and insecurely related to the bulk of the material featured in the foregoing chapters.

Chapter 2 is a long (over 40 pages), competently executed account of the emergence and development of the concept of 'nationalism'. It is the kind of chapter almost invariably found at the start of a PhD thesis: an overview or survey of the relevant academic literature on the theme of the thesis.

Chapter 3 engages with the debate about the extent to which present-day Ghana is related to the historical entity of Ghana. It is often noted that the two do not bear much geographic resemblance to each other, although Amoah argues that the links between them are closer than is generally realized: he contends that most present-day Ghanaians could trace their ancestry to the ancient entity of Ghana. Chapter 4 includes the author's critique of the claim that present-day Ghana is clearly differentiated from the ancient state of the same name.

The fifth chapter makes a conceptual leap to discuss why Ghanaians voted as they did in the 2000 and 2004 elections. In this context, Amoah discusses the notion of 'the rationalization of ethnonationalism', which for him is the main, indeed the only, way of explaining how Ghanaians voted in 2000 and 2004. He posits that 'the political choices of voters would be skewed towards the interests of their ethnonational identity group or a preferred other closely related, for any reason, in what can be described as the rationalization of ethnonationalism' (p. 6).

He proceeds to examine this hypothesis in Chapters 6–9. His claims are based on a 501-person survey of the industrial city of Tema, close to the capital, Accra. He then asserts that what he finds in relation to Tema – that voters are indeed often concerned with the ethnicity of the candidate they vote for – is in fact true for Ghana as a whole, even though no other surveys were conducted in the country as evidence. His discussion of the elections of 2000 and 2004 is focused simply on his hypothesis, and he proceeds to explain the victory of the NPP and President Kufuor in those terms. Crucially, however, no alternative reasons for voters voting in the way they did are presented.

Overall, this is an interesting but quirky book that mixes solid academic theory with some rather whimsical analysis of less substance. It will be of interest to those interested in Ghana's recent political trajectory and democratization, while readers whose interests extend to the political question of nationalism in the country will also find material with which to engage.