The legendary Iowa caucuses will take place in the United States very soon. The caucuses are an open system of voting where citizens meet at a designated voting centre or precinct and openly chose their preferred presidential candidate after a speech or manifesto is read by a representative.

Participants divide themselves at caucus sites based on which candidate they support. A candidate needs a certain number of people or votes to be viable; otherwise, they drop and join other groups after a period of persuasion. The candidate with the highest number of support wins but the vote share is distributed proportionally. This article discusses what Ghana can learn from the caucuses.

Citizen participation

The caucuses are the best example of representative democracy as we know it in its purest form. People meeting at precincts or the city center to take part in an important national exercise not secretly but openly through dialogue, deliberation and discourse. This is as close as we can get to Athenian democracy as we know it. Everyone participates in the caucuses: farmers, doctors, students, layers, business people, and artisans; it is such a leveler.

Contact politics

Politics, they say, is contact sports and few states exemplify this better than Iowa. Because of the decentralized nature of the caucuses candidates have to engage in grassroots campaigning or door to door campaigns in order to establish contact with citizens. Huge rallies may look colorful but Iowans want to get to know the candidates for who they are at closer level necessitating effective ground campaigns for electoral success. All in all it helps citizens to get to know candidates and their policies better beyond the billboards and the advertisements.

Civics and patriotism

At the core of the whole exercise is a certain palpable element of personal commitment and investment in the affairs of their country. This patriotic political culture is something we can all learn from. The interesting thing is that Iowa is not all about the caucuses. Their democracy is not just about elections. Through the term period, citizens participate in the governance process in a variety of ways: precinct/ward meetings, local government or city council events, advocacy and several other democratic structures and process. Everyone is engaged and plugged in with a certain sense of personal investment, sacrifice and patriotism.

Violence-free politics

As far as comparison to our system goes, one of the noticeable things about the caucuses and perhaps elections in the US in general, is the absence of violence or the specter of it. I don’t even think it was an issue. If we are to improve our democracy and continue to lead Africa, this is definitely something we need to work on.