Legislators between the throne and the house: Traditional authority and the constituency focus of Ghanaian MPs

Abstract In modern democracies, legislators are expected to attend to local constituency and internal parliamentary issues proportionately. However, existing research shows that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Africa’s emerging democracies are more obsessed with constituency work to the detriment of parliament. Yet few attempts have been made to explain this obsession, and many overlook the explanatory potentials of local informal institutions. This paper proposes a framework of legislative representation based on the political roles of traditional chieftaincy and patron-clientelism. It argues that legislative behaviour in new democracies is driven by informal institutions in the MPs’ local context. Evidence from interviews and press data shows rural–urban variation in representational behaviour.