Character or policy? Thematising Ghanaian Presidential debates

There is a growing interest in institutional presidential debates as a key pre-election campaign genre in Ghanaian politics. Since the early 2000s, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has organised debates for presidential candidates to advance their campaigns. Contrary to previous claims that Benoit’s (1999) Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse is only applicable to US presidential debates (Isotalus, 2011), this theory has been effectively applied to the Ghanaian context (Gyasi & Sarfo-Kantankah, 2021; Mensah et al., 2018). This study, following the previous studies, applied Benoit’s theory to examine the themes of two Ghanaian Presidential Debates–the 2012 and 2016 IEA debates. The study revealed that the debates prioritised policy topics. From the sub-topics of policy (past deeds, future plans and general objectives), candidates used more future plans as campaign promises were preferred to lauding past achievements. The study concludes that Ghanaian presidential debates are issue-based and not image-focused. This study has implication for theorising Ghanaian presidential debates and adds to the growing literature.