Abstract
This paper asks how trust in Ghana’s formal political institutions is socially patterned: by citizens’ contact with the formal political system, by their contact with traditional leaders, or by both? Drawing on five rounds of the Afrobarometer survey in Ghana spanning the decade from 2014 to 2024 (pooled N=11,969), the paper measures citizens’ contact with two authority structures separately: formal political actors (members of Parliament, party officials, assembly members, and local councillors) and traditional leaders. Citizens who report contact with formal political actors express higher levels of trust in the president, Parliament, and local government than citizens who had no contact. Contact with traditional leaders shows no association with trust in formal institutions; it is instead associated with trust in traditional leaders themselves. Contact and trust are thus linked within each authority structure rather than across them. With respect to citizen contact and institutional trust, Ghana’s two authority structures operate as parallel domains rather than as a single complementary or substitutive circuit: Trust in formal institutions is patterned by contact with the formal political system, while trust in traditional leaders is patterned by contact with traditional authority.
