Chapter 2 True, each election year', as Boafo-Arthur(2006) observes, 'generates its own defining issues and political undercurrents'. But electoral violence has been a recurring issue that continues to push Ghana towards the brink of all-out violence each election year. Such is the seriousness of the problem that it is difficult to predict with certainty if Ghana will survive the upcoming general elections in 2012 without major political upheaval. While some observers, particularly in the diplomatic community, portray Ghana as the'bastion of democracy’ 2 in the West African sub­region, the level of violence and tension that is beginning to characterize its elections is a measure of the frailty or fragility of this incipient democracy and its institutions(Van Rompuy, 2010; Ayelazuno, 2010). This chapter examines the phenomenon of electoral violence and its multiple implications for the processes of democratic consolidation 3 in Ghana. Following this introduction, part two of the paper discusses the centrality of elections in a democracy. Part three examines the imperative of strong institutional arrangements 4 as a key determinant of successful elections and sustainable democratization. Using random examples from the 2008 Ghanaian elections, the fourth section discusses how the National Democratic Congress(NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the two dominant political parties in Ghana, persistently resorted to violence as an effective operational strategy for 2 Jokers et al.(2009) attribute this obvious international or diplomatic bias to the need for a 'positive example to hold up, a model to follow for Ghana's African peers'. 3 A consolidated democracy, according to Linz and Stepan(1996), is a'political regime in which democracy as a complex system of institutions, rules, and patterned incentives and disincentives has become, in a phrase,“the only game in town”'. 4 Institutions are those mechanisms or frameworks that structure political interactions for the purpose of ensuring social order among actors in a political setting. 35