Chapter 5 While the regulatory gaps significantly reduce the leverage of politicians who loose elections and make them vulnerable, it transforms the leverage of election winners and opens up opportunities for entrenching themselves in office. Linked to the heavy financial cost of politics in the country – in which individual candidates bear the greater portion of the cost of political campaigns – there is a lot at stake in terms of the relations between politicians during the electioneering processes. Political Participation and Conflict Dynamics in Ghana – an Empirical Approach Both the NDC and the NPP have common structural problems that manifest themselves differently. In both parties, the sources of tension relate to the elitist preference for a dominant role in both parties for party financiers who together with the political godfathers control the structures of the party at every level (Aryee, 2008). Secondly, priority attention is often given to children of former political activists in the past who served actively in any of the two political traditions(i.e. children of former ministers and former members of parliament in the First, Second, and Third Republics as well as children of functionaries of the PNDC regime – i.e. 56 NDC). Through nostalgia for the former political activist, the initiative for appointing their children into political positions can come from either the communities in which such past activists lived or from the leadership of the political parties. 57 Children or descendants of past political figures continue to dominate partisan politics in the country. They are seen as people coming from trusted backgrounds and with political 56 Personal interviews with leading political journalists who have observed the political terrain of the country for decades 57 Personal interview with a veteran political journalist 152