Managing Election- Relation Violence for Democratic Stability in Ghana trappings of political office, parliamentarians, for example, can collect ex gratia awards as many times as they win the parliamentary elections in their constituencies. In the run-up to party primaries and also the lead-up to parliamentary elections, a combination of genuine grassroots protests and politically orchestrated rebellions take place against one candidate or the other. When this takes place within a given political party, it leads to acrimonious campaigns of attacks and threats that arm opponents of the other party ahead of the actual elections. When it occurs between candidates of different parties, it poisons the general political atmosphere and generates a state of insecurity throughout the campaign period. It is also at this time that underserved and deprived communities intensify their protests over official inaction regarding excessive exploitation of natural resources, pollution of their sources of water supply, degradation of the environment through surface mining, and inappropriate location of new district capitals, among other issues. For example, chiefs in the Western Region have been lobbying the government to set aside a proportion of expected oil proceeds solely for the development of that region, although that demand runs contrary to the traditional approach to the disbursement of proceeds from other agricultural and natural resources of the country. Additionally, communities around the country continue to mount pressure on the government to rename capital towns for new districts in their favour, threatening to vote en bloc one way or the other depending on government responses to their demands. Furthermore, because of the social diversity within communities and districts, the geographical area from which a DCE is selected is 165