ABSTRACT
Political life in Ghana revolves around a complex network of social forces, institutional settings, and interpersonal relationships. The analysis of politics in the country during the second post-independence phase must perforce commence with a detailed investigation of these variegated components of politics and their modes of interaction between 1969 and January 1982. Social structures in Ghana may be divided into two broad categories: the first encompasses those formations that may be said to be of an interest-oriented, voluntary, horizontal type, while the second incorporates ascriptive, inherited associations of a primary, vertical kind. Within these two basic sets of social structures may be placed a broad range of specific groups that have constituted the essential, vibrant corporate entities of the Ghanaian community. The vertical and horizontal structures of Ghanaian society and their composite social formations acquired particular salience with the emergence of social linkage structures which have gradually come to articulate the wider interests of the distinct groups they included.
