Performing Parliament: Executive Scripting, Symbolic Interaction, and the Social Life of Legislation in Sierra Leone

This article examines the dynamics of parliamentary performance in Sierra Leone’s 4th and 5th Parliaments (2012–2023), focusing on the interplay of formal rules, informal practices, and symbolic performances. Moving beyond frameworks of neopatrimonialism, electoral financing, and corruption, the study explores how executive scripting, ritualized deference, and symbolic acts such as walkouts, silences, and applause structured legislative life. Drawing on theories of symbolic interactionism and informal institutions, it demonstrates how parliamentary behaviour often reflected shadowboxing rather than substantive deliberation, creating an institutional culture marked by distrust, fragile alliances, and ritualized obedience. The analysis highlights the limits of colonial-era procedural legacies when confronted with postcolonial informal logic of loyalty and survival. It argues that Sierra Leone’s parliament functions less as a deliberative policy arena than as a contested stage of performance, where MPs navigate fatalistic outcomes through make-belief practices that signal loyalty, secure survival, yet erode institutional credibility.