Ghana displays a number of features of democratic institutionalisation and is considered a success story of democratic transformation in Africa. This paper examines the quality of Ghana’s political transformation and the nature of its institutions. It seeks to identify the driving power relations and ‘ideas’ which are shaping Ghana’s political and economic development. This involves first framing Ghana as a particular type of competitive clientelist political settlement. The paper also brings agency to the fore by identifying the key actors and members of the ruling coalition that reproduce the political settlement. The final section presents some hypotheses concerning the direct influence of the political settlement on development in Ghana now and in the future.
It concludes that, in the short- to medium-term, Ghana’s democratic politics and development will continue to be informed and shaped by a competitive clientelist electoral politics. In the medium- to long-term, however, with the increasingly competitive nature of elections and the continuous expansion of the public space, the character of the political settlement in Ghana will create the incentive structure for the ruling coalition to adopt sustainable policies and strategies towards inclusive development.
Key findings:
- What appear to be strongly-rooted democratic tendencies and high levels of commitment to national unity and development in Ghana, are under threat from the increasingly instrumental nature of politics and the deepening of factional loyalties, sometimes expressed in ethno-regional terms.
- Ghana’s economic and social progress is a result of a supportive economic, business and institutional policy environment. These have come about as a result of the combination of the country’s stabilizing and competitive political environment and a consensus among the political elite on economic stability and social investment.
- Increasingly competitive elections have generated incentives for politicians to emphasize broad issues (such as macroeconomic stability, inflation control, redressing north-south inequality, and public sector institutional reform) rather than focusing on providing patronage benefits. The stage at which Ghana finds itself has been the result of the growing elite commitment to stabilizing the institutional political framework.
- There is strong elite and popular support for democracy and for national unity and a growing sense of the need to provide public goods as a right rather than on the basis of patronage. Political parties increasingly act in programmatic ways, around election time at least.
- But Ghana’s system of competitive clientelism undermines its public institutions and hinders public institutional efficiency. In the short- to medium-term, it is unlikely that Ghana will escape the competitive clientelist political system.
- However, the authors argue that Ghana represents a different form of competitive clientelism to the more virulently ethnicised version apparent in Kenya; clientelism in Ghana seems to have evolved into something more akin to US-style pork-barrel politics, whereby the key currency is votes rather than ethnic (or other) allegiance. Although still a form of patronage, this is a less regressive force and holds the prospect of moving politics forward to a more programmatic basis in the future.