Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil

ABSTRACT

Ghana’s status as a new oil producer raises questions about the developmental effects of resources, and the role of political institutions in these processes. The conundrum this paper addresses is the rather limited impact of oil exploitation in Ghana despite the country’s strong democratic record and internationally acclaimed oil governance legislation. The reasons for this lie in the nature of elite-based political coalitions and we root our analysis of Ghana’s hydrocarbons in the political settlements literature, which moves us beyond the ‘good governance’ approaches so often linked to ‘resource curse’ thinking. We also move beyond the instrumentalism of political settlements theory to examine the role political ideas play in shaping resource governance. We argue that inter-coalitional rivalry has generally undermined the benefits of Ghana’s oil but that a crude interests-based interpretation is insufficient to explain differences between these coalitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Ghana
• oil
• political settlements
• ideas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Giles Mohan is Professor of International Development at the UK’s Open University. He is a human geographer who studies African governance and the transnational connections to and from Africa, especially migrants. His recent work focuses on China’s engagement with Africa and has been funded by a series of grants from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Mohan, G. (2015), ‘Queuing Up for Africa: The Geoeconomics of Africa’s Growth and the Politics of African Agency’, International Development Planning Review, 37 (1), pp. 45–52.

Mohan, G., Lampert, B., Chang, D. and Tan-Mullins, M. (2014), Chinese Migrants in Africa: The Next Imperialists or New Agents of Development? (London: Zed Books).

Lampert, B. and G. Mohan. (2014), ‘Sino-African Encounters in Ghana and Nigeria: From Conflict to Conviviality and Mutual Benefit’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 43 (1), pp. 9–39.

Mohan, G. (2013), ‘Beyond the Enclave: Towards a Critical Political Economy of China and Africa’, Development and Change, 44 (6), pp. 1255–72.

Power, M., G. Mohan and Tan-Mullins, M. (2012), China’s Resource Diplomacy in Africa: Powering Development? (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

Kojo Pumpuni Asante is a Senior Research Officer at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana). His research concerns the politics of development particularly the role of coalition politics and the implications for development outcomes.

Asante, K. (2016), Local-national Bargaining Over Oil and Gas Resources and Its Implications for Inclusive Development, PhD thesis University of Manchester.

Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai is a Lecturer in the Department of Public Administration & Health Services Management at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), and an Honorary Research Fellow at The School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, UK. His work has been published in Democratization; Labour, Capital and Society; World Politics Review; the Journal of Financial Crime, and the Ghana Journal of Social Science, among others.

Abdulai, A. and Hulme, D. (2015), ‘The Politics of Regional Inequality in Ghana: State Elites, Donors and PRSPs’, Development Policy Review, 33 (5).

Abdulai, A.-G. and S. Hickey. (2014). ‘Rethinking the Politics of Development in Africa? How the ‘Political Settlement’ Shapes Resource Allocation in Ghana’. ESID Working Paper No. 38.

Abdulai, A. and Crawford, G. (2010), ‘Consolidating Democracy in Ghana: Progress and Prospects?’, Democratization, 17 (1), pp. 26–67.

Abdulai, A. (2009), ‘Political Will in Combating Corruption in Developing and Transition’, Economies Journal of Financial Crime, 16 (4), pp. 387–417.

ORCID

Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6383-035X

Notes

1. The NDC does not strictly have its roots in Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP), but has succeeded in usurping the Nkrumahist parties due to the closeness of its ideologies to that of Nkrumah's CPP.

2. Parliamentary Debates Official Report, Fourth Series, Vol. 71., No. 33, 10 December, 2010, Col 2816.

3. Parliamentary Debates Official Report, Fourth Series, Vol. 71., No. 32, 9 December, 2010, Col 2820.

4. Parliamentary Debates Official Report, Fourth Series, Vol. 71, No. 32, 9 December, 2010, Cols. 2803-4.

5. This is reflected in the partial collateralisation that was agreed upon.

6. Much has happened around this Chinese loan over the past five years which is beyond the scope of this paper. See Phillips (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Manchester [grant number Effective States and Inclusive Development].