The politicisation of social programmes: insights from Ghana’s School Feeding Programme

ABSTRACT

The dominant discourses on the politicisation of social policy in the Global South mainly focus on analysing the effects of clientelism through the lens of voting behaviour or electoral outcomes. This paper goes beyond the dominant voting behaviour lens by arguing that the effects of political clientelism go well beyond the scope of electoral outcomes. Using qualitative data from the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), the paper shows how the programme is used to reward loyal party supporters through the partisan award of service delivery contracts. Further, the paper demonstrates how this politicisation of the programme ultimately leads to a de facto system of no supervision and monitoring of the activities of frontline service providers, undercutting the goals of the GSFP in the long run.

KEYWORDS:

• Politicisation
• Ghana
• school feeding programme
• qualitative data

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ethics approval

The data used in this study are part of the author’s larger doctoral study. The ethical approval for the doctoral study was given by the University of Sheffield’s Research Services.

Notes

1 The concepts “Competitive Clientelism” and “Winner-Takes-All” are discussed in the subsequent section.

2 Polygamy is practiced in the northern region of Ghana, as it is predominantly Muslim.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Abdul-Rahim Mohammed

Dr Abdul-Rahim Mohammed is currently a lecturer in the department of Development Management and Policy Studies. Broadly, his research interests include exploring the notion of children’s agency in the Global South, child labour, social policies in the Global South, policy implementation gaps, and qualitative inquiries into food insecurity.