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ABSTRACT
Citizens in Ghana have a host of options when it comes to local governance provision as a result of the government’s decentralization policies. We undertake to explore and understand how Ghanaians navigate the constellation of local institutions, both formal and traditional, to solve an array of common problems. A four-constituency survey was administered during the summer of 2009 and asked respondents about their experiences interacting with four formal institutions and one traditional institution. We find that formal institutions are by and large working effectively and are enhanced by the presence of a traditional institution. We consider the implications of our results with respect to both democratization and decentralization.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge support from a University of Tampa David Delo Faculty Research Grant.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
William M. Myers is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Tampa. His research interests include judicial politics and political behavior. He has been published in the Journal of Politics and Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.
Kevin S. Fridy is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Tampa. His research interests include African Politics and Political Behavior. He has been published in the Journal of Modern African Studies, African Studies Quarterly, Journal of African Elections, and Africa Review.
Notes
1. Boone, “Decentralization as Political Strategy in West Africa”; Olowu and Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa; Ribot, “African Decentralization”; Ribot, “Democratic Decentralization of Natural Resources”; Wunsch, “Decentralization, Local Governance and ‘Recentralization’ in Africa.”
2. Lynch and Crawford, “Democratization in Africa 1990–2010.”
3. Lentz, “The Chief, the Mine Captain and the Politician.”
4. Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs.
5. Ekeh, “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa.”
6. Ibid.; Lund, “Twilight Institutions.”
7. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa, 64.
8. Connerly, Eaton, and Smoke, Making Decentralization Work; Crook and Manor, Democracy and Decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa; Grindle, Going Local; Ndegwa and Levy, “The Politics of Decentralization in Africa”; Olowu and Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa; Wunsch and Olowu, The Failure of the Centralized State.
9. Ahwoi, Local Government and Decentralization in Ghana; Ayee, “The Balance Sheet of Decentralization in Ghana”; Crook, “Four Years of the Ghana District Assemblies in Operation”; Debrah, “Assessing the Quality of Accountability in Ghana’s District Assemblies, 1993–2008.”
10. Kulipossa, “Decentralization and Democracy in Developing Countries”; Manor, Democratic Decentralization and Sustainable Livelihoods.
11. Fritzen and Lim, “Problems and Prospects of Decentralization in Developing Countries.”
12. Ayee, “The Balance Sheet of Decentralization in Ghana.”
13. Ahwoi, Local Government and Decentralization in Ghana; Ayee, Decentralization and Conflict; Ayee, “The Balance Sheet of Decentralization in Ghana”; Debrah, “Assessing the Quality of Accountability in Ghana’s District Assemblies, 1993–2008”; Hoffman and Metzroth, “The Political Economy of Decentralization in Ghana.”
14. Debrah, “The Politics of Decentralization in Ghana’s Fourth Republic,” 57.
15. Ayee, “The Balance Sheet of Decentralization in Ghana,” 21; Debrah, “The Politics of Decentralization in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.”
16. For example, see Hoffman, “Assessing the Quality of Local Government in South Africa”; Van Donk, Consolidating Developmental Local Government, both regarding South Africa; Hussein, “Capacity Building Challenges in Malawi’s Local Government Reform Program,” for a Malawian case; Fjeldstad, “Taxation, Coercion and Donors,” in Tanzania.
17. Ndegwa, “Decentralization in Africa.”
18. Olowu and Smoke, “Determinants of Success in African Local Governments.”
19. See for instance Joshi and Ayee, “Associated Taxation.” It should be noted that when local institutions are reliably financed through transfers from central government authorities as opposed to local revenue extraction then they might very well be less accountable to their constituents for the decisions that they make and the services that they provide. Bates, When Things Fell Apart.
20. Shotton and Winter, Delivering the Goods.
21. Bratton, “Formal Versus Informal Institutions in Africa.”
22. Bratton, “Citizen Perceptions of Local Government Responsiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
23. Ibid.
24. Shotton and Winter, Delivering the Goods.
25. Ray, “Divided Sovereignty,” 184.
26. Ibid., 185.
27. Ibid., 191.
28. For example, see Ahwoi, Local Government and Decentralization in Ghana; Ayee, Decentralization and Conflict; Ayee, “The Balance Sheet of Decentralization in Ghana”; Debrah, “Assessing the Quality of Accountability in Ghana’s District Assemblies, 1993–2008”; Hoffman and Metzroth, “The Political Economy of Decentralization in Ghana.”
29. In each constituency, 100 surveys were administered. Survey respondents were selected via a multi-tiered randomization approach. First, Ghana Statistical Services provided 10 randomly generated enumeration area maps situated in each constituency. Those maps were used to conduct the 2000 national census and include between 100 and 500 households each. Both a sketch of the block or village enumerated and a written description of its boundaries were provided. At each enumeration area 10 surveys were collected by first systematically randomly selecting 10 households and then in each household randomly selecting a survey respondent. Substitutions of a neighbouring household were only made after two failed attempts to survey the randomly selected survey respondent. The sample was stratified by gender with half of the respondents for each constituency being male and the other half female.
30. Odododiodoo and Ayawaso West are both located in the Accra Metropolitan Area but the similarities largely cease there. Odododiodoo includes the traditional Ga-speaking areas of Jamestown and Usshertown where fishing and petty trade are the primary industries and boxing is the pastime that has sparked many a young man’s dream but made only a few rich. Moving from the economically underprivileged and densely populated colonial era buildings near the coast, Odododiodoo constituency spans northward to Agbogbloshie. Referred to by most Ghanaians as “Sodom and Gomorrah” for its high rate of crime and difficult living conditions, Agbogbloshie consists of informal settlements populated predominantly by migrants from the north and built around an impromptu refuse dump for foreign electronic waste. Ayawaso West is a constituency with markedly more affluence than Odododiodoo. The constituency, perhaps the wealthiest in Ghana in terms of per capita income, contains the house of former President John Kufuor and the posh neighbourhoods of Airport North Residential, Dzorwulu and East Legon. Large and well-maintained walled compounds and multi-storied single family residences with luxury vehicles resting in the car park beside the driver and security guard are common sights in the constituency.
31. Situated along the Burkinabe frontier in the Upper East region, Bolgatanga and Nabdam are about as far away as one can get from the capital city without leaving Ghana. Bolgatanga is the region’s capital and, though provincial compared to Accra, has a few radio stations, regular bus service to the south, a thriving market that runs on an every third day schedule, and all the benefits associated with housing not only municipal administrators but regional representatives of all the ministries in Accra. The Bolga Municipal District mixes urban petty traders and public sector workers with agriculturalists and handicraft makers. Though just next door to the regional capital, Nabdam constituency is far more isolated from the trappings of the formal state and luxuries of the international economy. With the exception of a handful of government functionaries and teachers, the constituency is completely rural with millet farming taking up peoples’ time in the short growing season and foraging in the forest reserve, illegal gold mining, and travelling south for porter work being the primary sources of revenue during the long dry season. Increasingly, the area has spotty cell phone coverage though motorbikes, electrified houses, piped water and an education beyond the primary level are luxuries enjoyed by a very select few.
32. The full survey questionnaire is available from the authors upon request.
33. This figure was generated using the coefplot command in STATA (January 2014).
34. Ahwoi, Local Government and Decentralization in Ghana; Ayee, Decentralization and Conflict; Ayee, “The Balance Sheet of Decentralization in Ghana”; Debrah, “Assessing the Quality of Accountability in Ghana’s District Assemblies, 1993–2008”; Hoffman and Metzroth, “The Political Economy of Decentralization in Ghana.”
35. A “good” rating is functionally the highest rating an institution received in our survey as only a handful of respondents rated any institution “excellent.”
36. Lindberg, “What Accountability Pressures Do MPs in Africa Face and How Do They Respond?”
37. For example, see Bratton, “Citizen Perceptions of Local Government Responsiveness in Sub-Saharan Africa”; Shotton and Winter, Delivering the Goods.
38. Dia, Africa’s Management in the 1990s and Beyond, 1.
39. See Ray, “Divided Sovereignty.”
40. Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy”; Englebert and Tull, “Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa”; Mazrui, “The Blood of Experience”; Herbst, States and Power in Africa.
41. Connerly, Eaton, and Smoke, Making Decentralization Work; Crook and Manor, Democracy and Decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa; Grindle, Going Local; Ndegwa and Levy, “The Politics of Decentralization in Africa”; Olowu and Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa; Wunsch and Olowu, The Failure of the Centralized State.
42. Klaas, “The Curse of Low Expectations”; Bratton and Logan, “Voters But Not Yet Citizens”; VonDoepp and Ellett, “Reworking Strategic Models of Executive-Judicial Relations.”
43. Haynes, “Democratic Consolidation in Africa.”
44. Whitfield, “Change for a Better Ghana.”