Understanding How Democracy Limits Public Sector Reforms in Ghana

Abstract

Ghana – Africa’s so-called model for democratic good governance – has implemented several donor-sponsored public sector reforms (PSR) in an attempt to improve core areas of state functionality, but the impact of such reforms remains generally disappointing. In this paper, we show that the nature of democratic competitive elections in Ghana is central to understanding the country’s limited success in improving the effectiveness of public institutions. Faced with a credible threat of losing power to excluded factions in competitive elections, reform initiatives tend to be driven largely by the logic of pursuing short-term projects that could deliver votes to maintain the ruling coalition rather than pursuing long term PSR to enhance the developmental effectiveness of state institutions. This has often resulted in decisions that undermine reform efforts, ranging from needless and costly institutional duplication to the wholesale removal of champions of PSR associated with previous regimes. Reform discontinuities across ruling coalitions is a norm, undermining the impact of reform initiatives that require a longer-time horizon to bear fruit.