Politics-Administration Relations and Decision Making in Ghana’s Local Government

Abstract

This thesis on the politics-administration relations and decision making in local government of Ghana seeks to investigate how politicians and administrators relate to each other in policy formulation and implementation and the involvement of relevant stakeholders in decision making and execution in Ghana’s local government. The study was conducted in three purposively sampled districts from northern and southern Ghana. It employed qualitative research approach to determine whether policy formulation and implementation practices within the politics-administration interface of Ghana’s local government (district assemblies) conform to the politics-administration relations models. The study found out that there exists varying degrees of preference for the orthodox dichotomy, the modified dichotomy and the partnership or complementarity models which were comprehensively reviewed. The findings however revealed that the partnership and modified dichotomy models have an edge over the orthodox dichotomy; the study therefore proceeded to propose a bounded complementarity approach which is the synthesis of the modified dichotomy and the complementarity models, for possible adoption by Ghana’s local government (district assemblies).