No abstract

With the administrative and operational functions of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated among developing countries by the 1980s, privatization was recommended by the IMF/World Bank as a remedy to these institutional deficiencies . This is contingent on the neoclassical debate that private ownership rather than public ownership of management and operations of SOEs results in prudent policy process and accountability. Therefore, this study sought to assess the validity of this assertion by employing the Principal-Agent theory in assessing the level of accountability between the citizens (principal) and the government (agent) during private ownership of service delivery. As a qualitative study, this paper adopts unobtrusive content analysis of an empirical study of the privatization of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL). The government (agent) under the Principal-Agent theory is to ensure that the private operator, Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL) respects the terms of divestiture, while upholding the principles of accountability. However, the findings of the study suggest that the failure of government (agent) to uphold core accountability mechanisms such as transparency, accessibility to information, sense of ownership, responsiveness, and conformity to established monitoring and evaluation measures, contributed to the inability to achieve key performance targets, leading to the unsuccessful policy outcome of the privatization contract. This paper, therefore, argues that the failure to adopt accountability mechanisms in the divestiture of SOEs will inevitably compromise administrative policy outcomes.

The complexity of business-government relations in the globalized economy cannot be underestimated. This is the product of the cross-cutting effects of a long-term policy shift heightened by globalization, coupled with privatization. Central to this, is the emergence of ideologies within the contours of the state-market-society landscape. Ghana’s privatization experience is typical of this major ideological approach to business-government relations. As a qualitative study, this paper adopts unobtrusive content analysis of an empirical study of the privatization of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC). This paper argues that Ghana’s adoption of privatization policy has yielded undesirable policy outcomes due to the complexities of the divestiture process which had adverse effect on the state-market-society nexus.

This study sought to examine the relevance of traditional political institution in modern democratic governance in Ghana by using Akim Abuakwa as the case study. This paper argues that the chieftaincy institution has become anachronistic due to elements of colonialism and modern democratic institutions which had adverse impact on the institution. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in collecting data from chiefs and local government authorities in the selected communities for the study. The primary data were obtained from both questionnaire administration and interview guides whereas the secondary data was collected from articles, journals and online materials that are related to the topic under study. The study revealed that the chieftaincy institution in Ghana to be refined to be abreast with the changing trend of society.