The Politics of Bureaucratic ‘Pockets of Effectiveness’: Insights from Ghana’s Ministry of Finance

Abstract

Ghana's Ministry of Finance (MoF) has been identified as a 'pocket of effectiveness', both in relation to other state agencies and in terms of delivering on its mandate. However, this effectiveness has not been constant over the post-independence period, which requires us to explain how and why effectiveness is generated, but also why it can falter. We argue that the effectiveness of the MoF's performance derives from the coupling of changing features in Ghana's wider political settlement with the internal organisational features of this key ministry. Using historical analysis and data collected from recent interviews and reports, we focus on the MoF's performance over the past five years, even as we situate this in the longer-term context of the Ministry's ups and downs.

Which Jobs for Which Boys? Party Finance and the Politics of State Job Distribution in Africa

“…From the late-1990s through 2016, Ghana’s ministers had significantly higher politicization scores than Benin’s. The rise in politicization scores in Ghana in the late-1990s is consistent with accounts of President J.J. Rawlings’ gradual acceptance of the (political) need to replace technocrats with “technopols” who were willing to serve the extractive interests of the NDC (Abdulai & Mohan, 2019). In Benin, the declining politicization scores in the 1990s and early-2000s coincide with significant episodes of ruling coalition fracture during the presidencies of Nicephore Soglo and Mathieu Kérékou (Banégas, 2003).…”

Political Settlements and Development

“…Recognizing that a thriving cocoa industry was crucial to his long-term political survival, Rawlings set about reforming the cocoa marketing board from being a vehicle for parasitic rentextraction to an organ that would provide an enabling environment for growth in the cocoa industry (Wiggins and Leturque 2011;Whitfield 2011). The creation of a pocket of effectiveness around cocoa was matched by one in the Ministry of Finance (Abdulai and Mohan 2019), and at least one successful initiative in horticulture (Whitfield 2011). It is notable, however, that these changes took place under a narrower, more concentrated settlement.…”

Responding to the commodity boom with varieties of resource nationalism: a political economy explanation for the different routes taken by Africa's new oil producers

“…Since 2000, tightly fought elections seem to have induced short-term time-horizons amongst ruling elites, resulting in a highly politicised public bureaucracy. Elections generate a significant turnover of jobs on partisan grounds and massive levels of public spending that undermine macroeconomic stability and the autonomy of technocrats (Abdulai and Mohan 2019;Killick, 2008;). From this perspective, competitive politics has deepened rather than displaced clientelist forms of politics in certain respects (Gyimah-Boadi and Keefer, 2007).…”

“…However, our evidence strongly suggests that political settlement dynamics were the key driver of this rapid move to production, with the NPP's primary motives being to secure the cash and electoral kudos. Indeed, the rising wage bill at the time was in itself an outcome of electoral pressures (Abdulai and Mohan, 2019).…”