School of Graduate Studies and Research (SoGSaR)

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Neopatrimonial Logic and National Programmatic Policies in Ghana: A Case of Rice Importation and Production Policies under the Administrations of J.A. Kufuor And J.E.A. Mills
(African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 2013-10) Adu-Bempah Brobbey, Collins
Ghana’s 1992 constitution requires a party’s candidate to obtain 50% plus one valid vote to win presidential elections. However, no party has ever secured such valid votes in the respective stronghold alone. This study explores whether or not political parties in Ghana are emerging as programmatic parties, and the implications of the lack of programmatic parties for a party’s credibility and the deepening of democracy. To undertake this analysis, multidimensional construction of neopatrimonial logic is adopted and NPP’s Rice Importation Tariffs and NDC’s Savanna Accelerated Development Programme were extrapolated. Findings demonstrated that implementation of these policies has been occasioned by neopatrimonial logic as none of them is a programmatic party. This led to hypothesize that a non programmatic party leads to no credible national policy and programme, and consequently no democratic deepening. Using secondary data and interviews with 2 policy experts, 3 politicians and some respondents selected from among NGOs specialize in governance issues. This study concluded that Kufuor and Mills’ rice policies were populist rather than programmatic. Findings from the views of Ghanaians confirmed that the absence of programmatic parties opposes national policy and programmes, in that social interventionist policy of one regime faced implementation challenges in another. This situation often worsens the already dilapidated social conditions.
Trial of Democracy Versus Democratic Triumphalism: A Focus on Ghana
(European Scientific Journal, ESJ (2nd Eurasian Multidisciplinary Forum, EMF 2014, 23-26 October, Tbilisi, Georgia), 2014-12) Adu-Bempah Brobbey, Collins
The volume of empirical literature on Ghana’s democratization is overwhelming. Two contrasting positions have come to dominate the Ghanaian democratization political discourses. While some Afro-optimist scholars argue that Ghana is the model of democracy in Africa and hence it is in the era of democratic triumphalism, on the contrary, other Afro-pessimist scholars contend that Ghana has since independence been experiencing a complex and contradictory historical legacy of democratic governance - where liberalism exists side by side with patronage politics and hence it is still in the era of trial of democracy. Thegoal of this paper is to investigate how Ghana’s democratic governance exists side by side with widespread cronyism and nepotism. The data for this paper came from scholarly articles, newspaper reports, and in-depth interviews.. This paper draws a number of conclusions. First, on the theoretical level, Ghana has a beacon of democratic rule and hence it is a model of Africa’s democracy. Second, empirically, the country’s relative electoral democratic success story is largely cosmetic due to pervasive cronyism and nepotism which impede active civic political participation. It thus, recommends institutional reforms not only to promote domestication and socialization of democratic norms, culture and values but also making it internalizeable and enforceable.
The Logic of Neopatrimonialism and Democratic Deepening: A Case of Ghana's Fourth Republic
(US-China Law Review, 2015) Adu-Bempah Brobbey, Collins
Africa’s quest for effective governance in the first two decades after independence yielded in different shades of political organizations ranging from radical socialism, militarism, military and/or civil authoritarianism and one party democracy. After the collapse of Berlin Wall and the demise of communism, most African states overwhelmingly joined what Huntington called the “Third Wave” of democratization of which Ghana was no exception. Although Ghana’s decades of democratizing state institutions and its politics have yielded relatively significant electoral democratic gains, democratic rule in Ghana still faces challenges of legitimization. While some Africanist scholars admit that Ghana is a neopatrimonial state, none of these scholars has drawn a linkage between neopatrimonial logic and political legitimacy crisis in Ghana. As an exploratory research design, this paper employed in-depth interview method to investigate the nexus between neopatrimonial logic and democratic deepening in Ghana. Findings reveal that in spite of Ghana’s several attempts at democratizing its state institutions and politics, legitimacy crisis still persists. This paper thus, concluded that the disruptive potentiality of neopatrimoniallogic bears inordinate (holding all other factors constant) responsibility.
Ghana’s Jubilee Fields Oil and Gas Extraction: Accountability and Prospects
(European Scientific Journal, 2015-12) Adu-Bempah Brobbey, Collins
Ghana commenced the oil and gas extraction in commercial quantities in the year 2011 and hence the country was listed among oil and gas producing countries in the sub-Saharan Africa. Accordingly, Ghanaians’ optimism widened because the oil and gas sectors were the change agent for social infrastructure and better living standards. Suddenly, however, Ghanaians’ optimism started to dwindle due to the lack of accountability mechanism to protect their interest. This study explored the Ghanaians’ misgivings regarding the accountability mechanism in the oil and gas sectors. Primary data for this study was collected from interviews and survey. Findings revealed that the majority of Ghanaians are pessimistic about the prospects of the oil and gas sectors for ensuring parity in national development. It concluded that Ghanaians have little information about the accountability mechanism to protect their interest and therefore recommended a policy action to strengthen the accountability and prevent the resource curse syndrome.
The Land Question: Political Economy of Land Banking in Ghana
(US-China Law Review, 2017) Adu-Bempah Brobbey, Collins
The Land question‖ is an interrogation of the politics of land administration and its associated conflictsissues in the process of appropriating land in sub-Saharan Africa in general and Ghana in particular. The central argument of this paper is that in pre-colonial times, land was not considered a commodity because it did not have an exchangeable value, in other words, it was neither owned by individuals nor meant for sale, instead, it was communally owned and the king or the chief remains the only custodian of the land. However, when colonial administration took control over Africa, two things happened. Communally owned land process became formalized and consequently gave impetus to administrative land (State lands) and traditional land (Stool lands, also known as Land Tenure System (LTS). And subsequently, land was commoditized or, for wants of a better word, land became a saleable commodity. Consequently, communally owned land otherwise refers to in this paper as Traditional Land Bank and Banking for the indigenous was, however, replaced by what this paper refers to as ―State-cum- Traditional-cum- Individuals Share equity‖. And surprisingly, land appropriation matters and its accompanied escalating conflicts bizarre had come to occupy center stage of land administration and appropriations discourses during and in post-colonial eras. Using peer reviewed articles, newspapers together with purposive in-depth interviews with stakeholders, traditional chiefs, land administrators, and individual land owners, this paper investigate the effectiveness of land administration and appropriation policy in Ghana. Findings revealed inconsistencies as a serious weakness of the existing land policy in Ghana and concludes that the emergence of commodification of land and its accompanied land appropriations turns to pose ominous challenge in the political economy of land acquisition and entitlement in the entire sub-Saharan Region of which Ghana is no exception. It recommends establishment of Land Banking system and to create land banks for easy and peaceful access to land ownership and usage. Also to serve as a recipe for land administrative and appropriating conflicts.
The Communicative Ecology of Social Media in the Organization of Social Movement for Collective Action in Ghana: The Case of #FixTheCountry
(Information Impact: Journal of Information and Knowledge Management, 2022-03) Adu-Bempah Brobbey, Collins; Aboagye Da-Costa, Caroline; Apeakoran, Ephraim Nana
This study seeks to unravel the media-oriented practices and media technology applications of the #FixTheCountry protests which seek to demand accountability from successive governments of Ghana. While acts by various governmental agencies supposedly worked to prevent a physical convergence due to the Covid-19 pandemic, their efforts proved futile due to the communicative ecology driving the movement. Using the concept of communicative ecology and a multimodal ethnography through observation, semi-structured interviews and time series analysis of happenings after the emergence of the hashtag, #FixTheCountry, the study found out that the diverse backgrounds of the participants of the movement notwithstanding, the hybridity of the communication technologies, especially the use of social media fueled the success of their interaction, leading to enhanced information and communicative ecology, giving them a formidable front both within and outside Ghana. It recommends that political actors need to embrace protest movements for collective action based on purpose, especially because of the complex intertwining technology that characterizes their formation in the digital era.

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