Seminar: Ghana: Vicious Circle of Competitive Clientelism – Easy Financing and Weak Capitalists

TIME: Tuesday, 1 November, 14-16

VENUE: Danish Institute for International Studies, Main Auditorium, Strandgade 71, ground floor, Christianshavn, 1401 Copenhagen K

TIME: Tuesday, 1 November, 14-16

VENUE: Danish Institute for International Studies, Main Auditorium, Strandgade 71, ground floor, Christianshavn, 1401 Copenhagen K

Ghana is an exemplary case to discuss the relationship between democracy and development. It has a viable opposition, relatively free and fair competitive elections, and the party in government has changed twice since the return to multiparty democracy in 1993.

However, its economic achievements are disappointing. Ghana has experienced sustained growth of a moderate level and significant poverty reduction, but its economy is still a predominantly agrarian one with low productivity agriculture and an export structure dependent on gold and cocoa, making poverty reduction gains untenable.

Ruling coalitions in Ghana are characterized by a high degree of vulnerability in power due to a strong opposition party, by strong lower level factions within the ruling coalition due to their importance in winning elections, and by a high degree of fragmentation among the ruling elite.

These characteristics, combined with a weak domestic capitalist class and high inflows of foreign aid, lead ruling elites to pursue initiatives in productive sectors that are shaped by a need to deliver quickly visible benefits to a large section of the population in order to garner more votes at election time, as well as to avoid policies that negatively affect key sections of the population or which benefit a small group (such as in nascent industries and emerging productive entrepreneurs). Ruling elites also focus on accumulating themselves, because they must fund electoral campaigns or because they are also aspiring businessmen.

The case of Ghana illustrates that democratization does not undermine clientelist politics, because the organization of clientelist political coalitions is driven not by the absence of democracy but by the structural features of the economies in developing countries. It also shows that democratization has little to do with accelerating economic transformation. The pace of economic transformation depends on how the competition between factions affects the emergence of a capitalist sector, the acquisition of technologies by that sector and its ability to begin to compete in global markets. These patterns of factional politics do not correlate in any simple way with the democracy-authoritarianism divide.

The presentation will subsequently be published in an expanded version as a DIIS working paper in the EPP sub series.

Speaker:
Lindsay Whitfield is Associate Professor in Global Studies at Roskilde University. She is a member of the Elites, Production and Poverty collaborative research programme (EPP) and was until recently a Project Senior Researcher at DIIS. Based on EPP research, she has published articles in Third World Quarterly and Journal of Development Studies as well as a DIIS Working Paper (2011:13).

Programme:

14.00-14.05: Introduction; Ole Therkildsen, Senior Researcher, DIIS

14.05-14.45: Ghana: Vicious Circle of Competitive Clientelism – Easy Financing and Weak Capitalists; Lindsay Whitfield, Associate Professor, Roskilde University

14.45-15.00: Coffee Break

15.00-16.00: Open Discussion

Chair: Ole Therkildsen, Senior Researcher, DIIS

This is the third of seven seminars in the 2011 EPP Fall Seminar Series. These seminars deal with the conceptual tools needed to understand the political economy of economic growth, job creation and poverty alleviation and how these tools are applied to studies of state interventions in productive sectors in Bangladesh, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. The main finding is that it is the motivation of political elites to support state interventions in productive sectors and mutual interests between these elites and producers that matters for good outcomes – rather than good governance, market driven development or empowerment of poor people.

The seminar will be held in English.

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Please use the online registration form from the website no later than Monday, 31 October 2011 at 12.00 noon.

Please await confirmation by e-mail from DIIS for participation.