The paths of African states have diverged markedly since the termination of colonial rule. Nevertheless, Ghana, the first African state to achieve independence, epitomizes both the political gyrations and the overall stagnation common to many other countries on the continent. This work concentrates on the 1969–1982 period in Ghana, focusing on two interrelated facets of African politics: the decline of state power and authority, and adjustments to political recession. The author traces the dual patterns of diminution of the state and the adaptation of autonomous coping mechanisms in the separate spheres of political leadership, political structures and institutions, ideology, and political economy. The dynamic of state-society interactions is then treated in terms of the rhythm of dissent, conflict, and disengagement. Dr. Chazan provides a comprehensive study of Ghanaian politics from the 1970s to the present. By systematically analyzing the process of political decline and regeneration, she highlights similar processes apparent elsewhere in Africa. The stress on the subtleties and direction of political change has important implications for policymakers and policy analysts alike.

The Corrupt Elites is a simple and straight-forward narrative in which explains the incidence of corruption or the rise of corruption within successive historical conjunctures in the Ghana. Some of the questions raised and answered in the study relate to how the Ghanaian precolonial, colonial and post-colonial states and their mutually interrelated political processes affected the production and distribution of wealth. In particular, how political decisions and interests of the political elites influenced the location of economic activities and the distribution of the costs and benefits of these activities. An explanation is given as to why corruption has festered in the Ghanaian polity and recrudesced from the 1990s with such devastating social, economic and political effect. The purpose of this essay is to substantiate the assumptions underpinning the narrative with concrete historical evidence.

Working from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives (especially, from the social sciences, media studies discourse analysis, text grammar, folklore, performing arts and linguistics), the authors of the volume investigate and illuminate pertinent issues on democratization, elections and electioneering campaigns and the constitution of order in an African context. The strategies through which political actors and the media speak about important policy issues such as healthcare, infrastructure, education, and finance during presidential sessional addresses and political campaigning are also elucidated. The extent of political ecologies’ impact on general elections, on policy issues, and on split-ticket voting (especially what causes it to happen and its impact on who gets elected and the consequent impact on party unity or disintegration) are also given scholarly attention. Also elucidated are is the entwinning of language, power, liberty, ideology and representation and issues deemed politically nerve wrecking and capable of entrapping political actors and causing the citizenry to either lose confidence in them or even call for their resignation.

Appendices (p. 179-220):--A. Speech in Parliament by J. A. Braimah during debate on Preventive detention bill, 1958.--B. Nkrumaism--African socialism: Ghana's conception of socialism, by K. Baako--C. Eulogy on Dr. J. B. Danquah, by N. Azikiwe.--D. Last wills of Kwame Nkrumah. Bibliography: p. 221-223.

A review of the reasons for the failure of different decentralization programmes in Ghana with reference to the link between the substance of a policy and its method of application.

Ghana attained independence in 1957. From 1992, when a new constitution came into force and established a new – democratic – framework for governing the country, elections have been organized every four years to choose the governing elites. The essays in this volume are about those elections because elections give meaning to the role of citizens in democratic governance. The chapters depart from the study of formal structures by which the electorate choose their representatives. They evaluate the institutional forms that representation take in the Ghanaian context, and study elections outside the specific institutional forms that according to democratic theory are necessary for arriving at the nature of the relationships that are formed between the voters and their representatives and the nature and quality of their contribution to the democratic process.