A Theoretical Exploration of the Evolution and Politics of Decentralisation Programmes in Ghana

This article is a theoretical exploration of the evolution of the politics of decentralisation programmes in Ghana from colonial to the post colonial era. It identifies the aims and objectives of decentralized policies of successive governments in Ghana, examines their structures, functions and powers, evaluates the financial and manpower resources that were available to them during implementation processes, analyses the philosophy underlying them and assesses the achievements and failures of the decentralisation policies. The articles finds out that the history of decentralisation policies and programmes in Ghana has been the history of the transfer of responsibilities to local authorities without a corresponding transfer of financial and material resources. The article concludes that formulators of decentralisation programmes in Ghana have held the ‘compliance view’ of implementation. They assume that once policies are formulated and announced, they would be implemented by subordinate administrators in a non-political and technically competent way. This ideological and administrative orientation of the compliance view of implementation had relegated monitoring, supervision and co-ordination of policies to the background, thereby precipitating policy failures. Keywords: decentralisation policies, implementation processes, financial and manpower resources