ABSTRACT
Ghanaian politics between 1969 and early 1982 exhibited an intriguing admixture of issues, policies, processes, patterns and results. The multiplicity of ambiguities and contradictions, of complexities and underlying uniformities, of uncertainties and weaknesses, of continuities and changes, of consensus and disparities, presented an often bewildering picture of political trends at this time. Ghana on the eve of its silver jubilee was undergoing a dual pattern of state deterioration and local political retrenchment. The fact that a process of state recession and local reinvigoration was in motion could be gleaned from the appearance of certain outward symptoms of malaise. The first set of deep-seated explanations for the realignment of political life in Ghana may relate to the deflation of state power and its reallocation. This power redefinition appears to have focused squarely on the inability of the state to fulfill organizational tasks related to control over the variegated resources theoretically at its disposal.
