ABSTRACT
Two puzzles motivated this book on political financing in Ghana. First, how are political campaigns financed? Second, how does this system of political financing persist? Political financing is a critical topic in development studies because politicians must raise money for their campaigns. But whom a politician owes for her campaign, defines how she will behave. In addition, no politician implements policies alone. She interacts with bureaucrats, construction contractors, and political-party chairs—and these players also need money to meet their needs.
To ground an empirical study of political financing in Ghana, the author reviews scholarship on the motivations of politicians, bureaucrats, contractors, and party chairs, drawing from examples in Comparative and American Politics. The literature on American machine politics is informative for Ghana, due to American machines’ embrace of patronage, ethnic politics, and graft. For donors, these motivations can appear complex, but it is necessary to understand how these motivations are shaped and sustained by political financing.
The author then describes the case of Ghana and his methodological approach. Conducting extensive fieldwork, the author studied 11 districts across all 10 of Ghana’s regions. The author observed district operations, analyzed project-delivery data, and conducted nearly 200 interviews.
