ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the governance project from the perspective of local as opposed to national governance. It argues that Ghana is faced with an administrative dilemma: implementing good governance policies with a bureaucratic mindset and techniques that have tended to work against effective local governance. The chapter focuses on the question of how the implementation of Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II at regional, local, and community levels was conducted to advance the cause of decentralized governance. It describes experience with poverty reduction programs and how they reflect and are reflected by state recentralization and rebureaucratization that are counterproductive to effective local governance. The chapter discusses the performance management framework was unbalanced, top-heavy, and skewed more in favor of central than local and rural governance. The 1992 constitution, which has created a democratic, representative, and republican governing system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, provides the legal framework for pursuing good governance.
