E. Gyimah-Boadi

Public opinion, democracy, and market reform in Africa

This book is a ground-breaking exploration of public opinion in subSaharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive crossnational survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think of democracy and market reform, subjects about which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government. They will accept economic structural adjustment only if it is accompanied by an effective state, the availability of jobs, and an equitable society. What are the origins of these attitudes? Far from being constrained by social structure and cultural values, Africans learn about reform on the basis of knowledge, reasoning, and experience. Weighing supply and demand for reform, the authors reach sober conclusions about the varying prospects of African countries for attaining full-fledged democracy and markets.

Another Step Forward for Ghana

Abstract:Ghana held its fourth successful elections in late 2008 and subsequently witnessed the peaceful handover of power from ruling party to opposition. The countrys leaders must now reform its institutions of governance.

A Peaceful Turnover in Ghana

With longtime ruler Jerry Rawlings obeying constitutional term limits, the opposition won a narrow electoral victory, bringing Ghana its first peaceful transfer of power since independence.

Constituencies for reform in Ghana

The attitudes of ordinary people in Africa towards the liberalisation of politics and economies are not well known. Are there popular constituencies for reform? Which specific reform measures do different social groups accept or reject? And does popular support for structural adjustment, if any, go together with support for democracy? In an effort to find answers, this article reports results of a national sample survey in Ghana conducted in July 1999 as part of the Afrobarometer. The survey finds that the constituency for democracy is broader than the constituency for market reform, which is concentrated among educated male elites. In addition, while most Ghanaians are patient with democracy and want to retain this political regime, most Ghanaians are fatigued with adjustment and want the government to ‘change its policies now’. Given this distribution of popular preferences, one can surmise that democracy will be easier to consolidate than a market-based economy.

Ghana’s Economic Decline and Development Strategies

Ghana’s political and economic decline is traceable in part at least to the partial delinkage of the 1980s. Contrary to current thought on this subject, however, in this instance the process was not a Third World initiated strategy of ‘transformation’ (i.e. a reduction of Third World states’ connections with Western international capitalism)1 but rather a steady withdrawal of Western interest in and concern over what the West has come to view as a strategically and economically peripheral country. The recession in the developed countries in the 1980s has led to a decrease in production, entailing less demand for commodities produced by Third World exporters. Tenuous business and financial linkages with Western capitalism have grown weaker as Western-based multinational companies and their governments have pulled back from entangling investments, aid and debt relief programmes in the less stable and strategically unimportant parts of the Third World. Multilateral lending agencies, the logical stopgap, appear somewhat hesitant and aloof — all too parsimonious with their funds and at times insensitive in the conditions they set for the loans they offer. In the face of this partial delinkage by the Western core, states at the periphery, such as Ghana, feel dependent yet neglected, vulnerable while lacking choice, and all this at a time when the world economy seems to be headed into a major crisis of uncertain proportions.

Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform in Africa: COMPETING EXPLANATIONS

This book is a ground-breaking exploration of public opinion in subSaharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive crossnational survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think of democracy and market reform, subjects about which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government. They will accept economic structural adjustment only if it is accompanied by an effective state, the availability of jobs, and an equitable society. What are the origins of these attitudes? Far from being constrained by social structure and cultural values, Africans learn about reform on the basis of knowledge, reasoning, and experience. Weighing supply and demand for reform, the authors reach sober conclusions about the varying prospects of African countries for attaining full-fledged democracy and markets.

Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform in Africa: Index

This book is a ground-breaking exploration of public opinion in subSaharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive crossnational survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think of democracy and market reform, subjects about which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government. They will accept economic structural adjustment only if it is accompanied by an effective state, the availability of jobs, and an equitable society. What are the origins of these attitudes? Far from being constrained by social structure and cultural values, Africans learn about reform on the basis of knowledge, reasoning, and experience. Weighing supply and demand for reform, the authors reach sober conclusions about the varying prospects of African countries for attaining full-fledged democracy and markets.

Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform in Africa: EXPLAINING REFORM CONSTITUENCIES

This book is a ground-breaking exploration of public opinion in subSaharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive crossnational survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think of democracy and market reform, subjects about which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government. They will accept economic structural adjustment only if it is accompanied by an effective state, the availability of jobs, and an equitable society. What are the origins of these attitudes? Far from being constrained by social structure and cultural values, Africans learn about reform on the basis of knowledge, reasoning, and experience. Weighing supply and demand for reform, the authors reach sober conclusions about the varying prospects of African countries for attaining full-fledged democracy and markets.