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What accountability pressures do MPs in Africa face and how do they respond? Evidence from Ghana*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2010

Staffan I. Lindberg
Staffan I. Lindberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science & Center for African Studies, University of Florida, 234 Anderson Hall, PO Box 117325, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
*
Email: sil@ufl.edu
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Abstract

How African politicians, especially legislators, behave on a daily basis is still largely unknown. This article gives a unique empirical account of the daily accountability pressures and the strategies that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Ghana employ in responding to the demands that they face. While literature on political clientelism focuses on explanatory factors like lack of political credibility, political machines capable of effective monitoring, autonomy of brokers, high levels of poverty, and political competiveness, the role of institutions has been overlooked. While the existing literature suggests that political clientelism is an optimal strategy in the context of weak institutions, the present analysis finds that the institution of the office of Member of Parliament in Ghana is strong, but shaped by informal norms in ways that favour the provision of private goods in clientelistic networks. The analysis also points to theoretical lessons on how political clientelism can endogenously undermine the conditions for its own existence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 117 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

The research was supported by a grant from the Africa Power and Politics Programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID). An earlier version appeared as APP Working Paper No. 2. I am grateful for comments on the earlier version provided by Goran Hyden, Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, Victor Brobbey, Winifred Pankani, Levy Odera, Keith Weghorst, Richard Crook, and the two anonymous reviewers. As always, the author is solely responsible for the contents, including remaining errors, misinterpretations, and so on.

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Interviews (Members of Parliament)

Names of other interviewees are omitted to protect confidentiality (see Appendix).

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