Public Sector Reform and the Political Settlement in West Africa: A Comparative Reading of Ghana and Nigeria

Author (s)

Karl Mark Arhin, Derick Antwi Benyin, Selorm Kweku Dzokoto, Saio Alusine Marrah, Frank Korbla Dzokoto, Shahid Nawaz, & Eugenia Aba Moses

Abstract

Public-sector reform has been a near-permanent feature of governance in West Africa since the structural-adjustment period of the 1980s, yet efforts across civil-service restructuring, decentralization, and public financial management remain poorly integrated and unevenly sustained. This paper is a structured comparative political-economy analysis, not a causal study: it evaluates whether documented reform trajectories in two comparable West African cases are consistent with the mechanisms proposed by political settlements theory. Drawing on a theory-guided literature review of English-language donor, governmental, and academic sources, the paper traces reform in Ghana from the 1980s Civil Service Reform Programme through successive initiatives to current public-financial-management digitization, and compares this trajectory with Nigeria. Interventions are distinguished as technical/administrative or politically redistributive and coded against an explicit reform–political-threat framework. Ghana achieved modest, durable gains in low-political-threat domains such as revenue administration, financial-control automation, and budget digitization. Reforms that would redistribute politically valuable resources wage-bill restraint, fiscal decentralization, and continuity across administrations have repeatedly stalled or reversed. These patterns align with the incentives of Ghana’s competitive-clientelist settlement. The Nigerian comparison reveals the same broad mechanism operating within a different institutional context shaped by federalism, oil-revenue dependence, and military-rule legacy, indicating a settlement-level pattern expressed through country-specific institutions rather than a uniform regional outcome.

Key words: Public Sector Reform, Political Settlements, Competitive Clientelism, Decentralization, Public Financial Management, Ghana, Nigeria, West Africa.

Download PDF

Cite This Article:

Arhin, K. M., Benyin, D. A., Dzokoto, S. K., Marrah, S. A., Dzokoto, F. K., Nawaz, S., & Moses, E. A. (2026). Public Sector Reform and the Political Settlement in West Africa: A Comparative Reading of Ghana and Nigeria, Journal of Scientific Reports, 12(1), 244-259. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58970/JSR.1167

About Author (s)

Karl Mark Arhin (Corresponding Author), Doctor of Philosophy (Political Science Department), Kaaf University, Kasoa, Ghana.  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4362-5800

Derick Antwi Benyin, Kaaf University, Kasoa, Ghana.

Selorm Kweku Dzokoto, PhD Researcher (School of Information and Software Engineering), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Sichuan P.R., 611731 Chengdu, China. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1230-0414

Saio Alusine Marrah, PhD Researcher (School of Information and Software Engineering), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Sichuan P.R., 611731 Chengdu, China. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4727-2480

Frank Korbla Dzokoto, Associate Dean (Pearson Construction Management Faculty), Global Banking School, U.K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8033-2468

Shahid Nawaz, Masters’ Student (School of Information and Software Engineering), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Sichuan P.R., 611731 Chengdu, China. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-6004-9897

Eugenia Aba Moses, PhD Candidate, (National Defense University) Ghana Armed Forces Command and Saff College, Ghana. ORCID:  https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7251-8148

Download PDF

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58970/JSR.1167

Summarize this article with: