EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Does Accountability Undermine Service Delivery? The Impact of Devolving Agriculture in Ghana

Danielle Resnick

The European Journal of Development Research, 2022, vol. 34, issue 2, No 17, 1003-1029

Abstract: Abstract In recent years, many developing countries have devolved services to locally elected governments. Although this may strengthen downwards accountability to citizens, does devolution improve service provision? Ghana began devolving agriculture in 2012 to its Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs). Drawing on an original survey with 80 District Directors of Agriculture and 960 households, as well as district-level budget data and interviews with national and local government stakeholders, this paper shows that agricultural expenditures and services have been negatively affected by the transition. The imperative of electoral accountability encourages assembly members to de-prioritize agriculture in the budget process in favor of more visible goods and services. Budget allocations, however, do reflect the preferences of local citizens, a majority of whom value using elections to sanction their district politicians. The findings indicate that devolution may increase accountability but result in sectoral trade-offs in service provision, which may undermine national policy objectives.

Keywords: Accountability; Agriculture; Devolution; Ghana; Local government; Service delivery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41287-021-00408-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:eurjdr:v:34:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1057_s41287-021-00408-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41287/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41287-021-00408-x

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Development Research is currently edited by Spencer Henson and Natalia Lorenzoni

More articles in The European Journal of Development Research from Palgrave Macmillan, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-16
Handle: RePEc:pal:eurjdr:v:34:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1057_s41287-021-00408-x