The Political Economy of Development and Decline in Ghana (1895-1992)
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The Political Economy of Development and Decline in Ghana (1895-1992) Thesis submitted to the Nottingham Trent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy STEPHEN KWATELAI QUARTEY MAY, 2019 i Dedication To the memory of my parents Mr Granville Quartey and Mrs Josephine Quartey, the two who shaped my life, and my supervisor, Dr Ros Hague. ii Acknowledgements First I would like to thank the Almighty God for his grace and mercies. I am truly grateful to Dr Jon Gorry for his relentless encouragement, advice and guidance throughout the years. I would also like to thank Professor Matt Henn for his critical guidance, commitment and valued support. I wish to thank Drs Imad El-anis and Marie Gibert for their contributions and encouragements. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Kwabena Barima Antwi for agreeing to serve as my external examiner, Professor Rebecca Parry for serving as the Independent Chair and Dr Sahra Joharchi for her role as the Internal Examiner. Sadly but importantly I extend a posthumous gratitude to one of my outstanding supervisors, Dr Ros Hague for her calm guidance and encouragement. I would also like to thank my dear wife, Alice Adwoa Kissi, for her love, prayers and support throughout my study and personal life. I am very grateful to Reverend Brother Emmanuel Affum (SVD), Lydia Quartey and my family for their support in diverse ways. I wish to thank Professor Ishmael Mensah of the University of Cape Coast, Administrative Staff of the Doctoral School Nottingham Trent University, Public Record Office in London, Ghana Library Board and National Archives in Accra. There are many others who shared ideas with me and gave me reasons to advance in difficult times. I am very grateful to them all and ask for God’s blessings on their pathways. iii The Map of Africa with emphasis on Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) Ghana is located along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Guinea, with a land mass spanning 238,535 km2 (92,099 square miles). iv Abstract: The search for a sustainable Sub-Saharan ‘developmental state’ stands as one of the most cherished alternative models for economic transformation proposed by those who would question the neoliberal trajectory of African political economy in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although the particular example of Ghana offers an archetypal case study, scholarship contributions on this subject are surprisingly quiet or limited in their scope or level of analysis particularly in the so-called Fordist or pre-neoliberal era. This thesis was written as a response to this lacuna and aims to unravel the historical problems of underdevelopment in Ghana within a particular time-frame (1895-1992), offer theoretical interpretations, and suggest the need for fresh appreciation of development-based state strategies. Its overarching objective was to address the question of protracted economic underdevelopment in Ghana and understand why it has been resistant to a number of development efforts by both colonial and post-colonial governments utilising both state-based and market-based strategies. The purpose is to bring the past to life in order to generate historically relevant approaches to African political economy. In this thesis a theoretically-informed and historically-embedded approach is used to examine theories of the capitalist state, production process and development models in relation to the political economy of Ghana 1895-1992. By adopting a longitudinal comparative historicist analysis the study is able to investigate more than one subject of interest over many historical junctures. It critically examines the development efforts of three distinct state forms and the roles played in production, trade, distribution and development. This method of examining development under distinct state forms is relevant because it was essentially the state that conditioned economic development in the Fordist era under discussion. Rather than first constructing theory to explain history, this thesis thus utilise history as the vehicle for understanding why particular theoretical approaches to development in Ghana arose and then fell. The intent is not so much to model for the future but to understand the conditions and potentialities of the present through appreciation of the past. In this direction a desk-based research was used with data gathered from a wide-range of archival information from the Public Record Office in London, National Archives in Accra, Hansard online resources, African Studies Centre resources, newspaper publications, journal articles, books, World Bank reports and British online archives. The outcome of the study identifies distinct trends in Ghanaian development across the colonial and post-colonial periods: from a colonial strategy of development dependency 1895-1956, to an import-substitution industrialization strategy 1957-1966, finishing with the more market-directed developments from 1967-1992, that finally ushered in the contemporary neo-liberal era. This interpretivist and historical method enable theoretical mapping of three distinct attempts at creating Ghanaian versions of the ‘development state’ that provide a clear and distinct analysis of efforts to modernise the political economy of Ghana, explain Ghana’s underdevelopment, and in so doing bring back politics into economics in order to make an original contribution to knowledge. It is hoped that policy makers, development partners, and scholars can learn from Africa in the same way they think and learn from the dramatic successes of East Asia. Keywords: Colonial and post-colonial development, capitalist state and capitalist economy, predatory state, vampire state, zombie state and developmental states, embedded autonomy, Weberian ideal-type bureaucracy. v Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................ iii The Map of Africa with emphasis on Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) ........................................ iv Abstract: .......................................................................................................................................... v Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 1 SECTION ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 5 Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 5 1.1 Introduction to the Political Economy of Ghana (1895 – 1992) ............................................... 5 1.2 Historical Overview of Development in Africa .......................................................................... 9 1.3 Central Research Concern and Methodological Issues. .......................................................... 10 1.4 Structure of the thesis............................................................................................................. 14 Chapter Two: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS .................................................................................... 16 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 16 2.2 Development Theories and Evolution of Development Thinking in Ghana. .......................... 20 2.3 Colonial Dependency and Modernization development ........................................................ 27 2.4 State-led Import Substitution Industrialisation Development ............................................... 33 2.5 Neoliberalism and Market-led Development ......................................................................... 34 2.6 Marx, Polanyi and Wallerstein’s Concepts of World Capitalist System .................................. 36 2.7 Theories of the Modern State and its Role in Development .................................................. 43 2.8 Developmental State, Bureaucracy and Embedded Autonomy ............................................. 47 2.9 Developmental state – an idea, concept or paradigm for Africa ............................................ 50 2.10 Analysis of the Political Economy of Development and Decline in Ghana ........................... 54 SECTION TWO: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PREDATORY STATE........................................................... 58 Chapter 3: The Political Economy of Ghana during the Colonial Era – Before 1929 ....................... 58 3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 58 3.2 The Pre-capitalist Political Economy of the Gold Coast in the period before 1895 ................ 62 1 3.3. The Reconstructing Era of a Colonial Predatory State: Chamberlain Policy (1895 – 1919) ... 69 3.4 First Planned Colonial Development Plan (1919 to 1929): Modernization of Agriculture ..... 72 Chapter 4: The Political Economy of Ghana during the Colonial Era -1930 to 1950 ....................... 89 4.1 The Evolution of Statutory Development Acts and Protracted Development in the Gold Coast. ...........................................................................................................................................