Hegemonic influence and selectivity in financial accountability discharge: Evidence from Ghana’s oil and gas sector

Abstract

This paper compares the extent of engagement between the Ghanaian government and the nation’s oil and gas firms with the nature of the financial accountability offered by each of these parties to the citizenry. The findings indicate that whilst the Ghanaian government and the nation’s oil firms pay (at best) cursory regard to societal needs for information and engagement, when interacting with each other an effective and unapologetic form of discharge exists, suggesting the existence of an exclusionary hegemony. We mobilize elements of work by Jessop (2003a,b), Joseph (2002, 2003) and Andrew and Baker (2020) to contextualise the evidence around recent theoretical debates on selectivity in information flows and accountability discharge in developing nation settings.