Interests or ideas: Analysing the drivers of Ghana's petroleum revenue expenditure

Abstract

The development of transparency and accountability enhancing institutions has been argued by new institutionalists as a means of engendering prudent petroleum revenue management. Although Ghana's petroleum institutional architecture is hailed as one of the best on the continent, reports of petroleum revenue mismanagement are not uncommon. However, there is little theoretical explanation on how successive governments have managed the country's hydrocarbon revenues. With heuristic insights from the political settlement analysis, the paper finds clientelist politics and coalitional competition as vital underpinnings in the use of the petroleum revenues. Despite the importance of ideas in political settlement analysis, the article posits that the use of petroleum revenues by Ghana's two major political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), does not necessarily reflect their respective ideologies. Thus, I argue that ruling elites use petroleum revenues in a way that contributes to expanding their coalition and sustaining power, even if they had to abandon their ideology to achieve those ends.