Transformative public policy design? The lifeworld of early postcolonial social policy in Ghana

Abstract

Based on the experience of advanced industrialized countries, social policies are portrayed as responses to the crises of capitalist industrialization. But this claim cannot explain the development of social policies, albeit limited in scope, in African countries in the early postcolonial era where policy makers undertook ambitious social development programs although their countries were comparatively underdeveloped. This article examines the approach to socio-economic development in the early postcolonial era (1950s to mid 1960s) in Ghana and argues that policymakers at the time adopted a transformative view of social policy and used it strategically as an integral part of modernization efforts to serve multiple purposes simultaneously. Consequently, social programs such as education and health were conceptualized as essential for human and societal progress hence, they were provided on the basis of social citizenship, whereas other such as old age income security and housing were designed to address new vulnerabilities that arise when a person is disconnected from traditional support systems due to processes of social change.