CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, February 2021 Page 1
Online Article
The Gilgamesh Dilemma in Counterbalancing Power in Ghana:
Constraints, Opportunities and Possibilities
O
ver a period of less than ten
years, Ghana’s apex court,
the Supreme Court, has adjudicated over two major electoral
disputes—in 2013 and 2021—between the two major political parties in the country, the New Patriotic
Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). These
rulings have come on the heels of
almost three decades of successful institutional design, which was
implemented in 1992 in the form
of the Fourth Republic. The Fourth
Republic was established to bring
stability to the nation, after many
bouts of chaotic identity-driven
politics, coup d’états, foreign interference and general governance
deficit, factors that had reinforced
each other and had undermined the
dignity of its citizens for decades.
Today, although identity politics is
still prevalent among certain sociocultural groups (especially among
Asantes in the Ashanti Region and
Ewes in the Volta Region, who form
up to 25 per cent of eligible voters)
and socioeconomic inequality is
still high (the Gini Index in 2016
was 43.5 per cent, meaning only
about half of the population share
all the country’s wealth), Ghana’s
Fourth Republic is still a good example of a stable political regime in
Africa. Its greatest weakness, however, lies in the Constitution’s emphasis on checks and balances (in
counterbalancing power) within the
top tiers of government.
Clement Sefa-Nyarko
La Trobe University, Australia
In this essay, I argue that this accountability arrangement has nurtured the ‘Gilgamesh’ problem of
a top-level conspiracy that undermines systems of accountability
in Ghana. I also critique the notion that Ghana’s constitutional arrangement is cast in stone; on the
contrary, each moment in the political process offers windows of opportunity to make changes as much
as it shuts out other possibilities. In
addition, civil society has a role to
play in keeping governments accountable, and therefore the interplay between the various arms of
government and the citizens must
be nurtured constantly.
Until the 1990s, Ghana struggled
to sustain political stability, swinging from authoritarian regimes in
many forms (such as the pre-1951
colonialism, the one-party state in
1962, military dictatorships in the
late 1960s and most of the 1970s
and 1980s) to the civilian rule of the
First, Second and Third Republics,
which were mostly unsuccessful
in achieving long-term legitimacy.
Each era made trade-offs between
social identities, opportunities,
incentives and political participa-
tion. Its current institutional remedy—the Fourth Republic—follows
what Reilly (2001: 7) referred to
as centripetalism, since it encourages moderation in social identities
in party politics and emphasises a
unitary national identity. This is
in contrast to, say, Ethiopia’s ethnofederalism or Nigeria’s federation, which legitimise distinct regional identities (centrifugalism)
within the broader federal architecture. Also, unlike South Africa’s
post-apartheid institutional design,
which was deliberate and originated from committee-room compromises, Ghana’s Fourth Republic
evolved organically from previous
political, social and economic catastrophes. Since 1992, the country
has had eight relatively peaceful
transitions of political power and
four changes of government.
So, what is the basis of Ghana’s
apparently robust design?
Two main drivers of Ghana’s political stability have been its ability to
successfully tame wide-ranging social identities within party politics
(Sefa-Nyarko 2020) and to counterbalance power in response to motivational complexities. It has done
this by institutionalising measures
that address the tension between
self-seeking impulses, principles and
altruistic motives (Goodin 1996).
According to Robert Goodin (1996:
CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, February 2021 Page 2
19), institutions are ‘organised patterns of socially constructed norms
and roles, and socially prescribed
behaviours expected of occupants of
those roles’, which are simulated to
exert power and influence. One of the
three principles of a good institution,
as proposed by Goodin, is a sensitivity to motivational complexity. As
Mahmood Mamdani (1996) argues,
the self-seeking impulses of individuals and groups can be resolved
through counterbalancing power
between government, civil society
and ordinary people. Generally, the
counterbalancing of power generates
an organic system of accountability,
and one of its modus operandi is the
Kantian Publicity Principle—the assumption that only publicly defensible actions are permissible and that
people would proudly admit their
higher motives, but not their lower
motives, in public (see Luban 1996).
The Government of Ghana’s Fourth
Republic has three arms—executive, legislature and the judiciary—
each of which must check the other
through legislation, constitutional
instruments, judicial protocols
and administrative processes (Republic of Ghana 1992). There is
also civil society, which has established itself as a formidable force
in creating equilibrium in the balance of power. Since civil society
took shape in Ghana in the 1970s,
it has perpetually exerted pressure
on successive governments, from
Kutu Acheampong’s military-police alliance and throughout Hilla
Limann’s Third Republic to Jerry
Rawlings’ two military regimes—
the Armed Forces Revolutionary
Council (AFRC) and the Provisional National Defence Council
(PNDC). Civil society has manifested itself in many forms, such
as the media, occupational groups,
student’s unions, sector-specific
groups, issue-based groups, think
tanks and academia.
Public demonstrations and protests, such as the 1995 Kume Preko
outcry against the introduction of
Value Added Tax, the 1993 Stolen
Verdict campaign and pro-democracy demonstrations that shaped institutional design in the 1970s and
1980s, found legitimacy in the 1992
Constitution (Article 21(1)(d)).
The Public Order Act, 1994 (Act
491, amended in 2016) reinforced
this constitutional provision, even
if some of its clauses, such as the
requirement of police clearance for
public demonstrations, have been
widely criticised due to the risk of
abuse by public officials in order to
intimidate protesters.
sociated with the IMF’s and World
Bank’s Economic Recovery Programme, and the infamous Structural Adjustment Programme, that
complemented pressure from civil
society for the country’s return to
constitutional rule in 1992. However, these conditionalities also compounded the crisis of breakdown
and consensus in Africa, especially
their capitalist, Eurocentric and often condescending and unrealistic
motives (Grindle 2004; Kjær 2014;
Mkandawire 2010).
Citizens exercising their individual
rights also have agency through
their participation in regular presidential, parliamentary and local
assembly elections. Furthermore,
the downstream distribution of executive and administrative authority through the Local Government
Act, 1993 (Act 462, amended in
2016), legitimised by Articles 240256 of the 1992 Constitution, has
expanded public participation in
governance and counterbalanced
central authority. Additionally, the
inclusion of Article 55 in the Constitution, which forbids the expression of ethnic, religious or sectarian sentiments in party politics, has
been widely credited for sustained
political stability in Ghana (Arthur
2009; Sefa-Nyarko 2020).
Undoubtedly, as philosophised by
Thomas Hobbes, some central authority is required in the architecture of the state (the Leviathan) to
ensure co-ordination, leadership
and the provision of public goods
and services. Ghana has such authority and associated legitimacy
set up in its three arms of government. But, left unchecked, the state
often abuses its power to extract
value from society in ways that exploit and undermine individual liberties. So who determines the level
and scope of checks and balances,
and how should these be verified?
International development agents
like the World Bank and IMF, and
bilateral agreements, have played a
role, too. They have used what Pettit (1996) referred to as ‘filters’, or
conditionalities, to counterbalance
power in Ghana—and Africa in
general—since the end of colonialism and the rise of neoliberalism
in the late 1970s. When Ghana’s
economy was in near collapse in the
1980s, it was the conditionalities as-
But Ghana’s ‘institutional
design’ also reinforces
power imbalances
An outcome in the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1800
BCE) well describes the dilemma
of the current power imbalance in
Ghana. In this story, the new hero,
Enkidu, who is created by the sky
god, Anu, in response to the supplications of the people of the city
of Uruk to counter the tyranny of
King Gilgamesh, eventually sides
with Gilgamesh. They combine
forces to topple the gods and further undermine the interests of the
people. In other words, checks and
balances that originate from within
the state (at the top) are not enough
to protect the interests of society (at
CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, February 2021 Page 3
the bottom). Accountability must
be claimed by society because the
state will not willingly offer it, and
even if it does, it is rarely in the interest of society.
Ghana’s constitutional provisions
of checks and balances are only
as good as civil society and other
non-state actors are active, enduring and vigilant. Although Ghana
has a vibrant civil society, a lot
more needs to be done because
the tension between state and society engenders constant tussle. The
Gilgamesh outcome prevails in
Ghana’s Fourth Republic because
the three arms of government can
work together to undermine public
interest, and often have done so.
Here are some examples.
First, the executive and legislature
conspired to reduce the potency of
the Right to Information Law, 2019
(Act 989) in exerting transparency
and social accountability. The genesis of the RTI law was the inability of the Institute of Economic
Affairs, a private entity, to access
exchange rate data from the Bank
of Ghana in the late 1990s. This
moved it to sponsor the draft of
the RTI bill for Parliament’s consideration (CHRI 2019). This was
an attempt by a non-state actor to
enforce the operationalisation of
the freedom of information provision of Article 21(1)(f) of the 1992
Constitution. The legislature and
the executive received the bill in
good faith in the early 2000s. However, by the time they passed it into
law in 2019, thirteen exemption
clauses had been inserted (Sections
5-17) that rendered the law toothless in extracting relevant public
information for social accountability. Parliamentary and executive privileges, public safety and
national security were some of the
reasons cited for these exemptions.
Even international actors appeared
to be part of this conspiracy. For
instance, Section 8(1)(d)(i-ii) of
the law disallows the disclosure of
information relating to international transactions made by the state.
According to this exemption, it is
illegal to:
reveal information communicated in confidence by a public
institution to (i) another public
institution in another country
or another government, or (ii)
an international organisation
or a body of that organisation
(Republic of Ghana 2019)
Even though civil society initiated
the RTI process with specific social
accountability interests in mind,
the legislature and executive took
almost two decades to pass it into
law, and by the time this was done,
the substance of the document had
been watered down, making it an
ineffective tool to tackle corruption in public spaces. Obviously,
the government was incapable of
checking itself.
Second, the constitutional requirement of Article 78 that mandates
the president to appoint the majority of ministers of state from
among members of Parliament
(MPs) adds to the Gilgamesh problem. This is because the executive
and the legislature often conspire
to grease each others’ palms, so
to speak. Parliamentarians act to
please the executive, in order to
get ministerial appointments, and
the executive is almost certain that
Parliament will look the other way
when it makes submissions to it.
In almost all cases, budgets, bills
and contracts that the executive
submits to Parliament receive parliamentary approval, often with
minor or no revisions.
For instance, in 2020 the infamous1 Agyapa Minerals Royalties
Investment Agreement, which was
found to be capable of perpetually
robbing the state2 of its mineral resources, received parliamentary approval without a hint of opposition
from MPs. It was only when civil
society rang the alarm about the
inherent financial loss that would
accrue to the state that the executive eventually abrogated the deal,
which was meant to take its legitimacy from the Minerals Income
Investment Fund, 2018 (Act 978).
The deal had slipped through Parliament unopposed because of the
close link between the two arms of
government and legitimised opacity in some financial transactions
of state (Kuditchar 2021). Even
when the Auditor General and the
Special Prosecutor attempted to intervene in matters of public interest in 2020, the former was hunted
down and forced to go on leave,3
and the latter resigned out of sustained frustration.4
The deal also nearly succeeded because, throughout the period of the
Fourth Republic, the ruling parties
often had the majority of MPs to do
government’s bidding. However,
this majoritarian exercise of power
could change. In January 2021, the
8th Parliament was sworn into office
after neither the ruling NPP nor the
main opposition party, the NDC,
had a clear parliamentary majority–
each had 137 of the 275 seats. But
this expectation is too ambitious
precisely because of the manifestation of the Gilgamesh problem.
The equal number of ruling and
opposition MPs in Parliament ordinarily should be a positive sign
for enhanced checks and balances
in Ghana, for two reasons. One,
citizen voters have become more
discerning over time and have
moved on from the usual ideological fixations to issue-based political decision-making, and now vote
for presidential and parliamentary
CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, February 2021 Page 4
candidates from different political
parties in one election. This political decision-making is termed
‘skirt and blouse’ in local parlance.
It signals to politicians that elections are votes of confidence and
not a mere census of political affiliation. Two, in the new Parliament, it will be harder for the executive to get its laws, budgets and
programmes rubber-stamped, since
it will have to convince ruling and
opposition MPs about the socioeconomic value of its programmes.
However, there are flaws in each of
these two arguments.
First, voting patterns among almost
a quarter of the voting population
(Asantes in the Ashanti Region and
Ewes in the Volta Region) have not
changed since 1992, despite the
provisions of Article 55. The votes
gained by the NPP in the Asante
Region since 1992 continue to increase—from 61 per cent (1992)
to 66 per cent (1996), 75 per cent
(2000), 75 per cent (2004), 72 per
cent (2008), 76 per cent (2016) and
73 per cent (2020)—while in the
Volta Region the NPP received an
average of only 11 per cent over
the same period. Conversely, the
NDC claimed an average of 87 per
cent of votes in the Volta Region
between 1992 and 2020, and managed only 27 per cent on average
in the Asante Region (Sefa-Nyarko
2020). In the 2020 election, classified as a pacesetter due to informed
political decision-making, the
NDC maintained its lead in the Volta Region with 85 per cent of votes,
while the NPP got 15 per cent in
that region (Electoral Commission
Ghana 2020). Similar patterns of
unflinching support have been recorded in the three northern regions
and among some Akan groups, although voters in the cosmopolitan
national capital, the Greater Accra
Region, have remained the arbiters
of change throughout the Fourth
Republic. This suggests that institutional design, even in its most effective form, cannot displace informal arrangements, and Article 55
has been only partially successful
in taming sociocultural identities in
party politics.
Second, any top-down counterbalancing arrangement is counterproductive without the sustained
involvement of ordinary citizens.
MPs in the Fourth Republic have
been found to easily agree on
things that are of interest to them,
like salary and bonus adjustments,
which are often not aligned with
wider society’s interests. They
have also been found to approve
certain laws and contracts that have
not stood up to public criticism,
such as the Right to Information
Law and Agyapa Minerals Royalty Investment Agreement. It is
therefore foolhardy to believe that,
on their own, MPs would be able
to improve checks and balances.
At best, governing and opposition
MPs might collaborate to achieve
goals other than those of public interest. At worst, they are likely to
bicker, stalling government business and undermining the ruling
government programmes, just as
the Parliament of the Third Republic did under the Hilla Limann government. Rawlings’ second coup
d’état eventually toppled that government on the grounds that it was
incompetent in meeting the needs
of the people. Similarly, not working in the public interest could potentially spell doom for the Fourth
Republic. Civil society ought to be
consistent in showing interest in
the affairs of the state, and explore
legitimate means of contributing
to public discussions, even as the
party numbers in Parliament have
the potential to strengthen collaboration among MPs or bring the
country to a standstill.
The judiciary has not been unblemished either. The 2015 Anas
Aremyaw Anas’ exposé showed
that the judiciary, just like all other
arms of government in Ghana, cannot behave without the critical eyes
of society on it. In this scandal,
judges and lawyers were found to
have conspired against unsuspecting victims on trial, taking bribes
and aborting justice (Sefa-Nyarko
2015). Judicial reforms followed,
which appear to be far reaching,
but it cannot be assumed that they
will institute greater fairness since
the justice system is shielded and
its processes are still shrouded
in secrecy. There is no doubt that
the judiciary still enjoys some legitimacy, as evidenced in the 2021
election arbitration between the
NPP and the NDC at the Supreme
Court. But this legitimacy is part of
a process that must constantly be
monitored. It is not an end in itself.
Implications
The formal structures of state are
only effective and responsive to
society if society itself is proactive in purposefully engaging with
the state. Hayek (1989) has been
critical of the state’s capacity to
be magnanimous and disciplined,
which is true only if society fails to
monitor, engage, disagree, contest
and co-operate with the state when
necessary (Acemoglu and Robinson 2019). Such collaboration
between the state and society will
not be delivered on a silver platter,
as the state is designed to dominate society, and will do so if not
restrained by society with focus
and purpose. Ghana’s institutional
design has been largely successful
because of the interaction between
the state and society. But this status
is not static, it has flaws, and as a
work in progress it requires consistent discourse, appraisal and reform. As seen in this essay, an im-
CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, February 2021 Page 5
portant driver of such reforms and
self-reflection is civil society. But
civil society itself is problematic.
The concept of civil society seems
self-explanatory, as an autonomous
and objective body that represents
the interest of a constituency and
functions independently of the
state to exert principles of democracy, representation and accountability (Botchway 2018; Hutchful
1995). This is what Kasfir (1998:
1) referred to as the ‘conventional view of civil society’ (see also
Whitfield 2003: 381). While this is
true, it is a simplistic understanding of civil society, and ignores
the complexities of engagements
within itself and interactions with
governments, donors, international
development agencies and organised social groups in the pursuit of
subjective interests.
The shape, form and process of
civil society engagement in Ghana’s state-building has evolved
dramatically since the late colonial
era. The modern nation emerged as
an uncoordinated coalition of farmers, traders, school-leavers and
an educated class negotiated with
colonial authorities in the 1920s
and 1930s. By the middle of the
twentieth century, it had become a
pawn in the hands of new African
political leaders advancing a nationalist agenda. The debilitating
socioeconomic conditions of the
1970s and the PNDC government’s
acceptance of the World Bank’s
Economic Recovery Programmes
in the 1980s were catalysts for civil
society to mobilise as non-state actors in various forms. In the Fourth
Republic (post-1992), civil society
has had a more stable and predictable role in political participation
and governance than in previous
epochs (Botchway 2018; GyimahBoadi 1991).
Nevertheless, the idea and practice of civil society are still in
flux, and it would be naïve to assume that civil society organisations (occupational and functional
groups) and civil society institutions (tertiary institutions, the mass
media, faith-based organisations
and issue-based advocacy groups)
are a flawless collection of people
and institutions who have an egalitarian agenda. Yet, without civil
society and citizens in general,
counterbalancing power is only a
textbook exercise.
While the Gilgamesh threat remains in Ghana, civil society is the
best catalyst for counterbalancing
power, despite its shortcomings.
The greatest strength of civil society lies in its decentralising tendencies. The media, for instance, ought
to continue sharing information
and engaging with public officials
at all levels—community, district,
regional, national and international. A similar strategy of societywide advocacy, information-sharing and social accountability must
be employed by all other non-state
actors, lest the Gilgamesh problem
infest their ranks too.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
https://www.graphic.com.gh/
news/general-news/agyaparoyalties-deal-to-go-back-toparliament.html
https://www.transparency.org/
en/blog/ghana-what-is-going-onwith-the-controversial-agyapagold-royalties-deal
https://www.graphic.com.gh/
news/general-news/domelevoresponds-to-akufo-addo-sdirective-to-proceed-on-leave.
html
www.graphic.com.gh/news/
politics/why-martin-amiduresigned-as-special-prosecutor.
html
References
Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A.,
2019, The Narrow Corridor:
States, Societies and the Fate of
Liberty, London, UK: Viking.
Arthur, P., 2009, Ethnicity and
Electoral Politics in Ghana’s
Fourth Republic, Africa Today,
Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 44–73.
Botchway, T. P., 2018, Civil Society
and the Consolidation of
Democracy in Ghana’s Fourth
Republic, Cogent Social Sciences,
Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 1452840. DOI:1
0.1080/23311886.2018.1452840.
Commonwealth
Human
Rights
Initiative (CHRI), 2019, The
Right to Information: Ghana’s
Journey (1992–2019). Available
online at
www.humanrightsinitiative.org/
download/1570075247RTI per cent
20GHANAs per cent20JOURNEY
per cent20(1992 per cent20- per
cent202019).pdf.
Electoral Commission Ghana, 2020,
Presidential Results Summary
Sheets, compiled during the
Ghana 2020 General Election,
December, Accra. Available
online at
w w w. e c . g o v. g h / r e s u l t s summary-sheets/. Accessed on 17
December 2020.
Goodin, R. E., 1996, Institutions and
their Design, in Goodin, R. E., ed.,
The Theory of Institutional Design,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 1–53.
Grindle, M. S., 2004, Good Enough
Governance: Poverty Reduction
and Reform in Developing
Countries, Governance: An
International Journal of Policy,
Administration, and Institutions,
Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 525–548.
Gyimah-Boadi, E., 1991, Notes on
Ghana’s
Current Transition
to Constitutional Rule, Africa
Today, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 5–17.
Hayek, F. A., 1989, The Fatal Conceit: The
Errors of Socialism, Vol. 1, Collected
Works of F. A. Hayek, Bartley,W. W.,
ed., London: Routledge.
CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, February 2021 Page 6
Hutchful, E., 1995, The Civil Society
Debate in Africa, International
Journal, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 54–77.
Kasfir, N., 1998, The Conventional
Notion of Civil Society: A
Critique, in Kasfir, N., ed., Civil
Society and Democracy in Africa:
Critical Perspectives, London:
Frank Cass, pp. 1–20.
Kjær, A. M., 2014, Debate on
Governance in Africa: An
Emerging Political Economy
Paradigm, in Mudacumura, G.
and Morçöl, G., eds, Challenges
to Democratic Governance in
Developing Countries, London:
Springer International Publishing,
pp. 19–35.
Kuditchar, N.-L., 2021, Curbing
Illicit Financial Out-Flow From
Africa: The Phenomenology of
Institutions in Ghana, Journal of
Contemporary African Studies,
Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 56–69.
Luban, D., 1996, The Publicity
Principle, in Goodin, R. E., ed.,
The Theory of Institutional Design,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 154–198.
Mamdani,
M.,
1996,
Citizen
and Subject: Contemporary
Africa and the Legacy of Late
Colonialism, Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Mkandawire, T., 2010, ‘Good
Governance’: The Itinerary of an
Idea, in Cornwall, A. and Eade, D.,
eds, Deconstructing Development
Discourse:
Buzzwords
and
Fuzzwords, Rugby, UK: Practical
Action Publishing and Oxfam,
pp. 265–268.
Pettit, P., 1996, Institutional Design
and Rational Choice, in Goodin,
R. E., ed., The Theory of
Institutional Design, Cambridge,
UK: University of Cambridge
Press, pp. 54–89.
Reilly, B., 2001, Democracy in Divided
Societies: Electoral Engineering
for Conflict Management, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Republic of Ghana, 1992, The
Constitution of the Fourth Republic
of Ghana, Accra: Parliament of
Ghana.
Republic of Ghana, 2019, Right to
Information Act (ACT 989).
Sefa-Nyarko, C., 2015, In Ghana,
Will Vast Judicial Corruption
Scandal Undo 23 Years of Political
Stability?, The Global Observatory,
23 September. Available online at
https://theglobalobservatory.
org/2015/09/ghana-judicialscandal-ecowas-coup-etat/.
Sefa-Nyarko, C., 2020, Ethnicity in
Electoral Politics in Ghana: Colonial
Legacies and the Constitution as
Deter-minants, Critical Sociology.