This paper synthesises findings from research in Bolivia, Ghana, Peru and Zambia to address the following three questions: 1) How does the nature of political settlements affect the governance of the mining and hydrocarbon sectors and the relationships between those sectors and patterns of...

This paper offers a political economy explanation to the question of why over 100 years of mineral resource extraction in Ghana has failed to translate into broad-based development. It does so through the lens of political settlements, which draws attention to how relations of power and ideas...

Although Ghana has implemented several donor-sponsored public sector reforms (PSRs) in an attempt to improve core areas of state functionality, the impact of such reforms remains generally disappointing. In this paper, we show that the nature of the political settlement in Ghana, described as...

This paper offers a political explanation to the problem of spatial inequality in developing countries, paying particular attention to the implications of patronage politics and inter-elite power relations for the spatial distribution of public goods. After showing that existing explanations of...

The challenges facing developing countries with new-found natural resource wealth are generally understood in terms of whether they have the institutions of ‘good governance' required to avoid the resource curse. New insights from a political settlements perspective show how deeper forms of...

Ghana's Ministry of Finance (MoF) has been identified as a ‘pocket of effectiveness', both in relation to other state agencies and in terms of delivering on its mandate. However, this effectiveness has not been constant over the post-independence period, which requires us to explain how and...

This paper explores the factors that shape the performance trajectories of three relatively effective public organisations in Ghana, namely, the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Revenue Authority. Drawing on an original investigation of organisational performance under the...

Through an analysis of Ghana’s HIPC Fund, which was established as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) process, this paper shows how aid financed efforts to reduce regional inequality in Ghana have failed. Dominant political elites agreed to policies of regional inequality...