Benjamin Adu Gyamfi

Biography

Fields: Comparative Politics, International Relations 

Clusters: Policy Making and Policy Change; Social Policy.

Bio: I am interested in Public Administration and Public Sector Reforms, Public Policy, Local Governance, Business-Government Relations, International Development, Resource Management in Africa, and Institutional Theory (The New Institutionalism).

Understanding policy making and policy change is very important because public policies involve who gets what in politics. A policy involves conscious choice that leads to deliberate action or inaction designed to induce changes in society. Since government policy is problem oriented and broadly conduces to general societal welfare, there is the need to describe, analyse, and explain not just what policies governments pursue, but also how and why they pursue such policies and what causal factors drive change in existing policies. This entails studying the causes or determinants of public policies and the drivers of policy change. This calls for a detailed and in-depth analysis of the agenda setting, policy formulation, and policy adoption stages of the policy making process and eventually policy change. Yet, the analysis of policy making and policy change of developing countries, particularly countries in Africa has been a neglected area of study. Whereas generally much has been written about policy-making and policy change, the same cannot be said comparatively about Africa. My current research, therefore, is on policy-making and policy change in Africa. With the multiple streams framework and the new institutionalism as theoretical lenses and Ghana as a case study, seeks to understand the factors that shape public policy making and policy change in post-independence Ghana. I argue that policy entrepreneurs and government political will in the form of demonstrated credible intent and commitment of political actors greatly shape different policy outcomes and differing magnitude of change in Ghana. I demonstrate how political will of the government and policy entrepreneurship interact differently to drive change in Ghana’s policies.

My past research revisit the question: Why has decentralization failed to achieve its development goals in Africa. The African continent as a whole has since the mid-1970s witnessed a renewed interest in and a drive towards decentralization as a “perennial tool for development” and an instrument for efficient and participatory governance. Yet, the level of development achieved in most parts of Africa is ‘nothing to write home about’. Thus, I relied on the New Institutionalism to explain how and why decentralization has failed to achieve its development goals in Africa due to politics.