ABSTRACT Non-enforcement of policies regarding persons with disability (PWDs) is a major national problem, especially when it comes to the hearing impaired and acquisition of drivers’ licenses in Ghana. The hearing impaired persons mobility to accessing some basic services such as education, social and economic activities, health and other cultural activities could depend on their mandate to drive to places in seeking for these basic services, hence the need for drivers’ licenses to ply t...
ABSTRACT Local government systems are created by various governments across the world to enhance broad participation of citizens in the process of governance, improve on the quality of lives of these citizens and to hopefully reduce fiscal burdens of states. In Ghana, to achieve these objectives, the local governments (District Assemblies) are empowered under the Local Government Act 462, 1993 and the Constitution of Ghana (1992) to mobilize revenue within their jurisdictions. District Assemb...
ABSTRACT Election observation has become the new phenomenon for assessing the quality of elections in nascent democracies. There are two main types of election observation; international and domestic election observation. Since 2000 the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), a con of civil society has watched Ghana’s elections. The study therefore assessed the role the CODEO played in Ghana’s electoral process in order to ascertain whether CODOE activities led to the increase ...
ABSTRACT E-government is becoming a fundamental reform tool for enhancing public administration especially in developing countries like Ghana where public organisations face resource constraints in their delivery of public services. Although studies have given considerable attention to how E-government helps improve public administration, there still exist few studies which aim at comparing the perspectives of both public servants and end-users. Studies are also limited on the long term susta...
ABSTRACT Studies indicated that women and men experience conflict, displacement and return differently. In post-war contexts, gender aspects of returnee reintegration have however not been adequately addressed by researchers and policy makers. This study, therefore, examined the gender aspects of the governance of reintegration of returnee refugee Liberian women. It identified the challenges and factors affecting reintegration. Qualitative methods of data collection were employed. One hundre...
ABSTRACT Electoral engineering the purposeful manipulation of electoral rules, relating to party organisation and electoral formula, has been established in comparative political studies as a tool for managing ethnicity in order to stabilise politics in divided societies. In Nigeria, ethnicity has been a major obstacle to democratic stability. Most studies on policy measures to address ethnicity in Nigeria have focused on federalism, federal character and political restructuring, with little ...
ABSTRACT The current global financial meltdown that began to take effect in late 2008, the worsening environmental crisis, the global food crisis, and the threat of global terrorism have raised serious questions about the stability and security of a world based on capitalism, without pointing to a clear alternative. Policy makers seem to believe that once national economies begin to grow, prosperity and happiness will return.
Abstract This paper contributes to the debate on the limited efficacy of civil society in Africa. It examines the complex interface between notions of civil society and citizenship within the context of the postcolonial state in Africa. It argues that the bifurcated character of citizenship is implicated in the inefficacy of civil society. This is underlined by the limited achievements in social citizenship, aggravated by the economic crisis and neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s as w...
The security situation in Nigeria at the moment has deteriorated at a geometric rate. This paints a very ugly writing on the wall and thus elicited very fundamental questions: is the heightened insecurity political or is it a function of a failed state? ...
ABSTRACT Globalisation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon with diverse consequences. The nature of the consequences has, however, remained contentious. There are contending perspectives on the effects of globalisation on modern states, particularly developing countries. In-depth studies that examined the cogency of these perspectives in relation to the Nigerian State are sparse. This study examined the manifestation of globalisation in Nigeria between 1985 and 2007 and its effects on the Stat...
Abstract This work studies the intellectuals in Nigeria and their roles in the policy process. After a careful identification of the roles which have been played by Nigeria’s intellectuals since Nigeria’s independence, the paper adopts the belief system framework of public policy analysis together with three ideological categorization of individual personalities. It provides a theoretical cum ideological explanation for the different roles played by these intellectuals in different areas...
Abstract Perception studies of corruption have proliferated in the last decade. However, there is a lingering controversy over the proper us of the outputs from such studies to benefit anti-corruption efforts. Against this backdrop, these paper reviews the theoretical context of the perception studies of corruption and their justifications. It examined key perception studies of corruption at the global, regional and national levels in relation to Nigeria and discusses key issues associated w...
ABSTRACT Nigeria marked her 50 years of independence in October 2010. More than three decades of this period were under autocratic military rule. The current experiment with democracy, the Fourth Republic, which commenced on 29 May 1999 when retired General Olusegun Obasanjo was swornin as president, is the longest attempt of practicing democratic governance in the history of the country. Indeed, the successful transition from one democratic government to another in 2007 and the peaceful tran...
ABSTRACT The relatively low level of women political representation between 1999 (7.5%) and 2011 (14.0%), at the federal level, is an indication that women are marginalised in governance in Nigeria. Previous studies on gender relations and governance in Nigeria largely focused on the marginalisation of women by men with negligible attention on the role of women in this gender-based political imbalance. This study, therefore, investigated the role of women in women‟s marginalisation in gove...
ABSTRACT In spite of their critical role and strategic importance as a check on the executive and a bridge between the government and the people, sub-national legislatures have remained largely understudied in Nigeria. This study, therefore, examined the performance of the Ogun State legislature in law-making, representation and oversight, as one of the most volatile and conflictual legislatures in Nigeria between 1999 and 2011. The theory of institutionalisation focusing on autonomy, intern...