Wednesday Seminar Notice

The Department of History Education in partnership with the Department of Political Science Education are pleased to invite you to its Wednesday Seminar Series.

Next two weeks event is scheduled as follows:

Topic: Asymmetric Expectations in Local Governance? Unit Committees under Ghana’s Decentralized System.

Presenter: Dr. Gabriel Botchwey

Date: Wednnesday, 8 February, 2017

Time: 3:00pm - 5:00pm (GMT)

Venue: Departmental Reading Room, LT 306

ABSTRACT

Effective democratic governance requires the existence of locally elected representatives with functions that revolve around issues that matter to the constituents, to which the state responds through public services delivery. This study set out to examine whether or not citizen expectations from locally elected representatives are in consonance with the functions that are assigned to them in national legislative instruments, using the Unit Committees, the base structure of Ghana’s decentralised system as a case for close examination. The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews covering four districts in the central region of Ghana. Findings show that there are several points of dissonance or asymmetry regarding what local citizens expect from their representatives, the functions assigned by the national statutes, and what the local representatives have actually being doing at the local level. These disparities in expectations, coupled with lack of training, funding and disregard for the role of local representatives account for their largely comatose existence under Ghana’s decentralised system. To remedy this situation, greater space is required in the crafting of legislation to allow local realities to take centre stage in the functions assigned to locally elected representatives in local governance.