IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jrpoli/v90y2024ics0301420724001818.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investigating the differential politics of competitive bidding in Ghana’s hydrocarbon and mining industries

Author

Listed:
  • Arhin, Gerald Emmanuel

Abstract

The rise of the transparency and accountability (T&A) agenda since the start of the twenty-first century has been identified as a key solution to the resource curse thesis. However, there remains little information available to explain the differential adoption levels of T&A-enhancing institutions across extractives. Using Ghana as a case study, this article examines the variations in the levels of adoption of competitive bidding, as an internationally promoted T&A mechanism, in the country's hydrocarbon and mining sectors. Drawing on fifty-one semi-structured interviews and secondary documents, the collected data were thematically analysed. The article finds that the rejection of competitive bidding in the mining industry was shaped by electoral imperatives, despite efforts by pro-T&A actors to push through competitive bidding. However, competitive bidding has been partially adopted in awarding licences in the hydrocarbon sector. This partial adoption is the result of the pressure exerted on the government by civil society organizations and transnational actors upon the discovery of hydrocarbons in Ghana in 2007, following suspicion of corruption in signed petroleum agreements. Consequently, the article argues that the adoption level of a T&A mechanism is shaped by electoral imperatives, albeit circumscribed by pro-T&A countervailing forces. This article contributes to supporting the work of T&A promoters by providing pointers to understand the conditions that characterize the successful adoption of T&A across extractives.

Suggested Citation

  • Arhin, Gerald Emmanuel, 2024. "Investigating the differential politics of competitive bidding in Ghana’s hydrocarbon and mining industries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:90:y:2024:i:c:s0301420724001818
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2024.104814
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420724001818
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resourpol.2024.104814?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Appiah & Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, 2017. "Competitive clientelism and the politics of core public sector reform in Ghana," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-082-17, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    2. Halvor Mehlum & Karl Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2006. "Institutions and the Resource Curse," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(508), pages 1-20, January.
    3. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew M. Warner, 1995. "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 5398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Halvor Mehlum & Karl Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2006. "Cursed by Resources or Institutions?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 1117-1131, August.
    5. Giles Mohan & Kojo Pumpuni Asante & Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, 2018. "Party Politics and the Political Economy of Ghana’s Oil," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 274-289, May.
    6. Acharya, Amitav, 2004. "How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(2), pages 239-275, April.
    7. David Benson & Andrew Jordan, 2011. "What Have We Learned from Policy Transfer Research? Dolowitz and Marsh Revisited," Political Studies Review, Political Studies Association, vol. 9(3), pages 366-378, September.
    8. Finnemore, Martha & Sikkink, Kathryn, 1998. "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 887-917, October.
    9. Pritish Behuria & Tom Goodfellow, 2016. "The political settlement and ‘deals environment’ in Rwanda: Unpacking two decades of economic growth," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-057-16, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    10. Virginia Haufler, 2010. "Disclosure as Governance: The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and Resource Management in the Developing World," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 10(3), pages 53-73, August.
    11. Tom Lavers, 2018. "Taking ideas seriously within political settlements analysis," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-095-18, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    12. Pritish Behuria, 2018. "Examining Effectiveness and Learning in Rwandan Policymaking: The Varied Outcomes of Learning from Failure in Productive Sector Policies," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 1023-1043, August.
    13. Sam Hickey, 2019. "The politics of state capacity and development in Africa - Reframing and researching ‘pockets of effectiveness’," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-117-19, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    14. Sam Hickey & Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai & Angelo Izama & Giles Mohan, 2015. "The politics of governing oil effectively: A comparative study of two new oil-rich states in Africa," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-054-15, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    15. Frederick Golooba-Mutebi & Sam Hickey, 2016. "The master of institutional multiplicity? The shifting politics of regime survival, state-building and democratisation in Museveni’s Uganda," Journal of Eastern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(4), pages 601-618, October.
    16. David Marsh & J.C. Sharman, 2009. "Policy diffusion and policy transfer," Policy Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 269-288.
    17. Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, 2017. "Competitive clientelism and the political economy of mining in Ghana," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-078-17, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    18. Franklin Oduro & Mohammed Awal & Maxwell Agyei Ashon, 2014. "A dynamic mapping of the political settlement in Ghana," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-028-14, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    19. Päivi Lujala & Levon Epremian, 2017. "Transparency and natural resource revenue management: empowering the public with information?," Chapters, in: Aled Williams & Philippe Le Billon (ed.), Corruption, Natural Resources and Development, chapter 4, pages 58-68, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emmanuel Akwandoh & Jiang Xinyu & Z. Y. Medin & Ying Ma & Estella Efiba Baffoe, 2025. "Assessing the Impacts of Competitive Tendering on the Effectiveness of Medical Logistics in Ghana’s Healthcare Sector at Both Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital and Tepa Government Hospital," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 1-35, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Ehis Odijie & Mohammed Zayan Imoro, 2021. "Ghana’s Competitive Clientelism and Space for Long-Term Stable Policies," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, July.
    2. Guan, Jialin & Kirikkaleli, Dervis & Bibi, Ayesha & Zhang, Weike, 2020. "Natural resources rents nexus with financial development in the presence of globalization: Is the “resource curse” exist or myth?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    3. Muhamad, Goran M. & Heshmati, Almas & Khayyat, Nabaz T., 2021. "How to reduce the degree of dependency on natural resources?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. Costantini, Valeria & Monni, Salvatore, 2008. "Environment, human development and economic growth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 867-880, February.
    5. Mounir Amdaoud, 2019. "Ressources naturelles, innovation et développement économique : vers une nouvelle approche," CEPN Working Papers 2019-06, Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord.
    6. Omar H. M. N. Bashar & Omar K. M. R. Bashar, 2020. "Resource abundance, financial crisis and economic growth: did resource‐rich countries fare better during the global financial crisis?," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 64(2), pages 376-395, April.
    7. Akwasi Ampofo, 2021. "Oil at work: natural resource effects on household well-being in Ghana," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 1013-1058, February.
    8. Abman, Ryan & Longbrake, Gabrial, 2023. "Resource development and governance declines: The case of the Chad–Cameroon petroleum pipeline," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    9. Dosso, David, 2023. "Institutional Quality and Financial Development in Resource-Rich Countries: A Nonlinear Panel Data Approach," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 113-137.
    10. Konte, Maty & Vincent, Rose Camille, 2021. "Mining and quality of public services: The role of local governance and decentralization," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    11. Kadagde Dalam Debonheur & Désiré Avom & Idrissa Ouedraogo, 2024. "The effect of natural resources rents on human development in selected African countries," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(3), pages 803-837, August.
    12. Wang, Xiang & Yin, Jian & Yang, Yao & Muda, Iskandar & Abduvaxitovna, Shamansurova Zilola & AlWadi, Belal Mahmoud & Castillo-Picon, Jorge & Abdul-Samad, Zulkiflee, 2023. "Relationship between the resource curse, Forest management and sustainable development and the importance of R&D Projects," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).
    13. Ongo Nkoa, Bruno Emmanuel & Ewolo Bitoto, Fabrice & Bikoula Minkoe, Séraphin Brice, 2024. "Resource dependence and life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa: Does financial sector stability break the curse?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    14. Wang, Qi & Zhang, Li, 2024. "Are natural resource volatility curses or blessings for economic performance? Stories of resource-rich regions," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(PB).
    15. Christian Hubert Ebeke & Luc Désiré Omgba, 2011. "Oil rents, governance quality, and the allocation of talents in developing countries," CERDI Working papers halshs-00616587, HAL.
    16. Maria Savona, 2021. "Revisiting High Development Theory to Explain Upgrading Prospects in Business Services Global Value Chains," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 33(2), pages 206-226, April.
    17. Wei, Hua & Rizvi, Syed Kumail Abbas & Ahmad, Ferhana & Zhang, Yuchen, 2020. "Resource cursed or resource blessed? The role of investment and energy prices in G7 countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    18. Njangang, Henri & Asongu, Simplice A. & Tadadjeu, Sosson & Nounamo, Yann & Kamguia, Brice, 2022. "Governance in mitigating the effect of oil wealth on wealth inequality: A cross-country analysis of policy thresholds," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    19. Hwang, Young Kyu & Díez, Ángeles Sánchez & Inglesi-Lotz, Roula, 2024. "The effects of critical mineral endowments on green economic growth in Latin America," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    20. Hamang, Jonas, 2024. "Economic development and known natural resource endowment: Discovery rate differentials of oil," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:90:y:2024:i:c:s0301420724001818. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30467 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.