Do the People Matter in Policymaking in Ghana? A Reflection on the E-Levy and Debt Exchange Programs

Abstract

The extent to which the masses have a say in matters concerning their lives is crucial in governance. It makes a significant amount of knowledge to say that people vote for elected policymakers to make policies that will make their lives better off and not the opposite. However, in the making of policies, the views of the people who either benefit or suffer the ramifications of policies are not taken into consideration. Therefore, the content analysis methodology has been employed in this study to systematically analyze secondary sources about the recent adoption of the E-Levy policy and Debt Exchange Program to ascertain whether the people mattered in adopting and implementing these policies. The adoption of these policies has raised a lot of controversies, with the public agitating and calling for its termination. The government of Ghana, being keen on continuing with the implementation of these policies as the only way out of the country's economic hardship, raises a lot of questions. After a systematic analysis of the literature, the paper argues that both policies were passed without the involvement of the people. The implication of the government’s failure to adopt a participatory policymaking approach accounts for the citizenry's loss of trust in the government.

Keywords

• social contract
• elitism
• participatory policymaking
• e-levy
• debt exchange program