Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

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Underpinning the study is a concern with the implications of decentralisation for the rural poor. A
review of the literature suggests that the linkages between democratic decentralisation and
poverty reduction are uncertain, at both national and local levels. With respect to the latter there
is, indeed, some evidence of an inverse relationship. There are a number of possible reasons for
this. For instance, poor people may be marginalised by the high opportunity costs to them of
political participation. For decentralisation to succeed also requires high levels of accountability
of both elected representatives and bureaucrats to the citizenry at large. Rural populations are
often, to varying degrees, heterogeneous and hierarchical. Such social complexity may well be
inimical to the success of decentralisation policies. Periodic elections are unlikely, on their own,
to create the kinds of public accountability which are central to democratic functioning.
Accountability mechanisms may also act to strengthen the position of elites, defined by various
social and class criteria. Where these elites are in an antagonistic relationship to the rural
majority, the effect will be to further marginalise the position of the poor. For decentralisation to
contribute to a redistribution of wealth within a locality is likely to require high levels of social
organisation and political awareness on the part of the poor. Where there is a requirement for
poor groups to challenge powerful local elites, then a strong party organisation is likely to be
required. Decentralisation systems which disfavour such political articulation between centre and
periphery are unlikely to favour radicalism. At the same time, other factors (such as the strength
of patronage systems) may also act to limit the potential for loyalties to develop around economic
interests rather than social identities.
These observations are pertinent to the case of Ghana, where party affiliations are prohibited in
elections at district level and below, elites tend to be in an antagonistic relationship to the small
farming class and the poor suffer from divided ethnic and other loyalties.
On all these grounds, there is good reason to argue that livelihood strategies will be crucially
influenced by social identities and institutions, and that these will, in their turn, be reflected in
political processes. Natural resource use at the FAI thus has important implications for
governance, in that the ‘rules of the game’ are being developed largely in the local contexts of
resource use, and under conditions in which national and global interests interact with local ones,
though not necessarily in a pro-poor way.
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