CORRUPTION

Global Anti-Corruption Conditionalities and Judicial Reform in Ghana
Global Anti-Corruption Conditionalities and
Judicial Reform in Ghana
Tyler Headley
New York University Abu Dhabi
I. INTRODUCTION
Since postcolonial independence movements began in West Africa, international actors have
attempted to enact policies, conditional aid packages, and communications with regional
governments aimed at combatting corruption. The rationale behind the global anti-corruption
movement in West Africa was to facilitate economic growth and trade, as corruption notoriously
hinders both by “reducing domestic investment, discouraging foreign direct investment, encouraging
overspending in government, and distorting the composition of government spending” (Wei 1999).
Thus, international actors had strong economic and often political incentives to combat corruption
in the developing countries within West Africa. But despite the near-constant involvement in West
Africa of international third party actors such as the United States, Britain, and France, as well as
supranational organizations, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, anticorruption
efforts and conditionalities in West Africa have, with few exceptions, been heralded as
ineffective (Cooksey 2003). Although conditionality as a policy continued for decades, the policy
of conditionality does not work well—rather, the case study of a recent successful anti-corruption
campaign in Ghana is indicative that within modern West Africa, grassroots and bottom-up anticorruption
initiatives are more effective and popular amongst the electorate.
International Affairs Forum
Since the Bretton Woods institutions began looking into divesting into developing countries,
international aid packages have frequently been tied to governmental policy changes, in a
strategy known as conditionality (Sachs 1989). These supranational or developed country-given
conditionalities were sometimes tied to economic reforms, such as deregulation and privatization
during the Reagan-Thatcher era, but many conditionalities were also tied to political reform aimed
at ultimately decreasing or limiting corruption (Babb and Carrthers 2008). In Sub-Saharan and West
Africa in particular, many conditionalities were aimed at both making government policies more
transparent and bolstering or stabilizing democratic governmental mechanisms with the intent that,
without or with minimal corruption, these fledgling democracies would be more stable, last longer,
... within modern West Africa, grassroots and bottom-up anticorruption
initiatives are more effective and popular amongst the
electorate.
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