Understanding contemporary Ghanaian social life is difficult, if not impossible, without considering its traditional context. Yet, despite existing analysis of social inequalities, bribery and corruption in Ghana, systematic national studies that link specific citizen and traditional authority behaviours to corruption patterns have been lacking. Ernest Harsch’s work ‘Corruption, Class, and Politics in Ghana’ fills this and many other important knowledge gaps. The book is centred on two crucial arguments – first, that corruption in Ghana is not just a matter of individual failure or a temporary aberration but a phenomenon that is deeply embedded in the country’s political economy, shaped by historical legacies and sustained by contemporary class structures. Second, the author argues that the fight against corruption cannot be won through the implementation of what he terms ‘narrowly focused technocratic reforms’ (p. 10) but through broad-based, institutional changes and a shift in political culture.
The book represents one of the most comprehensive attempts to provide a sociohistorical analysis of corruption in Ghana. Harsch argues that corruption in Ghana is deeply rooted in class relations and political incentives, which may explain why it is so pervasive and difficult to address. He connects corruption and class politics in Ghana using a historically informed and empirically grounded approach. Although he acknowledges the efforts made across different administrations to deal with corruption, he demonstrates that anti-corruption agencies and civil society activism have had limited and inconsistent success at fighting it.
Harsch discusses corruption and its manifestations across six main historical epochs, spanning precolonial, colonial and post-independence Ghana. During the precolonial era, he notes that a culture of gifts and unquestioning acquiescence to traditional authority led to social class differentiation and patronage that fostered corrupt behaviours. During the colonial period, corruption became embedded in governance as the British bureaucratic system was influenced by traditional values and the practice of indirect rule. After independence, Nkrumah’s efforts at state expansion also created a certain ‘party-linked class’ formation. Also, despite the anti-corruption rhetoric in the coup era after Nkrumah, Harsch highlights how efforts at tackling corruption failed and rather reinforced elite privilege. Similarly, attempts to dismantle patronage networks under Jerry Rawlings were unsuccessful because of limitations imposed by the structural adjustment programmes in the mid-1980s. In the present dispensation, Harsch demonstrates that even multiparty democracy has not eliminated corruption. Rather, electoral competition has intensified campaign financing and increased the politics of patronage.
The book’s conclusion carries a strong message – that even though corruption in Ghana remains a serious and persistent problem, it is surmountable. Harsch notes that real change will require three things. First, tackling the underlying political and economic structures that enable corruption. Second, popular agency through the empowerment of ordinary citizens; and third, the building of institutions that reflect the values of justice and fairness.
Significantly, the reader of this book is enlightened on how political institutions enable corruption in contemporary Ghanaian society through different mechanisms, including political control over bureaucracy, electoral corruption and the limited actions of anti-corruption agencies. The book effectively situates corruption within Ghana’s historical, political and economic contexts, moving beyond simplistic and moralistic explanations. It explores the influence of colonial legacies, class formation and political regimes on the persistence of corruption. Harsch challenges top-down, donor-driven reforms by arguing that real change must stem from local realities and popular participation. In his critique of the state and market, the author emphasises the need for political will, institutional depth and cultural change. However, the specifics of the change remain open to debate.
There also seems to be a kind of over-generalisation of religious influence in the author’s attempt to link the growth in prosperity gospels in the 1990s to corruption. Ghana’s Christian landscape is too diverse for such assumptions. Even within the charismatic tradition, prosperity theology varies widely and has often included discourses of hard work, entrepreneurial discipline and spiritual accountability. Therefore, the broad framing presented in chapter 12 of the book risks removing this complexity and thus treating ‘prosperity gospel(s)’ as a monolithic ideology. The book’s greatest strength lies in its effective historical and political analysis of corruption, attributing it to class formation and patronage and connecting its contemporary forms to changes in the political economy. Thus, the link between prosperity gospel and corruption is only suggestive but not empirically supported within the book’s evidence.
That said, the book is rich in historical and empirical detail. It presents evidence drawn from diverse sources, including archival research, document analysis and interviews. It offers an admirable tracing of corruption from precolonial Ghana through colonial and post-independence periods and the military era to its contemporary democratic forms. The breadth and depth of its analysis are unique, strengthening the insight that corruption is not just a contemporary pathology.
