Oil in times of democracy: debates on extraction and politics in Ghana

Abstract

By the time oil was discovered off the Ghanaian coast in 2007, the capacity of elections to encourage alternation between government by the two main political parties was already clear. This paper aims to investigate the terms in which the debates have developed around the relationship between natural resources and democracy in Ghana. Three main issues have been addressed: the capacity of democratic institutions to condition and shape the social and political effects of the oil industry in the country; the potentially perverse effects of oil extraction on democratic institutions; and the role of international actors and the international arena in forming the political economy of oil in Ghana.