“The President's Prerogative”? The Cabinet Appointment Process in Ghana and the Implications for Gender Parity

Abstract

This article seeks to understand why Ghana, unlike several other African countries, has seen relatively few women appointed as ministers to the cabinet since the transition to democracy. We draw on Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet's 2019 book Cabinets, Ministers and Gender, which provides an in-depth analysis of the cabinet appointment process in seven democracies (but no African cases) and demonstrates that the cabinet appointment process is gendered—that is, men and women have different (and unequal) opportunities to be appointed as cabinet ministers. This article covers Ghana's Fourth Republic, during which women's presence in cabinets has increased slowly but steadily. We rely on media reports from five recent presidential administrations and semistructured, in-depth interviews with selected informants, as well as other primary and secondary sources. We find that while Ghana has a fairly empowered president who could appoint a gender parity cabinet, the formal and informal rules governing the selection of cabinet ministers—for example, those related to regional balance and “minister MPs”—work against more women in the cabinet.

Consolidating Progress: The Selection of Female Ministers in Autocracies and Democracies

“…While we do not suggest that democracies deterministically increase female cabinet ministers, we argue akin to Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet (2019) that democratic elections establish “concrete floors” of cabinet participation through which incumbent and opposition leaders face punishment at the polls should they fall short. Moreover, as Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet (2019) and other authors (e.g., Bauer and Darkwah 2022) also demonstrate, this concrete floor tends to rise as contenders for office propose more gender-inclusive cabinets. While democracies may be limited in enabling constituent principals to monitor their representative agents, they can facilitate the struggle for collective principles such as inclusion (Hayward 2007).…”

Predictors of citizens' trust in public leadership in Ghana: a comparison between the president, MPs and MMDCEs

“…More specifically, the performance of the president was significantly higher compared to that of MPs and MMDCEs. This finding can be explained by the lack of political decentralization, the appointment of two-thirds of MPs as ministers, the president's appointment of MMDCEs, and other factors that lead to citizens attributing these leaders' performance to that of the president (Dzordzormenyoh et al ., 2022; Bauer and Darkwah, 2022; Ohemeng et al ., 2020).…”

“…“Ghana was the first country south of the Sahara to obtain independence in 1957 and to practice democracy. However, less than a decade after independence, Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown in 1966”, (Bauer and Darkwah, 2022, p. 553). Between 1966 and 1992, Ghana's political landscape was dominated by military regimes, with brief intermissions under civilian regimes (Ayee, 2017; Brierley and Ofosu, 2014; Daddieh, 2009; Bauer and Darkwah, 2022; Kumah-Abiwu and Abidde, 2022).…”

“…Since Ghana transitioned into democratic politics in 1992 and commenced its fourth republic, governments have alternated every eight years between the two major parties-the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) (Bauer and Darkwah, 2022). Table 1 provides a summary of the post-independence regimes, leaders and governments in Ghana.…”

The Appointment of Women to Authoritarian Cabinets in Africa

“…Much of the scholarship on gender, ministers and cabinets, however, focuses on the composition of cabinets in democracies (e.g. Annesley et al 2019;Bauer and Darkwah 2022;Davis 1997;Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2016;Studlar and Moncrief 1997). Recent studies advance our understanding of women's representation in legislatures and the adoption of women's rights laws in autocracies (Bush and Zetterberg 2021;Donno et al 2022;Donno and Kreft 2019;Tripp 2019;Valdini 2019), but whether and how this scholarship applies to the gendered selection of ministers is unclear.…”