Barry Driscoll (he/him/his) is an associate professor at Grinnell College. His article “Big Man or Boogey Man? The Concept of the Big Man in Africanist Political Science” was published in the Journal of Modern African Studies and his research and teaching interests center on states in the political economy of development, especially local governance, taxation, political parties, clientelism, and state capacity.
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Listed in: African Studies · Business & Economics | Development Studies · Ghana · Political Science | Political Process · Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social · History | Africa | West
Power, Patronage, and the Local State in Ghana
By Barry Driscoll
This quantitative and qualitative account of Ghanaian development shows how closely fought elections drive subnational local state institutions to patronize party volunteers. Extrapolating from Ghana’s example, the author shows how locally salient varieties of patronage shape political competition in a variety of contexts.
