Civil Society Anti-corruption Initiatives in Ghana: a Comparison of National and Regional NGOs

In Ghana, corruption has seriously constrained the development of the national economy and has adversely affected stability, level of trust and good governance values and principles. Predominately, previous studies explanations on how to combat the phenomenon tend to focus on government strategies and the wider conditions which give rise to the success of governmental anti-corruption initiatives by usually proposing governmental stiffer sanctions, institutional reforms, and the passing of new laws. In an attempt to advance recent debates on the civil society anti-corruption initiatives, this study analyses interview data with anti-corruption NGOs and experts, consisting of 10 semi-structured interviews, to examine how NGOs are adopting the anti-corruption field in Ghana. The findings revealed that national, regional anti-corruption NGOs, and experts perceived government anti-corruption initiatives dormant because of low political will. On the part of NGOs, it was found that both national and regional NGOs distant themselves from politics and position themselves as activists and experts to achieve long-lasting legislative and institutional changes. Furthermore, in both NGOs, the study finds that their anti-corruption activities and positioning, organisational structures and adoption of a universal model to fight corruption is framed by donor monies. The main differences are that: national NGOs face constantly political opposition while regional NGOs struggle to mobilize cooperation with citizens at the grassroots due to fear and strong social ties. These results show that political instrumentalization of NGOs anti-corruption initiatives and is the question of citizens’ attitudes and Ghanaian societal norms collectively carve a problem of criminalization on both the part of government and donors. Additionally, since national NGOs are usually concentrated in Accra, they use top media platforms to do their name and shaming activities – which in long run increases their credibility and resource mobilization. On the contrary, regional NGOs community-based engagement engender a non-hierarchical organization to be able to engage volunteers and activists to strengthen the link with the communities they represent. This research contributes to theoretical development and understanding of civil society anti-corruption initiatives by explaining how context differences affect non-governmental anti-corruption measure. This alone challenges the universal global anti-corruption applicability claims in the academic debate.