ABSTRACT

Post-colonial Africa is often represented as a tinderbox of conflictual ethnonational identities. Within this reckoning emerges the weak and failed states corpus. Against this background, if an ethno-plural African country builds an effective state with a vibrant democracy, its political development presents an interesting case. This article contends that Ghana’s ‘success’ with state-building is because purposive actors have harnessed citizens’ expectations beyond initial ethnonational imaginings into higher civic expectations. It argues that political agency, conceptualised as intentional acts of (elite) political agents in overcoming the problems of living together in a multi-ethnic society, should go ahead of the institutionalist accounts of Ghana’s state-building success. The analysis demonstrates Ghana’s political agency in two ways. First, it is argued, at independence, political leaders focused on the need to build an (objective) Ghanaian state as a superordinate goal. Second, various actors worked to create a political discourse framing the Ghanaian as ‘peace-loving’.

摘要

后殖民时期的非洲通常被看作是冲突的民族身份的温床。在这种计算中，出现了弱小的和失败的状态语料库。在这种背景下，如果一个民族多元的非洲国家建立一个充满活力的民主国家，那么其政治发展便是一个有趣的例子。本文认为，加纳在国家建设方面的“成功”是因为有目的的行为者将公民的期望从最初的民族主义想象中转移到了更高的公民期望中。它认为，政治机构被概念化为（精英）政治代理人在克服多民族社会共同生活问题时的有意行为，应该超越加纳国家建设成功的制度主义观点。该分析从两个方面说明了加纳的政治机构。第一的，有人认为，在独立时，政治领导人将重点放在建立（客观）加纳国家作为上级目标的需要上。其次，各种行动者努力创造一种政治话语，将加纳人形容为“爱好和平”。