Fiscal Relations, Class Politics, and the Election Year in Ghana’s COVID-19 Context

Abstract

In Ghana, West Africa, the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the national election year. This paper analyses the intersection of pandemic-related fiscal interventions and the electoral calendar, analysing how this temporal confluence shaped the kind of mechanisms of redistribution adopted during the pandemic. The NPP government, known for its right-leaning ‘pro-business’ approach to economic policy-making, designed fiscal interventions that did not effectively address the lower-income sectors of the society, while some of these interventions, including 50% subsidy of water and electricity bills for businesses, appealed to their elite and middle-class voting base. Combining insights from the anthropology of tax and macroeconomics, we raise broader questions about the diversity of tools needed to effectively combat multi-dimensional poverty in Ghana, including the role of direct cash transfers. Ultimately, we argue that Ghana’s pandemic-related fiscal interventions speak to the historical class politics at the heart of state-citizen fiscal relations.