Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the influence of local government institutional structures on the selection of beneficiary households for the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP) programme in Ghana

Paper long abstract:

While the expansion of targeted intervention programmes in Ghana reaches many extreme poor households, some equally eligible households have not benefitted from programmes intended for them. Using evidence from the implementation of the LEAP cash transfer programme, this paper demonstrates that despite transnational and national actors' careful design of a rigorous selection process intended to target the most vulnerable households for the LEAP programme, other forces at subnational levels of government seem to work against the selection process.

The institutional processes that delivers social welfare programmes, combined with deep- rooted values that are upheld in Ghanaian society, opens avenues for the influence of powerful brokers who corrupt the selection process and limit the selection of the most vulnerable households. The study finds that a significant degree of power and political interests gets distributed from the national level where policy decisions are taken to the subnational levels of government where actual selection of beneficiary households for the LEAP programme occurs. Often, the political interests of national level actors are extended to local elites who support the ruling government's priorities and align their interests with priorities and interests of the ruling government. As a result, the eligibility criteria for identifying extreme poor households is violated and the most vulnerable and extreme poor households are not targeted for the programme.