Paper short abstract:

Should electricity be depoliticised and treated as a regulated commodity or should we understand electricity as politicised, with citizens claiming it as a right? We explore the short and long-term effects of this divide on the distribution of electricity-system benefits.

Paper long abstract:

The literature on the role of democracy in development, and specifically the electricity sector, is divided. Disagreement lies in whether democracy is understood as enabling depoliticised decision making, or whether it deepens debate and political treatment of electricity distribution. One school is rooted in the 1990s triumphalist ‘end of history’ narrative: the liberal-capitalist model ‘won’ the Cold War, ushering in an era where the challenge was governance, not politics; a technical process of ‘getting the markets and institutions right’. This informed the ‘good governance’ agenda and its application to the electricity sector, the standard reform model, which is premised on turning electricity into a regulated commodity. Conversely, an increasing body of empirical work demonstrates that the politicisation of electricity produces claims to electricity as a citizenship right, and that this, not market mechanisms, produces rapid electrification and reliable supply. This paper analyses this divide in the case of Ghana. We demonstrate that electricity was made accessible and affordable through a combination of intense electoral politics (the need to win elections by promising, and delivering, electricity) alongside influential historically-embed narratives of electricity as modernity; the bringer of progress. However, we argue that whilst democratic pressures drive the delivery of these immediate populist measures, Ghana’s unstable, intensely-competitive democratic environment undermines long-term decision making. Highly competitive elections drive up their expensiveness, in turn incentivising rent-seeking, including from generation contracts and a deal to manage distribution. Such activity, given its fiscal implication, harms the electricity sector in the long-term.