Acknowledgments

The current attempts at economic and political reform in Africa will determine whether the next generation of citizens in the countries south of the Sahara live in even greater impoverishment than before or if they can at least glimpse a brighter future. Thus, the attempts at drastic reform in Ghana—once seen as the paradigmatic African "basket case"—attracted my attention as a possible guide for the future of the continent. I was fortunate to receive a Robert S. McNamara Postdoctoral Fellowship from the World Bank to carry out research in Ghana during 1989 and 1990. Further research trips to Ghana were sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of its project on Policy Reform in Africa (contract no. AFR-0438-C-00-9058-00) and the U.S. Information Agency. The views in this book are solely my own and should not be attributed to any of these organizations.

In Ghana, I was a research scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, Legon. I am especially grateful to my colleagues Dr. E. Gyimah-Boadi, Professor K. Foulson, and Dr. Kwame Ninsin for their collegiality. My thanks also to the literally hundreds of Ghanaians who consented to interviews, provided information, or pointed out new approaches to the problems I was examining. As promised, I have respected the confidentiality of my respondents.

While in Princeton, I again benefited from the support provided by the university and my colleagues. This research could not have been conducted without Princeton's generous leave policy. Nancy Bermeo, Henry Bienen, Forrest Colburn, and John Waterbury all read earlier versions of

this manuscript. Their comments were a tremendous help. I am also grateful to Ms. Elizabeth Hart for her valuable research assistance. Finally, Princeton's librarians—especially Sally Burkman, Laird Klinger, Rosemary Little, Denise Shorey, and Susan White—once again provided extraordinary service without fail.

I also benefited from a conference on reform in Ghana held at The Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in 1990. An earlier version of chapter 8 was presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in 1989, and parts of chapter 6 were presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 1990. I am also grateful to many of my North American colleagues including J. Clark Leith, Michael Lofchie, and Jennifer Widner for sharing their views with me. I am especially indebted to Tom Callaghy and Don Rothchild for providing extensive comments on the entire manuscript.

As this book is being sent to the printer, Ghana is once again attempting a transition to civilian democracy. Inevitably, therefore, this book is Janus-faced. It is both a review of the economic recovery program that has been in place since 1983 and an analysis of the problems that a successor government will face. As a result, the book confronts many of the political and economic problems facing other African countries in transition.