Interest Groups and the Passage of the Domestic Violence Act in Ghana: Insights from the Advocacy Coalition Framework

This chapter examines the events and circumstances preceding the enactment and formulation of the Domestic Violence Act (hereafter DVA) in Ghana. The struggle to pass this Act opened fresh wounds and brought to bear all the challenges that women face in this patriarchal society. It also demonstrated the power imbalance between women and men in Ghana’s parliament. This debate has been mainly between women groups who have lobbied and petitioned for this Act on the one hand and the male-dominated parliament. The DVA is a product of such a divided debate. This chapter is not interested in the impact of the Act. On the contrary, it is concerned with how the DVA came into being. Specifically, it focuses on how interest groups catapulted it onto the public policy spectrum and sustained and bulldozed it through parliament from a societal concern to a government policy and Act. Focusing on the advocacy coalition framework as a theoretical lens, the chapter examines the various actors, their roles, resources, and how they used all these to get the Act promulgated. In addition, it analyzes policy coalitions and mobilization efforts in Ghana and how this success can be replicated in other developing countries.