Local politics and the revenue collection effort in a developing country context: experiences from Ghana

There is a renewed global emphasis on domestic revenue mobilisation for local development. This call came through the Sustainable Development Goals, which places enormous responsibility on local government bodies, especially in developing countries, to focus on local sources of revenue for development. Just like many local government bodies in most developing countries, Ghana’s Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have had humongous challenges raising adequate revenue for local development. However, some assemblies have demonstrated more effectiveness in raising internally generated funds than others. Revenue variability studies on Ghana’s MMDAs are almost non-existent. This paper seeks to contribute to the role that local politics plays in different collection outcomes in the selected assemblies in Ghana. The study focuses on the selected urban Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies in the Greater Accra region that share similar characteristics. With the fiscal exchange theory, local politics has shown to have had some influence on local revenue mobilisation outcomes. The exploratory-sequential mixed methods approach was adopted for the study. Through in-depth interviews of relevant local government officers and a survey of opinions of taxpayers in all four selected Assemblies, it was found that local politics have played significant roles in occasioning different revenue mobilisation outcomes in the selected Assemblies.