Grass-Roots Perception of Decentralisation in Relation to Community Development in Ghana

Abstract

Decentralisation is presumed to have a number of democratic as well as developmental benefits. It is assumed that democracy will be deepened by facilitating democratic participation at the grassroots thereby empowering grassroots and channelling their input constructively into community development. However, some authors argue that the purported benefits of decentralisation leading to community development are not as obvious as proponents of decentralisation suggest. This paper explores the relationship between decentralisation and community development in six regions in Ghana using questionnaire surveys at the district level. In all the relationship between decentralisation and community development for the six regions was 57.8 per cent. This implies that 57.8 per cent of the respondent’s agree that there was a relationship between decentralisation and community development. The regression analysis between decentralisation and community development showed a significant relationship of 0.000 between decentralisation and community development.