Socio‐Economic Development Performance and Convergence Among Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies in Ghana

ABSTRACT Equitable development is one of the conditions for achieving a stable and just society. This assertion is corroborated by the numerous global and regional efforts to minimize inequality and ensure balanced development. By this recognition, decentralization, a system of governance where power cascades from centralized, remote structures to accessible local bodies, has long been floated as a tool for achieving development equity. In Ghana, decentralized units are unequally endowed, resulting in differing capacities for resource mobilization and service delivery. This study sought to accomplish two fundamental objectives, first to understand the nature of socioeconomic development performance dynamics among Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and whether spatial spillovers exist and mediate these dynamics. Second was to investigate whether socioeconomic development performance is converging over time. Using performance on the District League Table (DLT) as a proxy for socioeconomic development, global and local Moran's I analysis revealed statistically significant clustering of development performance, hinting at the presence of spatial spillovers. Leveraging spatially explicit Markov chains, findings indicated that most MMDAs were more likely to stay in their performance classes than transition to a different cohort, with this probability being the highest in the upper and lower classes. Nonetheless, MMDAs located within high performing neighborhoods were more likely to improve in their performance than their counterparts located in low performing neighborhoods. Further analysis also revealed a high degree of cohesion, where MMDAs' development performance tend to assume the direction of their neighborhoods. In the second objective, decomposed Theil index analysis revealed processes of convergence overall and within decomposed groups while between groups convergence appeared to have saturated. The study advocates for collective as opposed to piecemeal strategies for achieving equitable development.