The Paradox of Pro-Poor Targeting:Social Policy in Ghana During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper highlights the contradictions between the narrow scope for state action under neoliberalism and the robust institutional and logistical mechanisms required to effectively implement policies. The COVID-19 pandemic threw this contradiction into sharp relief, as governments around the world struggled to respond to an unprecedented crisis using diminished administrative machinery and crumbling infrastructure, the result of decades of state retrenchment. In Ghana, market-oriented reforms, accompanied by the erosion of state capacity and unequal access to public utilities, undermined the implementation of the social relief packages introduced during the pandemic. Drawing on secondary data sources such as policy documents, news articles, and published reports, this paper highlights the paradox of attempting to pursue pro-poor social policies using a public sector weakened by market-oriented reforms. It was found that the impact of the utility subsidies was regressive, despite the pro-poor policy intent, reflecting decades of failed neoliberal attempts to improve access to basic services for the poorest. In contrast to scholars who attribute this regressive outcome to problems of targeting, we argue that the central lesson is not about efficiency of delivery but the necessity of rebuilding social infrastructure through assertive state intervention. Yet, in the context of pervasive public distrust of the state and the ideological hegemony of market solutions, the difficulties encountered in implementing these policies have paradoxically been invoked to justify further narrowing of the scope for state action.