Military Regime Performance: An Appraisal of the Ghana Experience, 1972-78

Military regime performance relates to the effectiveness of organizations in attaining multiple goals at relatively low cost. But whose criteria are to be applied in evaluating this organizational effectiveness? On the one hand, it is possible to make use of generalizable standards of judgment, comparing military and civilian performance in the Third World as a whole, according to what one authority has depicted as intrinsically desirable dimensions.2 Such a cross-national approach certainly offers a much-needed insight into the validity of hypotheses on the ability of different kinds of regimes to realize specific economic, political, and social objectives. Certainly much competent and discerning research has been done along these lines, with social scientists bringing considerable rigor to their efforts to apply externally determined standards to a probing of comparative regime performance.3 On the other hand, it is possible to look inward at the state or region and to apply country or region-specific criteria. Military regime performance would then be evaluated, in part at least, in accordance with the goals and objectives set out by the local public authorities themselves. In pursuing such an approach, the analyst tends to emphasize the uniqueness of each polity or region under scrutiny. Because the interactional variables of regime, society, and international environment differ from one country or regional context to another, a broadly encompassing comparative framework that groups African, Asian, Latin American, and sometimes European experience together may be viewed as remiss in its failure to include such critically important aspects as political