land Article The Politics of Decentralization: Competition in Land Administration and Management in Ghana James Natia Adam 1,2, * , Timothy Adams 1,2 and Jean-David Gerber 1,2   Citation: Adam, J.N.; Adams, T.; Gerber, J.-D. The Politics of Decentralization: Competition in Land Administration and Management in Ghana. Land 2021, 10, 948. https://doi.org/10.3390/ land10090948 Academic Editor: Hossein Azadi Received: 29 June 2021 Accepted: 2 September 2021 Published: 8 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Institute of Geography, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland; timothy.adams@giub.unibe.ch (T.A.); jean-david.gerber@giub.unibe.ch (J.-D.G.) 2 Center for Regional Economic Development, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland * Correspondence: james.natia@giub.unibe.ch; Tel.: +41-779-979-232 Abstract: Decentralization policy forms part of a broader global ideology and effort of the interna- tional donor community in favor of subsidiarity and local participation, and represents a paradigm shift from top-down command-and-control systems. Since 2003, the formalization of property rights through titling became an integral component of decentralized land administration efforts in Ghana. The creation of new forms of local government structures and the related changes in the distribution of responsibilities between different levels of government have an impact on natural resource manage- ment, the allocation of rights, and the unequal distribution of powers. This paper aims to understand how decentralization reforms modify the balance of power between public administration, customary authorities, and resource end-users in Ghana. Decentralization’s impact is analyzed based on two case studies. Relying on purposive and snowball sampling techniques, and mixed methods, we conducted 8 key informant interviews with local government bureaucrats in land administration, 16 semi-structured interviews with allodial landholders, 20 biographic interviews and 8 focus group discussions with small-scale farmers. The interviews analyzed the institutions and the roles of actors in land administration. Our case studies show that decentralization has the tendency to increase local competition in land administration where there are no clear distribution of power and obligation to local actors. Local competition and elitism in land administration impact the ability of small-scale farmers to regularize or formalize land rights. Thus, the paper concludes that local competition and the elitism within the land administration domain in Ghana could be the main obstacles towards decentralization reforms. Keywords: decentralization; formalization; local competition; property rights; titling 1. Introduction Decentralization research has mainly focused on a wide range of public policy issues including education, healthcare, waste management, and social policies [1–4]. For roughly two decades, the World Bank and other international development agencies have pushed for merging objectives of decentralization with land administration and management [5,6]. Decentralization in land administration refers to the transfer of land-use (or physical) planning, cadastral surveys, land (tenure) regularization, and formalization from the central government to the sub-national government level to secure land tenure [5–7]. Available records from land formalization programs show that implementing land-use planning and cadastral survey towards secure land tenure has remained problematic [7]. Yet, this is largely unexplored in Ghana [5–7]. In this paper, we aim to appraise and highlight how decentralization in land administration and management increase local competition among local actors and impact the land rights of small-scale farmers. Decentralization in land administration and management is conceptually linked to participatory planning and is thus relevant for land-use planning and cadastral survey, which in turn influence land regularization and formalization [7]. Since the 1980s, the Land 2021, 10, 948. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10090948 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land