Determinants of Resource Allocation: Do Bureaucratic Factors Matter?

Many governments around the world claim to use the normative resource allocation model in the transfer of intergovernmental grants. However, many political-economy studies suggest the contrary. It has been widely suggested that political and economic factors dominate the resource allocation process in both developed and developing countries. Using resource allocation data from the Ghana Education Service, this study supports the arguments that intergovernmental resource allocation transcends the normative principles of proportionality and expenditure need. Political factors do indeed influence resource allocation. One interesting contribution of this study is that, it highlights the importance of bureaucratic factors in the resource allocation process. Bureaucratic representation is a political institutional factor which has to a large extent been neglected by most political economy studies.