The Bargaining Context and FDI in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

The discussion in this chapter focuses on the factors that form the bargaining context for FDI in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and examines how those conditions shape the relationship between FDI and aggregate political and economic outcomes. As in previous chapters, the bargaining approach, with its emphasis on the ability and willingness of the host country to counter-balance foreign investors, is used as a means of organizing the comparison of context conditions. The expectation is that FDI in countries with relatively strong context conditions will be associated with modernization-type outcomes such as high economic growth and long-term development. FDI in countries with weaker context conditions is expected to be associated with dependency-type outcomes, such as slow economic growth, political instability and long-term underdevelopment.