The Politics of “Physics Envy” and the Coloniality of Policymaking in Ghana

The ontological and epistemological outlook of Ghana’s economic policy architects is defined by Keynesian economic theorems structured with impersonal abstract phenomena such as the invisible hand of the free market and comparative cost advantage with logically precise models of progress or otherwise encoded with non-humanitarian indicators such as per-capita income. This notional orientation is shaped by “physics envy”: an obsession with the neat method of physics to mathematically specify problems, plot courses of action, and precisely predict outcomes. Further, economic policy actors, who are closely associated with rent circuits, have acquired a dominant ontological and epistemic status in policymaking and policy execution, leading to the rise of a hegemonic quantitative technocracy that is numb to human aspirations and prefers to conceptualize and refract imperatives of social empowerment through economic theorems to enact policy options. The heuristics of economic policy as sketched and the orientation of its cadres generates structural violence perpetuated through the persistence of colonial-era dehumanization schemes of governance . This chapter examines the worldview through which policymaking in Ghana occurs and argues that it remains largely colonial in ontological and epistemological terms, hence the inability of public policies to secure and guarantee a decent livelihood for ordinary people as anticipated in chapter six of the Fourth Republican constitution.