Timothy Agbola (Wisconsin International University College, Ghana) has posted Sovereign Debt, Democratic Legitimacy, and the Limits of Continuity Doctrine: The Ghanaian Domestic Debt Exchange Programme in African Constitutional Perspective on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Article examines the Ghanaian Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) of 2022-2023 as a case study in the limits of contemporary democratic legitimacy theory under conditions of inherited sovereign obligation. Building on Odette Lienau’s account of sovereign debt continuity as a historically constructed rather than naturally given doctrine, the Article argues that the DDEP, in which the Ghanaian state restructured domestically held bonds against the will of the holders to preserve obligations contracted by prior administrations, exposes a structural tension between democratic legitimacy and the doctrine of debt continuity that the existing scholarship has not adequately confronted. The Article extends James Gathii’s recent analysis of Kenya’s debt-induced constitutional crisis to argue that the African experience of sovereign debt restructuring constitutes not merely a macroeconomic phenomenon but a constitutional one, requiring sustained doctrinal and political-theoretical engagement. Drawing on the African political philosophy of Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye, the Article proposes that the consensual framework of Akan political thought offers conceptual resources for theorising legitimacy under conditions of inherited institutional structure that contractarian democratic theory cannot supply on its own. The Article concludes that the doctrine of sovereign debt continuity, as operationalised in the DDEP and parallel African cases, requires reform on grounds the existing Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship anticipates but has not yet fully developed.
Recommended!
To receive new posts from Legal Theory Blog by email, get a free subscription to Legal Theory Stack.
Lawrence Solum