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This book provides analytical, conceptual, and practical insights into how public policy processes and outcomes are conceptualized and framed. Drawing on Ghanaian experiences, but with extensive illustrations from other African countries, it showcases issues of commonality and diversity in public policy with analytical insights and real-life policy concerns that specifically addresses how citizens engage with the state, and how they think and function as social actors within the socio-cultural settings of Africa. The book brings public policy to life as a practical and problem-solving discipline, with examples of how policy actors such as the legislature, governance architects, the media, and the judiciary become arenas for contest. Linking public policy to development paradigms, governance, and responsible citizenship, it is important reading for students and scholars of public policy, governance, and politics in Africa, as well as practitioners. Michael Kpessa-Whyte is an Associate Professor at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. His research focuses on the nexus between partisan politics and public policy. James Dzisah is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Sociology, University of Ghana. His research focuses on knowledge production, globalization and development .

Abstract
Teacher trainee allowance, a statutory cash transfer support to persons training to become professional teachers in Ghana has been on the social policy reform agenda of successive governments. Notwithstanding the saliency of the policy in recent political campaigns, there is presently no original research that explains why the policy has been resistant to change. Drawing on historical institutionalist literature, this paper explains why attempts by successive governments to reform teacher trainee allowance in Ghana has been unsuccessful. The inability of policy makers to undertake planned reforms is puzzling because Africa is perceived as a place where policies are less resistant to change due to strong presidencies as well as the influential role of powerful and resourceful transnational actors. Drawing on insights from the literature on policy feedback, the paper analyzes the specific mechanisms that have reinforced the original institutional logic of the trainee allowance policy, and it shares ideas about options for endogenous path departing policy change.