In Sub-Saharan Africa, scholars have mainly deployed structural (conditionality thesis) and institutional (path dependence) frameworks to explain policy stability and change, thus neglecting other mechanisms such as ideational processes. Yet, there is evidence of path departing changes in education reforms and other policy areas in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which call for ideational analysis. Drawing on insights from institutional and ideational explanatory frameworks, this study analyzes the 1987 and 2007 education reforms in Ghana to ascertain the factors, the key actors, and the mechanism employed to influence these reforms. Consequently, the study explores the processes of bricolage and translation that informed these two reforms. To achieve these research objectives, the study adopts the case study approach based on qualitative methods of inquiry, which involves face-to-face interviews and document analysis. The study identified that, in addition to state actors, two groups of non-state actors (Domestic Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Trans-national Actors (TNAs)) mattered for education reforms in Ghana. Unlike what is implied by the conditionality thesis, these non-state actors use ideas channeled through conferences, issuing of annual reports, workshops and press releases to influence these reform processes and generate policy legitimacy and local ownership among national policymakers. More generally, the study argues that the educational sector in Ghana has witnessed both policy stability and change when the dimensions of the reforms are specified along objectives, content, financing, and structure and duration. Thus, whereas financing of basic education witnessed policy stability, the objective, content, and structure witnessed significant changes in 1987 and marginal changes during the 2007 reform. Finally, the study also argues that, regardless of the political regime in place, the socio-cultural and political duality of the Ghanaian society was ignored during the reform processes. As such, a key group of actors, traditional institutions, was marginalized by national policymakers
