Abstract
This chapter offers an account of Malawi’s recent political economy. The chapter shows that academic and policy literature tends to place a strong emphasis on the clientelist nature of the polity since independence: that citizens’ and civil societies’ concerns have been irrelevant in this winner-takes-all system where the state is captured by the incumbent’s informal networks for personal gain and where emergent political forces and progressive (young) politicians are simply co-opted or suppressed. The chapter highlights how different flavours of patrimonialism have either contributed to or constrained transformation and improved developmental outcomes dependent on whether the control of rents is centralised and long term instead of dispersed and for instant gratification. It concludes by highlighting the role of transnational actors in Malawi’s recent past.
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Prowse, M., Grassin, P. (2020). A Very Short Political Economy of Malawi. In: Tobacco, Transformation and Development Dilemmas from Central Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33985-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33985-2_7
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