Today a number of sub‐Saharan African countries display the outward signs of modern, democratic states. International aid agencies often treat them as though power and decision‐making reside within government institutions and that they function as designed. When they do not they are labelled dysfunctional though their action is actually quite logical when viewed through a ‘neopatrimonial lens’. This article outlines a number of neopatrimonial practices observed in Africa in the past two decades and attempts to explain the ‘logic’ that underpins them. It provides several recommendations about the way donors should assist states where deeply rooted anti‐democratic and non‐developmental behaviour dominates.
This article outlines the impact of local governance institutions on public goods provision in contemporary Malawi. Three cases -on safe birthing, market management, and public safety -are presented. These demonstrate that coordination between agencies and rule enforcement are important to the delivery of public goods. Undermining coordination are jurisdictional overlaps and uncertainties, capacity weaknesses, politicisation of public services and resource constraints. Policy shifts originating with donors and major regime changes compound the problem. Conflicting rules and norms emerge during transformations, and their not being enforced contributes to their not being obeyed or adopted by citizens. It is also important to work with local beliefs and perceptions, since doing otherwise can undermine attempts to provide public goods. Citizens and local leaders do join together, launch self-help initiatives and work with local and state officials to deliver public goods, but for various historical reasons these collaborations generally remain small and weak, and do not endure over long periods in Malawi.
For significant periods Malawi's economy has performed as well or better than might have been expected given its geographical location and natural resource endowments. Underlying these promising episodes is a pattern of centralised, long‐horizon rent management and technocratic integrity. This case study of ‘developmental patrimonialism’ found that the period 1965–79 was one of centralised, long‐horizon rent management and a vertically disciplined technocracy, and the economy grew healthily; 1980–94, by contrast, was a period in which rent management drifted. Although it remained quite centralised, it became geared more to the short term, while the civil service began to deteriorate as it was politicised. These resulted in a comparatively directionless reform programme. The situation deteriorated still further under President Bakili Muluzi (1994–2004). This was a period of decentralised, short‐horizon rent management and a further deterioration of the state bureaucracy. The economy entered a tailspin. A recovery was made during the first term of President Bingu wa Mutharika (2004–09), who reintroduced some aspects of long‐horizon rent centralisation and promoted a more vertically disciplined technocracy.
Since 1994, Malawi's elite have constructed their political settlement in a way that has generally benefited them as a whole and individually. They have established a social contract with the population that mostly maintains enough services to sustain social conciliation, have created a workable though less-than-democratic governance arrangement and have done all of this while not establishing a policy environment conducive to national economic development. The paper analyses four 'critical junctures' between 1994 and 2014, which are key to Malawi's current political settlement. At each of these, institutions were laid down that have affected political and economic governance.
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