Malawi’s Third Republic: Towards a Democratic Developmental State?

Abstract

The paper critically examines the extent to which Malawi’s economic and political developments, leading to the country’s Third Republic, have contributed to the country’s quest towards achieving the basic attributes of a democratic developmental state. An analytical framework is developed to examine this covering the post-independence political and economic regimes. The analysis reveals that despite experiencing some episodes of high growth rates, the country has been marred by autocratic tendencies, rampant corruption and nepotism. Oftentimes the political and economic system remained fragile as the performance of the different governments pre-2020 had been hardly inspiring in relation to peoples’ expectations.