Developmental patrimonialism? The case of Malawi Diana Cammack and Tim Kelsall with David Booth Working Paper No. 12 July, 2010 Copyright: The authors. Published on behalf of the Africa Power and Politics Programme (APPP) by the Overseas Development Institute, 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD, UK (www.odi.org.uk). The APPP Working Paper series is edited by Richard Crook, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK (
[email protected]). The Africa Power and Politics Programme is a consortium research programme funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with additional support from Irish Aid, for the benefit of developing countries. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of DFID, Irish Aid or the Programme as a whole. Developmental patrimonialism? The case of Malawi Diana Cammack and Tim Kelsall with David Booth* Economic governance in Malawi has never been without problems. Yet, for significant periods, the country’s development performance has been better than might be expected given its geographical location and natural resource endowments and the global context of the time. This paper argues that underlying the episodes of better performance are institutional configurations which include: centralized, long-horizon rent utilization, a disciplined economic technocracy, and an inclusive form of ethno-regional politics. In particular, the 1964-79 phase of the presidency of Kamuzu Banda conforms closely to the concept of ‘developmental patrimonialism’, defined in this way. It tends also to support the proposition that regimes of this type are associated with relatively good development outcomes.