District Assemblies in a fix: the perils of the politics of capacity in the political and administrative reforms in Malawi

Blessings Chinsinga

Development Southern Africa, 2005, vol. 22, issue 4, 529-548

Abstract: This article appraises the prospects of District Assemblies institutionalising local governance structures and processes that are responsive, democratic and capable of improving the livelihoods of the poor. District Assemblies have been established against the backdrop of a radically reconstituted policy, governance and administrative framework following the transition from one-party rule to multiparty democracy in Malawi in May 1994. The underlying argument of this paper is that the potential success of the District Assemblies is effectively hampered by widespread self-seeking tendencies and orientations among various stakeholders in grassroots development, strategically veiled as lack of capacity on the part of the decentralised planning framework. Unless these seemingly idiosyncratic tendencies are subordinated to the underlying noble cause of the decentralisation policy and institutional reforms, the trinity of good governance, development and poverty reduction in the evolving structures and processes of local government will remain a virtually unattainable ideal.

Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768350500322891 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:deveza:v:22:y:2005:i:4:p:529-548

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CDSA20

DOI: 10.1080/03768350500322891

Access Statistics for this article

Development Southern Africa is currently edited by Marie Kirsten

More articles in Development Southern Africa from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().