Neopatrimonialism and agricultural protection: The case of maize in Malawi

Horace Phiri and Abdi Khalil Edriss

No 1, MaSSP working papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: This empirical study uses data from 1970 to 2010 to estimate levels of neopatrimonialism in Malawi. We then test how neopatrimonialism has affected policy-induced agriculture producer incentives. Three dimensions are used to measure neopatrimonialism – systematic clientelism, a power concentration index, and control of corruption. All were negatively related to the level of producer support provided farmers by government. This suggests that the manifestation of a patronage system creates policy-induced disincentives to agricultural production due to worsening corruption, concentration of political power, and a crowding out of development expenditure by the costs of maintaining a bloated civil service. This result reaffirms the belief that neopatrimonialism results in poor performance of the agricultural sector of countries in sub-Saharan Africa

Keywords: productivity; agricultural policies; incentives; maize; corruption; producer prices; Malawi; Southern Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa; Eastern Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/153644

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:fpr:masspp:1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MaSSP working papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().