Role of legislature in the democratization process in Malawi

Among the many countries that underwent the democratization process in Africa in the mid-1990s, Malawi remains in the transition process while struggling to fully consolidate. Its parliament faces challenges impacting its performance of the core functions: executive oversight, constituency service and legislation. Despite the challenges the Malawi parliament faces, it distinguished itself in 2002 when it helped to maintain constitutionality by denying the president's bid to change the constitution to allow him to stand beyond the constitutional limit of two terms. Since then, the parliament has been less effective in performing its main functions. This thesis compares the parliament's performance of its core functions in the periods 1994-2004 and 2004-2009 to explain why its performance declined over time. It finds that the struggle for control of the House undermined the parliament's ability to perform these key functions, and thereby weakened the democratization process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Security Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Kayanula-Banda, Frank Kelvin Nenani Timve.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lawson, Letitia

Statement dc:rights

• This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10945/5066

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:calhoun.nps.edu:10945/5066