Democratic local governance in Malawi dates back to the year 2000 when Malawi had its first democratic local government elections. The councillors’ mandate ended in March 2005 and a new set of local government elections were supposed to be held in the same month. However, up to the writing of this article (April 2010) the Government has not yet conducted the local government elections. With the presidential and parliamentary elections already held in May 2009, there are no plans to conduct local elections any sooner. The argument of this article is that the absence of councillors is paralyzing the local governance policy in the country. This is because currently, it is only administrative activities that are taking place but governance functions have been stalled, thereby paralyzing the policies that provide for these functions. Taking a new institutional perspective, this article seeks to understand the nature, dynamics, explanations and impacts of the paralysis. Through an institutional analysis, the article explains the intricacies that shape the local governance policy paralysis in Malawi and the underlying motives of the political actors in the paralysis.
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