Abstract

Leadership is complex and has enormous dimensions. Leadership has to be well researched and understood in order to deploy its relevant models to fight corruption. Corruption is increasingly seen as pivot on which, depending on their response to it, societies rise, decline, or even collapse(Johnston, 1995).This research study is aimed to assess role of different political leadership models in the crusade against corruption in Malawi since independence through a case study design. The study employed a qualitative research methodology through individual interviews with key informants from various social science related fields as primary source of data and an in-depth review of related documents using desk research as secondary data source. Institutional, elite and pluralist political theories were adopted as theoretical frameworks for the study. Findings indicate that Malawi’s democracy has fragile institutions and offers very weak political leadership model that cannot deliver effective corruption fight as well as socio-economic transformative development. This is also supported by the notion that power in participatory governments is shared among key system organs namely: various interest groups within citizenry, monetary and tax authorities, the Judiciary, Legislature, the Executive, the Military and Police, Local governments, governing and opposition political parties. Constitutionally, these players have distinctly independent legal mandates, public economic and financial interests and socio-political pursuits which cause complex-chaotic institutional rivalries making it extremely hard for leadership at the apex of state power to pull them towards one direction of purpose and nip corruption. Thus benevolent autocracy has been found to reduce corruption because of its hegemonic nature.

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School	: School of Law, Economics and Government
Issued Date	: 2022

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