Abstract

This study investigated the extent to which Constituency Service (CS) is a viable strategy for re-election of a Member of Parliament (MP) in Malawi. The study was informed by observation that some members of Parliament in Malawi get re-elected when on many occasions many fail to retain their seats even after showing interest to be re-elected or retained. While literature around the region, not only in Malawi but other countries in Africa at large, point to constituency service as a cause for re-election, the study was interested to confirm if indeed constituency service stands the test of time beyond other electoral strategies for Members of Parliament. While the study was more qualitative in its analysis both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection were employed in order to get the opinions of the key informants who were the MPs themselves. The general findings point to the fact that beyond constituency service there are several other factors affecting the “would be strategies” in support of re-election bid. Among those that kept on coming include; party loyalty, place of residence for the MP; the behavior of the incumbent and handouts rating highly. The Manifesto of the party or individual and the education levels of the aspirant MP were also mentioned but scored lowly. The overall finding is that while constituency service is an important strategy in case of Malawi, it alone does not guarantee re-election, rather, with a combination of all others strategies. The study safely concludes that there is no straight formulae an MP can use as a key strategy to secure re-election.

More details

School	: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Issued Date	: 2019

Download full document