The Social Protection Policy in Malawi: Processes, Politics and Challenges
Blessings Chinsinga (2007)
How does policy actually get made and implemented? What has driven the development of social protection policy in Malawi?
This paper, an output of the Future Agricultures Consortium, takes the case of social protection policy in Malawi to demonstrate that policy making does not happen in neat distinct stages but is a complex mesh of interactions and negotiations between a wide range of stakeholders. In Malawi, poverty and vulnerability affect a large majority of the population, and livelihoods have become more precarious over the past two decades. Nevertheless, in a context in which development assistance accounts for about 27 percent of GNP, the social protection agenda has been largely donor-driven, putting into question its prospects for effectiveness. This is in contrast, for example, to the issue of fertilizer subsidies which has been highly politicised and has generated a nation wide debate.
This study highlights these findings:
The social protection policy process is being treated entirely as a technical process in which politicians, local level government structures, and the grassroots are yet to be engaged.
There is a lack of capacity among government agencies to provide the necessary leadership and technical guidance and direction to the policy process; as a result, policy design has so far been driven and determined by donor agencies
It concludes that:
The involvement of stakeholders should be an integral part of the policy process in order to stimulate public debate at political, technocratic and community levels.
Policy making needs to be recognised as an inherently political process, entailing bargaining processes among actors with different forms of expertise, power and influence. It cannot be treated technocratically.
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