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The potential successes of the Poverty Alleviation Programmes (PAPs), which have become more or less the defining features of contemporary development strategies, raise crucial questions of institutional design. Would the successful implementation of PAPs require new and autonomous institutional designs or would they simply be integrated into the existing institutional apparatuses? The argument in favour of novel institutional set-ups is that they are less constrained by the orthodox bureaucratic traditions. They would, as a result, benefit from the strategic management capability, that is the trinity of adaptability, flexibility and pragmatism. The argument for existing institutional apparatuses is that poverty in developing countries is too deep and widespread to merit temporary relief. PAPs should not supplant but instead reinforce the institutional delivery systems that are already in place.
This study seeks to undertake an institutional review of the 1994 Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) in Malawi. It argues that, ideally, institutional blueprints should, as much as it is practicable, minimise the levels of transaction costs and eschew being captive to the existing institutional arrangements.
The paper follows the debate on the implementation strategy of PAPs by the United Democratic Front (UDF) led Government since 1994. The two approaches in question are:
- implementation of PAPs by putting in place new and autonomous institutional designs (a view favoured by the UDF led Government)
- implementation of PAPs through integrating the programmes into the existing institutions apparatuses (an approach less popular to the UDF led Government).
The analysis is made within the framework of North’s theory of institutions. The theory is adapted to project the potential ramifications of the current institutional design of the PAP to future efforts to fight the ubiquitous problem of poverty in Malawi. |
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