ETHNICITY, URBANIZATION AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORAL CHOICE IN MALAWI

Abstract

Presidential elections since the dawn of plural politics in Malawi in 1994 have been generally described by electoral scholars as ethnic census. Whilst the influence of ethnicity on presidential electoral preference has been widely acknowledged especially in rural constituencies, the influence of ethnicity on the electoral behavior of Malawian urbanites has not attracted adequate scholarly inquiry. This study aimed at assessing the extent to which the ethnic identity thesis as expounded by Lijphart (1977) and political anxiety theory advanced by Conteh-Morgan (1997) are accurate explanatory perspectives for understanding electoral behavior in Malawi’s urban and rural settings. The main thrust of the two perspectives is premised on the widely held belief that electoral behavior in democratizing multiethnic societies is motivated by fear of exclusion of one’s ethnic group from accessing opportunities when faced with electoral defeat in the changing material realities of state and market. This study investigates the extent to which urbanization has been a melting pot of ethnic loyalties that are believed to influence choice between electoral alternatives in multiethnic societies like Malawi. The study argues that although ethnicity has been a major criterion of predicting voter presidential electoral preference, its influence on determining the voter’s presidential electoral choice is waning in both urban and rural areas of Malawi.