Kenasi Kasinje

Opposition Political Parties and Democracy Consolidation Nexus: an Appraisal of Malawi's Opposition Politics from 2004 - 2011 Kenasi Kasinje

Recent political studies on the nature of political interaction within and amongst political parties in Malawi shows that the focus has largely been on the analysis of macro and micro level political interactions as a means to democratic consolidation. These studies have exhaustively managed to identify lack of intra-party democracy and poor governance as some of the major factors that impinge on democratic consolidation in Malawi. However, few studies have been conducted with the special focus on the role of the strong opposition political parties in consolidating democracy in Malawi. This book however, takes a different approach to the question of democratic consolidation in Malawi. This book aims at establishing the relationship between performance of opposition parties in parliament and democratic consolidation and how the performance of strong opposition parties in parliament affect democracy consolidation. The central argument in this book is that, vigorous parliamentary opposition parties undoubtedly enhance consolidation of democracy, such that in emerging democracies like Malawi, there is need to have strong parliamentary opposition parties to check government actions.