Attempts to circumvent presidential term limits in African countries show a puzzling variation of success or failure. This variation is due to both international and domestic factors. However, how these interact is not yet well understood. This article analyses how international donors and organisations intervened in the attempted term limit circumvention in Malawi from 1999 to 2003. It differentiates between different types of instruments used by donors in democracy promotion, and, by doing so, contributes to the question whether donors in term limit struggles can contribute to genuine democratic consolidation. It employs deductive process-tracing based on an analysis of primary media sources and interviews conducted during field research. The results show that erosion of party support as a proximate and a strong civil society response as a mediate factor were important in saving Malawi’s term limit. Aid conditionality and democracy promotion by donors and international organisations exerted influence on both factors.

试图绕开非洲国家总统任期限制的尝试显示出成功或失败的令人困惑的变化。这种差异是由于国际和国内因素造成的。但是，这些相互作用的方式尚不十分清楚。本文分析了1999年至2003年国际捐助者和组织如何干预马拉维尝试的期限限制。它区分了捐助者在促进民主中使用的不同类型的工具，并以此为依据提出了一个问题：极限斗争可以促进真正的民主巩固。它采用对主要媒体来源的分析和实地研究期间进行的采访为基础的演绎过程跟踪。结果表明，党派支持的侵蚀是最重要的，而民间社会的强烈反应是调解的重要因素，对挽救马拉维的任期限制至关重要。捐助者和国际组织的援助条件和民主促进对这两个因素都产生了影响。