The paper critically examines the extent to which Malawi’s economic and political developments, leading to the country’s Third Republic, have contributed to the country’s quest towards achieving the basic attributes of a democratic developmental state. An analytical framework is developed to examine this covering the post-independence political and economic regimes. The analysis reveals that despite experiencing some episodes of high growth rates, the country has been marred by autocratic tendencies, rampant corruption and nepotism. Oftentimes the political and economic system remained fragile as the performance of the different governments pre-2020 had been hardly inspiring in relation to peoples’ expectations.

这篇论文批判性地考察了马拉维的经济和政治发展，导致该国的第三共和国，在多大程度上促进了该国实现民主发展型国家的基本特征。开发了一个分析框架来检查独立后的政治和经济体制。分析显示，尽管经历了一些高增长率时期，但该国仍受到专制倾向、猖獗的腐败和裙带关系的损害。通常，政治和经济体系仍然脆弱，因为 2020 年之前不同政府的表现与人们的期望相比几乎没有鼓舞人心。