Education for All Meets Political Democratization: Free Primary Education and the Neoliberalization of the Malawian School and State

Abstract

In recent years sub-Saharan African states, including Malawi, have adopted the Education for All (EFA) goal of universal, fee-free primary education (UPE). The EFA process is often linked to the expansion and sustainability of universal rights, democratic processes, and political systems. The EFA policies have also been tied, discursively and in practice, to officially democratic or democratizing elections. In fact, many international EFA declarations claim a relationship between UPE and political democratization. In official documents, UPE is contrasted with, and judged inherently more democratic than, colonial, elite-creating, limited-access education systems, and UPE is also envisioned as creating an environment in which political democracy can flourish. For example, the World Bank (2001, 8) claims that “broad and equitable access to education is . . . essential for sustained progress towards democracy, civic participation, and better governance.” The purported egalitarian and democratizing effects of EFA are regularly touted in arguments made for international support of EFA. At the same time, measures of good governance and political democratization are increasingly included among the aid criteria considered by international donors. And yet, despite the supposed linkage between EFA and political democratization, there have been few empirical studies of the effects of EFA on democratization, or vice versa. The research reported here explores the case of UPE and political democratization in Malawi, a country in central eastern Africa. Malawi offers analytic opportunities to examine the relation between EFA