Producer Support Estimate (PSE) for the staple food crop maize were calculated in this
study to add to knowledge on the incentives and disincentives that created by public
policy in agriculture. All the PSE were negative implying that producers are implicitly
taxed through policies that transfer income from producers to consumers. Using a
Newey –West regression analysis political economy explanations to agricultural
protection were tested. It was observed that; PSE increased with increasing levels of
social accountability, international donor pressure and declining production.
Neopatrimonialism was also found to negatively affect producer
support.Autoregressive Distributed Lag model results show that the PSE granger
causes production and that one percent change in PSE results in a 0.24% change in
national maize output.
Evidence from the ARIMA model showed that the political power varies with changes
in maize prices and income. In general, the results obtained in this study show that the
policy making process in Malawi is not driven by efficiency motives alone but rather a
political economy framework with its own demands that have to be understood. The
following recommendations are therefore put forward; policy stakeholders should have
an understanding of political preferences and incorporate them in their policy options
if their advice is to be relevant in the policy processes; interest groups have shown to
have strong influence on policy outcomes therefore policy reforms should be designed
in a way that ensures that affected groups accept reform to avoid political pressure
induced reversals.