China and African Parliaments

Abstract This book maps the political controversies surrounding the designing, making, and utilization of three Parliament buildings in Southern Africa that were financed and constructed by the People’s Republic of China (China). The book is the first to explore and explain the impact of China’s expanding influence in African Parliaments. The financing of African Parliament buildings is a new and tangible phenomenon around which to understand China–Africa relations, the evolution of African Parliaments, and policy-relevant debates on contemporary representative politics in Africa—all of which are tackled in this book. The book draws on eight months of mixed-method fieldwork in Lesotho, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. Data was collected through official access to all three buildings, key informant interviews with political and civil society elites (former heads of state, cabinet ministers, foreign affairs ministry officials, donor aid coordination ministry officials, Parliament executives, parliamentarians, public construction officials, NGO leaders, trade unionists, academics, and journalists), and focus group discussions with a cross-section of ordinary citizens who live and work around the buildings. The book makes two distinct contributions to the China–Africa relations and African Parliaments literature. The first contribution is to advance a ground-breaking argument that China’s method of donating Parliament buildings to African countries indicates that it is targeting the institution as a site of long-term influence. The second contribution is to make a theoretical and comparative case to utilize discussion of the concept of African legislative institutionalization through, and in juxtaposition to, these Chinese government-funded Parliament buildings.