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Despite a burgeoning interest in studying the effects that traditional leaders have on service delivery and political accountability, scholars have paid little attention to political competition and its role in accountability for the unelected leaders. This article investigates these questions leveraging original surveys collected from 684 village-level traditional leaders (658 for the second round), 680 members of their ruling family, and 669 secretaries of the leaders in Central Malawi. This study first establishes that leadership contestation appeared in 14 percent of the leadership positions, which challenges the conventional belief that such disputes occur who exceptionally rarely for such hereditary positions. The in-depth analyses in this article demonstrate that traditional leaders’ legitimacy stems from the support from their ruling family, and that the family wields significant power in the installation and removal of the leader as selectors. This work further finds that traditional leaders who experienced competitive challenges exhibit a higher propensity to share the resources at their disposal with their ruling family than other leaders who did not encounter the challenges. The findings align with the theoretical expectation that leaders who undergo competitive challenges adopt a heightened sense of the importance of the ruling family and are incentivized to buy their loyalty because securing this support or the lack thereof significantly affects the leaders’ fate and authority. Finally, this article expands on the recent studies concerning competition in traditional leadership by shifting the focus to the ruling family – the kingmakers behind the scenes – and discusses the ramifications of this phenomenon on political accountability.

To Whom Are Traditional Leaders Accountable after the Rise of Competitive Challenges? Evidence from Central Malawi