Wealth, power and institutional change in Tanzania’s parliament

Tanzania’s legislature, or Bunge, has undergone considerable change in recent decades, gradually strengthening to attain unprecedented influence during Jakaya Kikwete’s presidency (2005–2015) only to decline again under President John Magufuli (2015–2021). This article investigates Bunge’s institutional evolution, asking what explains institutional change within an authoritarian legislature, dominated in this case by the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi. Building on recent literature highlighting the influence of elite contestation on legislative outcomes, the article seeks to go further by probing the nature and origins of the elite factions driving legislative institutional change. It uses insights from a recent political settlements literature, as well as older work on African political economy, to outline how changes to Tanzania’s Parliament have both reflected—and magnified—shifting patterns of elite contestation within CCM. These elite power struggles, in turn, vary with changes in the extent of private wealth accumulation and the related expansion of rival patron–client factions. When private accumulation has continued relatively uninhibited, as was true under Kikwete but not Magufuli, then factional contestation intensified and surfaced in parliament, helping to drive legislative institutional strengthening. For this analysis, I use interview and archival data gathered during extensive fieldwork