The Architecture of Executive Restraint in Developmental States: Reassessing Presidential Term Limits and Legislative Longevity under the Zambian Constitution.

This article examines the structural asymmetry between strict presidential term limits and indefinite legislative tenure within the Republic of Zambia, as codified under Article 106(3) of the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2016 and dramatically expanded by the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 7 of 2025. While the 2025 Act increased the National Assembly to 251 elected members (211 constituency seats plus 40 proportional representation seats) and removed all mayoral term limits, the two term ceiling on the presidency remains absolute. Employing fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and drawing on the developmental state experiences of the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) and the People’s Republic of China, this article demonstrates that rigid executive term caps impose three structural pathologies on developing economies: lame duck policy atrophy, systematic short termism, and the sovereign hazard of successor incompetence. The article also engages critically with countervailing evidence showing that term limits can reduce corruption and improve fiscal discipline (Besley and Reynal Querol, 2011; Acemoglu, Robinson and Torvik, 2013). Recognising this trade off, the article proposes a constitutionally anchored, performance based extension mechanism for Zambia: a president who meets objectively verifiable economic and governance benchmarks may seek one additional five year term, subject to super majority parliamentary approval and a national referendum. A counterfactual analysis of Zambia’s past presidents (1991 - 2026) shows that only the most exceptional would have qualified, mitigating fears of systematic abuse. The article concludes that for low income, structurally transforming economies, a narrowly tailored exception to term limits can reconcile output legitimacy with democratic safeguards.

Constitutional engineering; Article 106(3); Act No. 7 of 2025; executive restraint; legislative longevity; Asian Tigers; output legitimacy; policy whiplash.

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