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The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis
Abstract
Using political economy analysis, this paper discusses three precipitating factors that were ignited by Kenya's 2007 election, which was too close to call beforehand and highly contested afterwards. These factors were: the gradual loss of the state's monopoly of legitimate force and the consequent diffusion of violence; the deliberate weakening of institutions outside the executive in favour of personalized presidential power, raising questions about the credibility of other institutions to resolve the election on the table rather than in the streets; and a lack of programmatic political parties which gave rise to a winner take all view of parties that were inherently clientist and ethnically driven, something that raised the stakes of winning and gave rise to violence. The paper discusses each of these factors in historical perspective. It explains how and why they arose and what made each so dangerous. It also aims to place what happened in Kenya into a wider framework of understanding by drawing on a broad range of literature in political economy ranging from Max Weber to Douglas North. Of the three factors discussed, the diffusion of violence followed by institutional issues constitute serious challenges. The resilience of both has the potential to undermine Kenya's transition to democracy.
... These are illustrated by some urban case studies (see Legros [2002] on Senegal; Quénot [2007] on Ghana), but they are mostly rural in focus (see Beck [2001] on Senegal; Jackson [2005] on Sierra Leone; Kyed & Buur [2006] on Mozambique). Some work on African cities alludes to the importance of party politics in urban governance, but in general, and not centrally as a research object (see, for instance, Katumanga [2005] on Nairobi; Legros [2002] on Dakar; Quénot [2007] on Accra and Ouagadougou), unless it is about the study of violence and conflict, often at the junction between local and national politics (for instance, De Smedt [2009] and Mueller [2008] on post-electoral violence in Nairobi; Potts [2006Potts [ , 2008 on Harare). Portraits abound of 'big men' in positions of power at a metropolitan scale (for instance, De Smedt [2009]; Pellerin [2009]), but, again, the city is considered more as a step towards national power than as the object of governance, and the political networks and positions of the big men are displayed more at a national level than analysed through their links to urban governance and governability. ...
... Secondly, we question the extent to which these forms of exchanges (access to public resources for political support), which vary from clientelist to democratic practices (Bénit-Gbaffou 2011), increase political accountability for low-income residents or weaken civil society's ability to mobilise by fragmenting or sedating it. Finally, we wish to look at the impact of political competition at the local level, and whether it gives residents more bargaining power or -especially in racially or ethnically divided societies -aggravates social cleavages and leads to violence more often than to enhanced democracy and citizenry (Mueller 2008;Piper 2009;Van de Walle 2009). ...
... For example, the so-called taxi wars in Cape Town are linked to contested agreements between taxi associations and local political leaders, and eventually damage the city's international brand. And Nairobi's post-electoral riots were based on national political manipulation, but also on local and ethnic conflicts between landlords and tenants (Mueller 2008;De Smedt 2009). ...
This chapter is inspired by the gap we find in academic literature on the role, impact and place of party politics in urban governance, at both the metropolitan and neighbourhood levels. Much evidence in our fieldwork demonstrates the importance of political parties, their agents and party politics in the everyday lives of city residents, as well as in their discourses, practices, strategies of access to resources, hopes and sometimes fears. However, it seems that few academics, regardless of their discipline (e.g. political studies, urban ethnography, urban politics, urban studies, sociology of social movements), take the matter seriously...
... 4 While ethnic identity is politically salient in many African societies, Kenya's ethnic politics have become formulated around exclusion and victimisation to a large extent, which has precipitated the use of violence. Many ethnic identities in Kenya are what have been labelled 'exclusionary ethnicities': a form of identification that offers guidance not only as to which group has a legitimate right to access power, but also about which groups should be denied state power (Lynch 2011: 9;Mueller 2008). This form of ethnic identity formation has been shaped by violence and repression, which has led to a sense of victimisation and injustice among several groups. ...
... 'Over time, through reorganizing national alliances and patronage networks to ensure patrimonial control, KANU alienated many within Kikuyu and Luo constituencies … particularly over irregular allocations of land, which proceeded apace under the Moi regime' (Klopp 2001: 477). This marginalisation of certain groups can partly be explained by deteriorating economic conditions, which eroded the basis for more inclusive governance based on patronage (Mueller 2008;Throup 1993: 383). At the same time, the Kikuyu remained the most prominent group economically, which 'contributed to Moi's sense of isolation and political vulnerability' (Holmquist and Ford 1995: 177). ...
... Over the years, a sense of political and economic marginalisation among non-Kikuyu groups had grown and had combined with deep resentments against Kikuyu. The centralisation of power around the president had also peaked, political institutions were weak, and political violence had become normalised and institutionalised (Mueller 2008). When it was announced that the incumbent Mwai Kibaki had won the election, violence escalated and diffused quickly and did not come to a halt until elite-level negotiations resulted in a power-sharing agreement and the leaders called for the violence to stop. ...
... And they were not too hopeful about the future, suggesting that 'a reluctance by the Grand Coalition partners to undertake fundamental reform of the constitution means that Kenya remains a "democracy at risk", and faces a real possibility of slipping into state failure' (Kagwanja and Southall 2009: 259). Several articles in this issue and another special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies variously attributed the crisis to elite fragmentation and the existence of non-programmatic clientelist parties, political liberalisation and institutional fragility, the informalisation and criminalisation of the state, and the decentralisation and privatisation of violence (Branch and Cheeseman 2009;Lafargue 2009;Mueller 2008). ...
... Scholars focusing on the background to the Kenyan crisis have pointed to several causes. These include the creation of ethnic administrative provincial boundaries by the colonial administration, which resulted in politicised ethnicity that was further encouraged by the postcolonial leadership (Oucho 2010); ethno-nationalism and diffused violence ); diffused violence and failure to reform the security sector Mueller 2008); failure to deal with the land question (Kanyinga 2009;Mghanga 2010;Oucho 2010); and a centralised presidency and weak institutions, including political parties (Anyang Nyong'o 1989;Kagwanja and Southall 2009). ...
... Instead of reforming the flawed boundaries and land system he inherited from the British, Kenyatta skewed the system further under an imperial presidency he created after several amendments to the independence constitution. He did this to reward disproportionately his Gikuyu ethnic group, and in particular the Gikuyu elite, with matunda ya uhuru (fruits of independence) (see also Mueller 2008). Matunda ya uhuru here symbolises various socio-economic and political benefits that accrued to his cronies, such as prime land in Central, Coast and Rift Valley provinces, and political appointments and economic opportunities in government, further exacerbating horizontal inequalities between the Gikuyu and other ethnic groups (Okello and Gitau 2007; Stewart 2010); this strengthened and entrenched ethno-nationalism and political tribalism . ...
... An estimated 1100 people were killed, 663,000 displaced or forcibly removed, and 40,000 became victims of sexual violence as a result of excessive police force against protestors as well as ethnic-based killings by supporters aligned to both the ruling and opposition parties (Lynch, 2009;Waki Commission, 2008). Factors that ignited this specific crisis included the state's gradual loss of its monopoly of legitimate force and parallel proliferation of violence, particularly given young unemployed populations that can be mobilised by politicians, the increase and personalisation of presidential power and deliberate weakening of other institutions, the ethnic clientelism of parties and feelings of historical marginalisation and injustices (Mueller, 2008;Waki Commission, 2008). Kibera was one of the areas most affected by the 2007 post-election violence: many people were killed, houses and businesses looted and burned and gender-based violence was extremely widespread, with ethnic rape a frequent occurrence (De Smedt, 2009;Kihato, 2015). ...
... One interviewee, a woman in her twenties, said: 'you know we fear police in our community because the way they come in, they don't come in as people, they come to kill, because they are sent to kill, and we are not there to be killed.' 5 State violence in Kenya carries an ethnic component, given that opposition strongholds are traditionally Luo communities and, in the 2017 elections, supported Raila Odinga, while the President and Vice President were part of a coalition of Kikuyu and Kalenjin political interests. Kenya's tribalism (Lonsdale, 1992) -the use of ethnic identity in political competition with other groupsoriginated in British colonial rule and has been exacerbated by post-colonial politics of patronage, which link the distribution of resources to ethnicity (Mueller, 2008). One of the drivers of continued electoral violence is the politicization of ethnicity in the run up to elections, with national politicians tapping into feelings of historical marginalisation and injustice and mobilising young unemployed populations to gain power (Waki Commission, 2008). ...
This study examines how residents of Kibera, an multi-ethnic informal settlement and opposition stronghold in Nairobi, Kenya, understood and negotiated political instability in the run up to, and during, the contested elections of 2017. Much of the scholarship on election violence has been gender-blind, ignoring the ways in which gender roles shape the experiences but also the nature of conflict. When women's experiences during conflict and war are considered, it is typically in relation to sexual violence. By contrast, our study examines women's gendered experiences of political instability across multiple dimensions, employing the structural framework of gender relations developed by Connell and Pearse (2014) that distinguishes power, production, emotional attachments, and symbolism. Data were produced from multi-method qualitative fieldwork undertaken shortly after the 2017 elections. We find that participants' experiences of deeply patriarchal structures, threats of sexual violence and the brutality of policing in Kibera coexisted with contestations of gendered power relations through mitigation strategies and some women's activism. Political instability moreover impacted women's labour and increased their already great obligations in terms of paid and unpaid work by generating additional responsibilities to cope with conflict and violence and to keep children safe. A dominant discourse of women as peacebuilders is shown to contribute to many women's senses of increased responsibility for peace itself during periods of political instability and serves to obscure their differences and that their gender roles might contribute to ethnic conflict. By examining how political instability in an informal settlement is experienced and negotiated across multiple dimensions of gender relations, this article contributes to the feminist literature on peace and conflict, and specifically to recent analyses of gender and electoral violence.
... The ethnic dimensions of politics in Kwale featured in the ways in which politicians discussed how to fairly balance opportunities such as employment among the ethnic groups in the county. This patronage reflects the dominant place of ethnicity in Kenyan politics, where political differences, historical land conflicts and disproportionate allocations of social and economic resources have fuelled ethnic conflicts and tensions (Kanyinga 2009;Lynch 2006;Mueller 2008). Politicians have exploited this 'negative ethnicity' (wa Wamwere 2003) to bolster their own claims to power. ...
... This gendered dimension of political giving ultimately reveals the limits of gender quotas in Kenya, where they were part of a constitution designed to remake Kenya and its 'winner-takes-all' political culture (Mueller 2008). However, Cheeseman et al. (2019) argue that Kenya's constitution has not resulted in a complete overhaul of politics. ...
In 2010, Kenya introduced a gender quota to boost women’s political representation. The quota mandated that a single gender should not hold more than two-thirds of elective and appointive positions in public bodies. When few women won seats in elections in 2013 and 2017, political parties fulfilled the gender quota by nominating hundreds of women as members of county assemblies (MCAs). Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2019 in one of Kenya’s county assemblies, this article shows how nominated female MCAs participate in transactional relationships with the public. Like male politicians, they are often called on to contribute to fundraisers and to meet the needs of constituents. Female politicians also accompany their giving with political rhetoric in support of female leadership. I argue that, through their giving, female politicians use money as a tool to champion women’s political leadership. Their matronage – a term I use in lieu of patronage to emphasize the role of women in transactional relationships – ultimately shows how gender quota legislation can go only so far in increasing women’s political representation. Instead, political actors also rely on informal mechanisms in order to achieve gender equality in politics.
... The country has for decades been considered as an Island of peace in the middle of a tempestridden sea, with a burgeoning economy and good international ties built on commerce and tourism (Modi & Shekhawal, 2008). This image was especially enhanced by the successful elections of 2002 that saw relative ethnic cohesion experienced in the country; following the defeat of the incumbent party: Kenya African National Union (KANU) which had been in power since independence in 1963 and the peaceful assumption of power by an opposition coalition National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC) led by Mwai Kibaki (VonDoepp & Villalón, 2005;Mueller, 2008). The aftermath of this historic event marked the beginning of what Kenyans saw as a new era, infact Kenyans were rated as the most optimistic people on the planet (Murunga & Nasongo, 2006). ...
... Worth stressing is that, both the Kenyatta and Moi regime perfected the art of patron-clientism by meeting delegates of ordinary Kenyans mainly in their rural homes, Gatundu in Central province and Kabarak in Rift Valley respectively (Branch, 2011;Throup & Hornsby, 1998;Munene, 1997). Terms such as going to Kenyatta to "lick sugar" (Mueller, 1984) or to drink "chai", Swahili for, tea (Munene, 1997), or "buying land," or going to Moi "to eat ugali" were used (Mueller, 2008). Moi saw the thawing of the land question (Kayinga, 1998;Mutua, 2008) and from the mid-1980s onward, the Moi regime became progressively more active in using land allocation and the landrestitution issue as tools to forge a cohesive ethno-political constituency out of the Kalenjin groups and the other ethno cultural groups claiming to be native or indigenous to the Rift Valley-the Kalenjin groups, the Maasai, Turkana, and Samburu (Collectively known as KAMATUSA) (Lynch, 2008). ...
This study set out to examine the protracted nature of the Mt. Elgon conflict and the motivations driving it. The thesis of the study was that a multi-causal analysis of protracted conflicts provides a basis for a more comprehensive approach to conflict management and conflict transformation. The main objective of the study was to find out what has fueled and sustained the conflict in Mt. Elgon region. This is because the Mt. Elgon conflict has proven difficult to bring to an end. The choice of the study location was motivated by a number of factors such as the area being prone to political instability and violence resulting from complex and rapidly changing social economic dynamics. In addition, there is paucity of literature on the protracted nature of the conflict in Mt. Elgon region and on the motivations driving it. Methodologically, the study adopted a qualitative design, drawing from both primary and secondary sources in my discussion. This study used Edward Azar’s theory of Protracted Social Conflict (PSC) and conflict trap theory by Paul Collier, V.L. Elliott, Harvard Hegre, Ankle Hoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol and Nicholas Sambanis (2003) as its analytical tools. These theories were purposely selected to explain and enhance the understanding of each of the variables affecting the research questions. The study examined Kenya’s historical and political development and established that the conflict in Mt. Elgon region has partly been contributed by the different regimes in independent Kenya. Consequently, the study found out that Mt. Elgon conflict is motivated by a number of factors among them land distribution, marginalization, shortchanging of the people of Mt. Elgon among other factors. The research recommends that there is need for full implementation of the devolution agenda, developing national consciousness, working on practical and reforms and lastly, need for justice and reconciliation in Mt. Elgon. See full report: https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/123456789/19656/Protracted%20conflict................................pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
... The primary cause of corruption in Kenya is therefore related to a societal state of being whereby the basic institutions that underpin and support the rule of law and good governance have been deliberately undermined or neglected to the point where they can no longer uphold the rule of law or act in the best interests of the nation. That undermining and neglect have been systematically applied as Kenya's institutions outside of the executive were weakened in favor of personalized presidential power and a centralized presidency that reached a crescendo under the Presidency of Daniel ArapMoi (Mueller, 2008) who ruled the country for 24 years from 1978 to 2002. In fact, according to the National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP), the 'emergence of wanton poor institutional governance, an atmosphere of impunity to the rule of law, low morale and inefficiencycontributed immensely to an environment that enabled corruption to thrive and reach devastating levels' (NACP Secretariat, n.d., p. 3). ...
The culture of corruption has grown deep roots in the Kenyan society and become endemic. Institutions, which were designed for the regulation of the relationships between citizens and the State, are being used instead for the personal enrichment of public officials. Corruption persists in Kenya primarily because there are people in power who benefit from it and the existing governance institutions lack both the will and capacity to stop them from doing so. This paper looked at the role of accounting on how to control corruption in the Kenyan Public Sector and the rate of existing internal control and accounting standards are helping to reduce the level of corruption. The main objective of the study is to establish whether internal control and accounting standards have significant relationship with corruption control in the public sector in Kenya. The study got primary data using a structured questionnaire while secondary data were obtained from reports. To test for reliability of result from data used, the Cronbach alpha coefficient was applied. Questionnaires were administered to staff in Kenyan ministries. Respondents were selected using stratified random sampling method. Multiple regression analysis result showed that both internal control and accounting standards do not have significant relationship and effect on corruption control in the Kenyan Public Sector. The recommendations of the study showed that management personnel should at least have basic knowledge of accounting while staff in the accounts and finance department needs to proceed regularly on capacity building to upgrade emerging accounting trends.
... Consequently, this heightened ethnic tensions and sometimes led to violence. Much of the literature on Kenyan political and economic changes have attempted to explain the causes of ethnicity and ethnic conflicts that have punctuated the country's electoral history (Lehman 1992;Mueller 2008;Mutua 2009;Ogachi 1999). While ethnicity and ethnic conflicts have been a major trait of Kenyan history, it would suffice to argue that the neoliberal reforms intensified these conflicts. ...
Populism and its spread across the world have received mostly negative assessment. Research has explored the circulation of far-right xenophobic messages and populist views through traditional media outlets and social media (e.g., Ernst et al. 2017; Brandão 2021). Previous studies have also produced important insights into the negative effects of populist messages on people’s attitudes and behavior (e.g., Sheets et al. 2015; Reinemann et al. 2019). Naturally, this development poses the question whether a liberal democracy can coexist with populism and have any positive effect on citizens’ democratic engagement.
This chapter seeks to explore uniting and mobilizing effects of populism during the most recent presidential race in Ukraine. To this end, this research addresses the following questions: Can digital populism have positive consequences for democratic development? How do people respond to populist messages on social media?
... This difficult context was exacerbated by the actions of the ruling party. Having prophesised that multi-party elections would lead to ethnic clashes and political instability, the government of then President Daniel arap Moi set about fulfilling his prediction (Mueller, 2008), using vote-buying, intimidation, and political violence to hold on to power. Thereafter, Kenyan elections have come to be associated with extremely high political tension, inter-ethnic clashes, and disputed results (Klopp and Kamungi, 2007). ...
In the 2017 Kenyan elections, voters simultaneously cast their ballots for Member of the National Assembly, Governor, Senator, Member of County Assembly, Women’s Representatives, and the President. Between 2015 and 2017 the Deepening Democracy Programme (DDP) channelled roughly £9 million from UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) in support of these elections. Funds were provided to seven organisations that delivered support to a number of key beneficiary organisations (such as the election commission and political parties) through eight projects. This report reviews key changes that have occurred in the delivery of elections, compared to 2013, what contributions DDP may have made to any changes, and what lessons and recommendations there are for DFID as they plan their support to Kenya’s 2022 elections.
... However, the 2007 election remains one of the bloodiest in recent African history. Deeply entrenched ethnic rhetoric combined with highly personalized parties and the winner-take-all view of political power exacerbated tensions to unprecedented levels (Mueller 2008). Between December 2007 and February 2008, widespread ethnic-based political violence left over one thousand Kenyans dead and more than 700,000 displaced (Human Rights Watch 2008). ...
University students have often played a critical role in shaping political dynamics across sub-Saharan Africa. This article situates the expressed political attitudes of students at the University of Nairobi (UoN) within the context of current Kenyan politics. Given the high saliency of ethnicity in the latter, we are particularly interested in how university students define themselves, how they view and engage with the politicization of ethnicity, and how they view members of other communities. Using original survey data from the UoN collected in 2018, this article fills a gap in the existing literature on Kenyan politics, which seldom concentrates on youth or students. Our findings demonstrate that although Kenyan university students aspire to move beyond ethnic politics, ethnicity often shapes their view of their fellow citizens and government action. Overall, we do not find strong evidence that university students will alter the underlying dynamics of Kenyan politics.
... No mesmo ano, o total de investimento externo direto feito pela China foi de aproximadamente 1,5 bilhões de dólares (CHINA AFRICA RESEARCH INITIATIVE, 2018). Além disso, desde os anos 1990 o Quênia apresenta uma vida política intensa, em um sistema pluripartidário, com eleições periódicas e alternâncias no poder (Anderson, 2003;Mueller, 2008;Cheeseman;Lynch;Willis, 2014). ...
O paradigma da cooperação pelo desenvolvimento pacífico adotado pelo governo chinês no início dos anos 2000 levou à projeção do país sobre as diversas partes do globo, que presenciaram a ascensão da China como uma das grandes potências mundiais. A exponencial entrada de mercadorias e investimentos chineses no continente africano é algo que chama a atenção dos pesquisadores, muitos dos quais buscam entender a percepção das sociedades africanas sobre a presença da China no continente. Neste artigo, buscou-se entender a percepção da elite política do Quênia em relação à China, utilizando ferramentas de análise de sentimento aplicadas aos discursos parlamentares. Os resultados obtidos corroboram as pesquisas já desenvolvidas anteriormente sobre as percepções da sociedade civil queniana: no geral, o sentimento da elite política em relação à China varia de neutro a positivo.
... No mesmo ano, o total de investimento externo direto feito pela China foi de aproximadamente 1,5 bilhões de dólares (CHINA AFRICA RESEARCH INITIATIVE, 2018). Além disso, desde os anos 1990 o Quênia apresenta uma vida política intensa, em um sistema pluripartidário, com eleições periódicas e alternâncias no poder (Anderson, 2003;Mueller, 2008;Cheeseman;Lynch;Willis, 2014). ...
O paradigma da cooperação pelo desenvolvimento pacífico adotado pelo governo chinês no início dos anos 2000 levou à projeção do país sobre as diversas partes do globo, que presenciaram a ascensão da China como uma das grandes potências mundiais. A exponencial entrada de mercadorias e investimentos chineses no continente africano é algo que chama a atenção dos pesquisadores, muitos dos quais buscam entender a percepção das sociedades africanas sobre a presença da China no continente. Neste artigo, buscou-se entender a percepção da elite política do Quênia em relação à China, utilizando ferramentas de análise de sentimento aplicadas aos discursos parlamentares. Os resultados obtidos corroboram as pesquisas já desenvolvidas anteriormente sobre as percepções da sociedade civil queniana: no geral, o sentimento da elite política em relação à China varia de neutro a positivo.
... Before delving into the empirical analysis, it is useful to probe the nature of, and received wisdom about, election-related violence in Kenya, an important and wellstudied case in the literature (Klopp, 2001;Kagwanja, 2003;Anderson & Lochery, 2008;Cheeseman, 2008;Kanyinga, 2009;Mueller, 2008;Boone, 2011;Kanyinga, 2011;Dercon & Gutiérrez-Romero, 2012;Klaus, 2020;Gutiérrez-Romero, 2014;Mutahi & Ruteere, 2019). The occurrence of large-scale, politically motivated violence has been a feature of Kenyan politics since the reintroduction of multiparty elections in the early 1990s. ...
Why do politicians use violence as an electoral tactic, and how does it affect voting behavior? Theories of election-related violence focus on the electoral benefits such violence is said to provide, relying on the assumption that when parties and candidates employ violence, they do so based on an accurate assessment of its relative costs and benefits. Far less attention has been paid to the costs of violence as an electoral tactic, including the potential for voter backlash against it. This study provides evidence that voter backlash against violence is more significant than both scholars and politicians tend to assume. Moreover, that backlash can diminish the electoral advantages that violence provides. Combining survey experiments with Kenyan voters and observational data on violence and election outcomes, I find compelling evidence for broad-based voter backlash against violence that undermines its effectiveness as an electoral tactic. At the same time, data from parallel survey experiments and qualitative interviews with Kenyan politicians demonstrate that they underestimate the extent to which violence diminishes their support among voters. The results highlight the often underappreciated costs of violence as an electoral tactic and the role that elite misperceptions can play in its persistence.
... The 2013 elections were significant for three main reasons. Firstly, the disputed elections in 2007 had resulted in unprecedented countrywide ethnic violence that almost plunged the country into civil war (see Branch & Cheeseman 2008;Mueller 2008;Throup 2008;Shilaho 2008 for analyses of the 2007 elections and the aftermath) and, since Kenya is of geostrategic relevance and an anchor state, the international community monitored the elections closely, lest the country descend into violence again. ...
On 4 March 2013 Kenya held transitional elections that were significant
for three reasons. Firstly, they were a test of the country’s institutions
under the new Constitution, which was promulgated in 2010. In 2007
Kenya experienced violently disputed elections, partly because of weak and
dysfunctional institutions not capable of impartially arbitrating political
disputes. Secondly, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto presented a joint
presidential ticket despite having been indicted by the International Criminal
Court as among suspected masterminds of the 2007-8 post-election violence.
Thirdly, Raila Odinga, the loser of the controversial 2007 presidential
election, attempted to succeed the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, through a third
presidential bid. Thus stakes were much higher in 2013 than at any other
election time in Kenya’s independence history. Some reforms under the
new Constitution, the Kikuyu-Kalenjin tribal alliance and the ICC factor
ensured that the elections were relatively violence free. However, as in the
past, the presidential contest was primarily about control of the state by
expediently cobbled together ethnic alliances of self-styled ethno-regional
barons for spoliation opportunities. In this article I argue that the triumph of
the ICC duo was a setback for reform since it ensured continued dominance
of Kenya’s economic and political spheres by the ancien régime. Kenyatta
and Ruto could not countenance reforms because they were beneficiaries
of an unreformed and centralised state. Thus they were bound to frustrate
implementation of the Constitution, which was intended to secure Kenya’s
stability by consolidating democracy.
... The plausibility of the connection between elections and selfishness is especially strong in East Africa, a region in which elections are viewed as occasions for choosing which group will control the country's resources-for determining whose turn it is to "eat" (Wrong, 2009;Branch, Cheeseman and Gardner, 2010)-and where politicians often engage in (or are assumed to engage in) blatantly clientelistic behavior (Mueller, 2008;Vicente and Wantchekon, 2009;Kramon, 2018). We draw on data from two countries from this region, Kenya and Tanzania, both places where politics is strongly associated with rent extraction and clientelism, and where voters often perceive political candidates as self-serving and corrupt. ...
Elections affect the division of resources in society and are occasions for political elites to make appeals rooted in voters' self-interest. Hence, elections may erode altruistic norms and cause people to behave more selfishly. We test this intuition using Dictator Games in a lab-in-the-field experiment involving a sample of more than 1000 individuals in Kenya and Tanzania. We adopt two approaches. First, we experimentally prime participants to think about the upcoming or most recent elections and find that this priming treatment reduces how much money participants are willing to give to other players. Second, we compare results obtained across lab rounds in Kenya taking place right before the country's 2013 national elections and eight months prior, and find that selfishness is greater in the lab round more proximate to the election. Our results suggest that elections may affect social behavior in important—and previously unrecognized—ways.
... Contextualising Kenya's PEV is not within this article's scope, having been extensively discussed elsewhere. 2 That said, numerous scholars agree the underlying causes were multifaceted -comprising the legacy of colonialism, weak institutions, manipulation of ethnic identity, poverty and inequality, youth unemployment, a centralised presidency, historical grievances (particularly around issues of land), and the mobilisation of armed militias (Kagwanja, 2009;Kagwanja and Southall 2009;Mueller 2008). Yet, as the historian Daniel Branch suggests, many Kenyans seized upon ethnicity in an attempt to understand what had happened (2011, p. ...
In this article I examine how the chaos of Kenya’s PEV became the source of motivation for Solo 7’s peace activism. For the artist, the term "chaos" was initially understood as a metaphor for the violence and destruction in the slum of Kibera (where Solo 7 resides), which upturned daily life as people knew it. The article will go on to argue that once this particular episode of chaos came to an end, other forms emerged – notably, an anxiety as to whether violence might reoccur, but also the uncertainty of surviving day to day in a precarious and highly unequal society. These multi-layered connotations of chaos created new subtexts for how Solo 7’s peace slogans and activism were interpreted and used by both the artist and public. [...] And they are needed today more than ever.
... However, for Kibaki's supporters who remembered their experience under Moi, and the debates over the issue during the divisive 2005 referendum, majimbo bore connotations of ethnic chauvinism and ethnic cleansing. The combination of a history of winner-takes-all politics, personal rivalries and clear ethnic cleavages set the scene for 'the Kenya crisis' (Mueller 2008). ...
... Mwiraria was minister for much of Kibaki's first term, giving the Treasury sufficient stability to activate its technocratic base and undertake consistent fiscal policies. However, in early 2006, Mwiraria was forced to resign, after being exposed by John Githongo, Kenya's anti-corruption czar, for undermining investigations into Kenya's Anglo-Leasing scandal, which became Kibaki's own version of Goldenberg (Mueller 2008;Wrong 2009). The scandal demonstrated that, even during his first term, Kibaki had not succeeded, or even attempted, to eradicate corruption from the economic technocracy (Maina 2019). ...
... Social tension, mistrust, and violence accompanied both the 2007 and 2013 General Elections in Kenya, which played out against a deeper background of ethnic politics and violence (Boone 2011;Cheeseman, Lynch, and Willis 2014;Kanyinga 2009;Mueller 2008). The 2017 General Elections-held eight months after the close of the interventions studied hereproved a continuation of these themes. ...
... In Kenya, elections conducted after the return of multiparty democracy in the early 1990s have been characterised by disputes that have led to violence. The post-2007 election violence in particular is a subject of several studies (Cheeseman, 2008;Githongo, 2008;Kanyinga, 2011;Kanyinga and Okello, 2010;Kameri-Mbote and Kindiki, 2008;Mueller, 2008;Wolf, 2009). The immediate trigger for the violence was a dispute over the vote count and tallying of the presidential election results. ...
In Africa, many countries have adopted technology in the conduct of elections so as to improve efficiency and deter malpractice. However, electoral disputes and violence continue to recur even where elections involve use of technology. This article builds on a case study of Kenya to show the limitations of technology use in elections. We argue that use of election technology does not guarantee the credibility of elections; technology has become a ‘black box’, which competing parties exploit to either play victim or declare themselves winners. The paper concludes that election technology is the new frontier for fraud. The manner in which election technology is procured, deployed and utilized is not only technical but also political. Addressing this political problem is imperative to avoid political violence around elections.
... Apart from that, the formation and management of political parties since the reintroduction of multipartyism in 1991 has been driven by the "charisma and deep pockets" of the party luminaries (Respondent Ten 2018) [28]. This lends credence to assertions that members of political parties are not recruited based on their support for manifestos presenting parties' fundamental principles and policies for the country (Mueller 2008, p. 200) [29]. ...
Since the colonial period, group identity has affected politics in Kenya and South Africa. Ethnicity and race are used to explain many issues in both countries including party politics. This article examines the linkages between ethnic and race relations in the activities of political parties in both countries. The article finds that ethnicity and race are endemic to the nature and operations of political parties in Kenya and South Africa. As a result, most political parties formulate policies and allocate public goods and national resources along ethnic and racial lines in a bid to satisfy their support bases so as to achieve and maintain political power.
... High-stake elections -where the odds and the consequences of losing are significant -are also argued to increase the likelihood of electoral violence. The odds of losing an election are higher in majoritarian systems than in proportional representation systems (Mueller 2012;Bob-Milliar 2014;Fjelde and Höglund 2016), while the consequences of losing an election are greater when the office elected has substantial decision-making authority or control over the distribution of patronage (Bratton 2008;Kraetzschmar and Cavatorta 2010;Arriola and Johnson 2012;Klaus and Mitchell 2015;Fjelde and Höglund 2016), and when the policy preferences of the electorate are polarized as when economic inequality is high (Fjelde and Höglund 2016). ...
Political actors often resort to electoral violence in order to gain an edge over their competitors even though violence is much harder to hide than fraud and more likely to delegitimize elec- tions as a result. The existing literature tends to treat violence and fraud as equivalent strategies or to treat violence as a means of last resorts due to its overtness. We argue, in contrast, that vi- olence is neither and, in fact, that political actors often use violence for the very reason that it is hard to hide. Its overtness, we argue, allows political actors to observe whether the agents they enlist to manipulate elections for them do so and reduces these agents’ likelihood of shirking in turn. We develop our argument through a formal model, illustrating how increasing incentives to shirk due to electoral monitoring induces actors to use violence, and use process tracing to test the implications of this model through the example of pre-2011 Egypt.
This paper discusses the factors that deepen democratization in Kenya. The idea of democracy remains puzzling, as various authors draw attention to a myriad of issues attendant in democratic transitions. Theories of democracy are diverse and point to the universality of rights within prescribed legal parameters, citizen consent based governance, freedom of conscience, rule of law among other relevant factors. Democratic consolidation therefore becomes a key goal to many countries in so far as democratic transitions are concerned.
Constitution-making is a major event in the life of a country, with constitutions often acting as a catalyst for social and political transformation. But what determines the visions, aspirations and compromises that go into a written constitution? In this unique volume, constitution makers from countries around the world come together to offer their insights. Using a collection of case studies from countries with recently written constitutions, Constitution Makers on Constitution Making provides a common framework to explain how constitutions are created. Scholars and practitioners very close to the process illuminate critical insights into how participants see constitutional options, how deadlocks are broken, and how changes are achieved. This vital volume also draws lessons concerning the role of courts in policing the process, on international involvement, and on public participation.
The International Criminal Court emerged in the early twenty-first century as an ambitious and permanent institution with a mandate to address mass atrocity crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity. Although designed to exercise jurisdiction only in instances where states do not pursue these crimes themselves (and are unwilling or unable to do so), the Court's interventions, particularly in African states, have raised questions about the social value of its work and its political dimensions and effects. Bringing together scholars and practitioners who specialise on the ICC, this collection offers a diverse account of its interventions: from investigations to trials and from the Court's Hague-based centre to the networks of actors who sustain its activities. Exploring connections with transitional justice and international relations, and drawing upon critical insights from the interpretive social sciences, it offers a novel perspective on the ICC's work. This title is also available as Open Access.
Africa and the ICC: Realities and Perceptions comprises contributions from prominent scholars of different disciplines including international law, political science, cultural anthropology, African history and media studies. This unique collection provides the reader with detailed insights into the interaction between the African Union and the International Criminal Court (ICC), but also looks further at the impact of the ICC at a societal level in African states and examines other justice mechanisms on a local and regional level in these countries. This investigation of the ICC's complicated relationship with Africa allows the reader to see that perceptions of justice are multilayered.
The birth of 1992 democracy in Kenya called for a multi-party participation in Kenya's electoral system. This also marked the emergence of the fourth republic, the longest republic after the attainment of independence in 1963. To have a successful administration of elections in Kenya, there are some key processes followed by the Electoral Commission in the administration of the free, fair and transparent elections. This study looked at Kenya General Multi Party Electoral Processes and Electoral Challenges, with regards to past seven general elections. This article asked what Kenya's 2017 general elections tell us about the capacity of a new constitution to reduce the stakes of political competition and prospects of political instability. Three constitutional changes are particularly important: the adoption of a 50% + 1 threshold for the presidential election; the devolution of power to 47 county governments; and the introduction of a Supreme Court with the right to hear presidential electoral petitions. We found that the impact of the 2010 constitution had been mixed. The 50% plus 1 threshold encouraged coalition formation, but this dynamic had long been evident. Devolution had given a wider set of Kenyans a stake in the system, but also created new structures that can be used to channel dissent against the state. The Supreme Court demonstrated its capacity to act as an independent institution, but did little to sustain electoral legitimacy. Indeed, while the 2010 constitution was clearly reshaped the political landscape, it was a personal deal that ended the post-election impasse. The elections therefore demonstrate how formal institutions alone cannot change political logics and revealed the continued significance of individual politicians and informal institutions that may compete with or complement their formal counterparts.
How do discontented masses and opposition elites work together to engineer a change in electoral authoritarian regimes? Social movements and elections are often seen as operating in different terrains – outside and inside institutions, respectively. In this Element, I develop a theory to describe how a broad-based social movement that champions a grievance shared by a wide segment of the population can build alliances across society and opposition elites that, despite the rules of the game rigged against them, vote the incumbents out of power. The broad-based nature of the movement also contributes to the cohesion of the opposition alliance, and elite defection, which are often crucial for regime change. This Element examines the 2018 Malaysian election and a range of cases from other authoritarian regimes across Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa to illustrate these arguments.
(Full-text free access until February 23, 2022: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/street-and-the-ballot-box/984D9821A42E634531F41C1130A58738)
Sexual violence is a human rights violation and is addressed under a growing number of international agreements including the 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, among others. This article uses the due diligence standard, as elaborated on by the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, to interrogate Kenya's domestic accountability efforts with regard to sexual violence in the 2007/2008 post-election violence. It finds that Kenya suffered from a number of structural and systemic shortcomings that resulted in its failure to meet its obligation to prevent, investigate, prosecute and compensate for such acts of sexual violence perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. Key among them are a lack of well-coordinated multi-sectoral approaches to address sexual violence; human capacity gaps in the provision of medico-legal services to survivors; and systemic failures in the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence cases. The article further highlights the hope for future accountability inherent in the recent ruling in Constitutional Petition 112 of 2013 which held the state accountable for all gaps and shortcomings in responding to sexual violence during the post-election violence. The article concludes by advocating community-based multi-sectoral approaches in prevention and response to sexual violence in the Kenyan context with an emphasis on improving both human and technical capacities for provision of medico-legal services to survivors. Key words: sexual violence; human rights; Kenya 2007-2008 postelection violence; medico-legal responses to sexual violence
This article examines transitional justice in Kenya, drawing on interviews and focus groups with survivors of the post-election violence of 2007–2008. Focusing particularly on the experiences of women and internally displaced persons (IDPs), it explores how survivors understood and negotiated waiting for reparations and analyses the effects of temporal uncertainty (around timing and scope) and of inequality (in relation to waiting times). Uncertainty and inequality contributed to survivors’ senses of passivity and exacerbated their feelings of marginalisation. To delay reparations for an uncertain time contributes to senses of continuity with the past, which transitional justice precisely seeks to disrupt. However, the study also demonstrates that waiting is not only endured, but at times actively resisted or rejected, which might be understood as a claim to ownership of local peace and exercise of peacebuilding agency but also as resistance against the dominant temporality of transitional justice. By framing survivors’ experiences with the scholarship on time and power and the “politics of waiting”, the research contributes to the literature on local experiences and understandings of transitional justice and to recent debates around its temporalities.
Social science research on election violence shows that incumbents regularly turn to different nonstate armed groups to organize violence during elections, including ethnic militias, gangs, criminal organizations, and paramilitaries, among others. Less well known are the motivations of these different actors, what they seek to gain from election violence, and when they turn down incumbents’ overtures. From a practitioner perspective, understanding when armed groups supply election violence for incumbents is important because of the severe consequences of such acts, including economic hardship, forced displacement, damaged infrastructure, and costs to human life. The paper asks: under what conditions do armed groups agree or refuse to perpetrate election violence for incumbents? Drawing on most similar case studies of the Ijaw Youth Council and the O’odua People’s Congress in Nigeria, we find that internal armed group politics help to explain how these actors respond to incumbent governors’ demands for election violence. Specifically, groups divided by leadership rivalries agree to perpetrate election violence for incumbents whereas those with cohesive leadership refuse to do so. Leaders of rival factions accept money and arms from incumbents to try to eliminate their competitors, and in exchange, agree to organize violence during elections for their incumbent sponsors. In contrast, groups with cohesive leadership turn down incumbents’ overtures given the risks of cooptation and weakened community support. The findings contribute to our understanding of how election violence is co-produced by elites and nonstate armed groups by explaining the motivations and decisions of the latter. More broadly, the paper speaks to larger questions about security challenges in developing democracies. The findings also highlight the need for greater attention to interventions to prevent armed groups from engaging in election violence on behalf of political elites.
The purpose of this paper is to study the institutional transmission mechanism of the limited-access social order in Kenya. That is, which institutions show evidence for the hypothesis of North,Wallis, and Weingast (2009). This is motivated by the theory of new institutional economics, which views differences in institutions as fundamental in explaining differences in the level of economic development across countries. However, this theory often faces criticism in as far as it provides weak evidence pertaining to the direction of causality between institutions and economic development because it tends to neglect the problems of political instability and the process state formation. In the social order framework, the problems of violence and instability underpin state formation and consequently institutional development. The limited access theory suggests that openness to the political and economic spheres of influence, in a developing society, with no monopolization of force (e.g civilian control of the military) serves to increase instability and the level of violence in that society. Using the theoretical framework of social orders and public choice theory a Vector Autoregressive Model is applied in order to evaluate the predictions of the limited access order theory. The early results indicate the importance of violence in explaining institutional development over time. Additionally, while the literature on postcolonial African states suggests that colonial institutions have been persistent, the results indicate that postcolonial Kenya has better institutions than colonial Kenya, in terms of economic and political rights. Moreover while the theory mainly attributes violence to elite competition, the findings highlight the importance the increase in political consciousness in the postcolonial state in explaining the evolution of institutions.
Incumbent politicians often deliver mixed performance records: good results in some areas but poor ones in others. We explore the challenges these records generate for voters attempting to use elections to incentivize better governance, improved development outcomes, and greater accountability. We argue that evaluation of mixed records poses a more complex cognitive task for citizens than the evaluation of either uniformly good or bad records. Unlike uniform records, mixed records require weighting and aggregating information across multiple dimensions, raising the difficulty of arriving at a single, clear evaluation of performance. Evaluative complexity, in turn, induces voters to rely more heavily on informational shortcuts like ethnicity, reducing the effectiveness of elections as accountability mechanisms. We evaluate the link between ethnic voting and mixed performance records using a survey experiment implemented in a nationally representative exit poll during Kenya’s 2013 election. The survey experiment manipulated two factors, the ethnicity of a hypothetical candidate running for president and their performance record (with uniformly good, uniformly bad, and mixed performance conditions). We find that co-ethnicity between respondent and candidate had a large effect on voting when the candidate’s prior record was mixed, but no effect when it was uniform. Our results suggest that ethnic voting is situational rather than dispositional: even performance-oriented citizens vote ethnically when performance records are difficult to evaluate. They also suggest an under-appreciated source of accountability problems in developing countries: not fixed voter attachment to co-ethics, but rather reliance on informational shortcuts to deal with the challenges of evaluating performance in complex environments.
Heritage-making, also known as heritagization, is the process by which various actors assign different values to cultural identity based on specific interests. As a product of day-to-day living, heritage is created and recreated through perceptions and practices motivated by various reasons, which could be social, economic, or political. In Kenya, like in most African countries, heritagization of culture has historically been used by ethnic and other sub-national groups in the creation and maintenance of ethno-political, local, and regional identities. Heritagization has also been used by the state in the perpetual creation of Kenyan national identity and nation-statehood. Historically, the centrifugal forces that create ethno-political and local identities have been seen to pull against the centripetal force geared towards the creation of Kenyan national identity and nation-statehood. Almost sixty years after independence, realization of a unitary Kenyan identity and nationhood has been hindered by perpetual ethnic politicization and state centralization instituted partly through identity instrumentalization and heritagization. While the origins of objectification, institutionalization and politicization of ethnicity, and centralisation of the state have been attributed to the colonial period, perpetual political heritagization of ethnic identity and state ethnicization by the political elite in the post-colonial period led to ethnic animosity which culminated with the 2007/08 Post-Election Violence (PEV). The desire and determination by Kenyans to imagine and ‘create’ a new Kenyan nation with equal opportunities for all led to the promulgation of a new constitution on August 27th, 2010. The constitution, which was premised on devolution of power to the people was heralded as the concretization of a unitary Kenyan nationhood. By recognizing “culture as the foundation of the nation and as the cumulative civilisation of the Kenyan people and nation (Art. 11), “the constitution promotes the concept of ‘Unity in diversity’, while safeguarding cultural or ethnic identities.” In the ten years that Kenyan devolution has been in place, the application of the “Unity in diversity” concept has proved to be paradoxical. On one hand the national government has variously attempted to use heritage for supposed creation of Kenyan nationhood and national identity. On the other hand, county governments and sub-national groups (ethnic, political religious) have continued to use cultural heritage for the creation of subnational (ethnic, religious, local and regional) identities. This study analyses how different actors have continued to use cultural heritage to create and mobilise diverse ethno-political and regional identities against Kenya’s national identity and nationhood, whose creation has been an ongoing project of the state. The study also explores the possibility of having a balance and harmonious coexistence between the diverse ethno-regional identities and the Kenyan national identity in the context of devolution. In conclusion, the study emphasises the need for sound policies which would enable the achievement of such a balance for the common good of all Kenyans.
Little is known about how the health professions organize in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Recent strikes among health workers in many LMICs have directed interest toward measuring their impacts and understanding their causes. Yet, much of this literature belies a technical understanding of a social problem. By drawing on theoretical developments in organizational studies, this article proposes health sector movements be understood through attendant social processes of sensemaking as organizations seek to expand pragmatic, moral, and cognitive forms of legitimacy. Kenya, a lower middle-income country in sub-Saharan Africa, is an interesting case for such research. The intersubjective construction of meaning among medical doctors fashions narratives to order institutional change in the Kenyan health sector. This analysis shows how the strong legacy of colonial biomedicine shaped medical professionalism and inherent tensions with a deteriorating state following independence. In 2010, a new constitution and devolution of health services caused a fractured medical community to divide and pursue industrial action in its quest for organizational legitimacy. In this way, strike behavior, as a form of legitimation among union doctors in Kenya, is a risky path to universal health coverage.
The idea that Kenya is made up of 42(+) tribes is widespread, but the origins, nature and consequences of any list are not well-known. This article compares ethnic classifications in all Kenyan censuses to demonstrate the origins of the ‘42’ in (only) the 1969 census, and the multiple political purposes of classifying and counting. To make sense of why the 42(+) remains significant, I argue a cultivated vagueness provides a sense of consistency, linking a national past to present and future, while providing the basis for both numbers-based competitive politics and more inclusive politics. Moreover, it avoids engaging in politically risky work of making legible sense of shifts in ethnic identities, classifications and numbers, and avoids having to resolve their relation to the nation, which benefits both state and citizens. Extending literature on the political utility of uncertainty, I theorise this cultivated vagueness as magic, backed by opaque forces, potentially dangerous or beneficent, which deters interrogation or certainty on all sides. To further clarify this awkward relationship between vagueness and certainty, I argue ethnic classifications are intelligible via the social imaginary of the 42(+), but not especially legible, contesting the literature on census practices as tools of legibility and governability.
In this article, we show how youth groups in Nairobi’s poor settlements engage with politics while carving out a political space for themselves and providing a livelihood. In doing so, we challenge dominant neo-patrimonial narratives of youth radicalization and instrumentalized youth mobilization in relation to electoral processes. Based on long-term ethnographic engagements, we argue for more complex dynamics between local youth groups and politicians; dynamics informed by differently situated understandings and diverse experiences of democracy. We follow the emic use of the term kupona (Kiswahili word meaning recovery or healing) to approach youth’s political engagements along lines of participation, recognition, and re-distribution, which all in different ways express demands for social recovery. Empirically, the article draws on events and examples from the primary elections in 2017, which provide a privileged frame for investigating local politics and responses to the recently initiated devolved government structure.
Existing research on electoral violence has largely proposed either top-down (elite) or bottom-up (mass) explanations for such conflict. Consequently, scholars have scarcely considered how elites’ tactics interact with the interests of citizens on the ground. This article proposes an issue-framing approach to fill the above gap. Drawing on over 140 original interviews conducted with elites and vernacular radio listeners in Kenya, we identify three emphasis frames – political marginalisation, victimisation, and foreign occupation – that found resonance with certain groups of Kenyan voters in 2007–2008. Specifically, we show that divisive messages – disseminated through ethnic radios – resonated among those communities for whom institutional or material factors had already provided reasons to fight. These findings from the Kenyan case suggest that in giving rise to election-related conflict, incendiary media messaging is likely to inform the choices of those groups who are predisposed towards violence.
In an era when adversarial politics is condemned for either being archaic or right-wing extremism, proposing that incivility can be used to counter existing hegemonies, despite its potential to incite violence, is proposing an unorthodox project. By rejecting foundationalist approaches to the current incivility crisis, this study sees an opportunity for it to act as a populist rapture that defies simple binary categorisation and deconstructs incivility, at an ontological level, to reveal the deep meanings and concealed causes that contrast the grand narrative of hate speech. After an overview in chapter one, the study continues with a theoretical review of literature on incivility, guided by the works of radical democracy theorists who universalise what seems particular to Kenya. This review is followed by the description of Bakhtin’s concept of carnivalesque as utani, a joking relationship common in East Africa. For its theoretical perspective, the study is guided by Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy and a research method developed by transforming Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) work in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic, into a method for Discourse Analysis. Various concepts from Laclau and Mouffe’s work are used to innovate an explanation of how political practices in social media, both linguistic and material texts, enhance incivility and the struggle to fix a regime’s preferred meaning. Guided by Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Analysis, the study describes how the government is using linguistic tools and physical technologies to repair the dislocation caused by incivility in social media in its attempts to re-create hegemonic practices. Without engaging in naïve reversal of the polarities between acceptable and unacceptable speech, and considering that at the ontological level politics is a friend-enemy relation, the study argues that incivility in social media is part of the return of politics in a post-political era, rather than simple unacceptable speech. While remaining aware of the dangers of extreme speech, but without reinforcing the anti-political rational consensus narrative, incivility is seen as having disruptive counterhegemonic potential, that is, if we consider the powerplay inherent in democracy. It means that binary opposition is blind to the way power produces, and is countered through unacceptable speech.
Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes - edited by Gabriel L. Negretto September 2020
Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes - edited by Gabriel L. Negretto September 2020
Cambridge Core - Constitutional and Administrative Law - Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes - edited by Gabriel L. Negretto
To understand the political geography of Kenya’s 2007–08 post-election violence (PEV), locational (territorial) and relational (ethnic community) theories of how context affects politics are combined. This hybrid conceptualization provides a nuanced illustration of how subnational violence patterns are shaped by Kenyans’ ethnic community-level experiences and by regional demography. Communities whose leaders have held presidential office in the past (prior-incumbents) have skill using government institutions to distribute material benefits to supporters, which increases their motivations for political activity, including violence. Where the size of the two prior-incumbent communities – Kikuyu and Kalenjin – are large, the severity of PEV is elevated. The presence of a community without these experiences controlling the presidency acts as a buffer, reducing the severity of conflict. Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzioa counties are used as illustrative cases highlighting the relationship between locational–relational contexts and PEV. While both counties endured substantial electoral conflict, Trans Nzoia’s comparatively diverse ethnic geography diluted the incentives for deadly PEV. Understanding these multidimensional contextual influences for violence improves the understanding of conflict geography.
Examining a key puzzle in the study of electoral violence, this study asks how elites organize violence and why ordinary citizens participate. While existing theories of electoral violence emphasize weak institutions, ethnic cleavages, and the strategic use of violence, few specify how the political incentives of elites interact with the interests of ordinary citizens. Providing a new theory of electoral violence, Kathleen F. Klaus analyzes violence as a process of mobilization that requires coordination between elites and ordinary citizens. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork in Kenya, including hundreds of interviews and an original survey, Political Violence in Kenya argues that where land shapes livelihood and identity, and tenure institutions are weak, land, and narratives around land, serve as a key device around which elites and citizens coordinate the use of violence. By examining local-level variation during Kenya's 2007–8 post-election violence, Klaus demonstrates how land struggles structure the dynamics of contentious politics and violence.
The business of fighting corruption in Kenya dates back to the colonial period and has continued through successive governments. However, no significant progress has been made. Instead, corruption has continued to permeate every sector of Kenya’s economy in an industrial scale. This is despite diverse strategies contained in Kenya’s anti-corruption laws, including a new and reformist Constitution with an avalanche of far reaching changes in Kenya’s constitutional architecture governing the fight against corruption. Among the legal strategies that have failed to effectively respond to the alarming levels of corruption in Kenya are lifestyle audits.
To this end, this study explored the viability of lifestyle audits as a strategy for combating and preventing corruption in Kenya by assessing the efficacy of the existing policy, legal and administrative framework. Conscious that sound laws on their own cannot be a panacea for corruption, the study also makes various general recommendations to facilitate effective deployment of lifestyle audits in Kenya’s political, economic, social and cultural environment.
Colonial rule in Kenya witnessed the emergence of a profoundly unbalanced institutional landscape. With all capacity resided in a strong prefectural provincial administration, political parties remained underdeveloped. The co-option of sympathetic African elites during the colonial twilight into the bureaucracy, the legislature and the private property-based economy meant that the allies of colonialism and representatives of transnational capital were able to reap the benefits of independence. In the late colonial period these elites not only attained the means of production, they also assumed the political and institutional capacity to reproduce their dominance. The post-colonial state must therefore be seen as a representation of the interests protected and promoted during the latter years of colonial rule. Under Jomo Kenyatta, the post-colonial state represented a ‘pact-of-domination’ between transnational capital, the elite and the executive. The ability of this coalition to reproduce itself over time lay in its capacity to demobilise popular forces, especially those elements of the nationalist movement that questioned both the social and economic cleavages of the post-colonial state. Whilst Kenya may have experienced changes to both the executive and legislature, the structure of the state itself has demonstrated remarkable continuity.
This paper explores the conditions under which cultural cleavages become politically salient. It does so by taking advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the division of the Chewa and Tumbuka peoples by the border between Zambia and Malawi. I document that, while the objective cultural differences between Chewas and Tumbukas on both sides of the border are identical, the political salience of the division between these communities is altogether different. I argue that this difference stems from the different sizes of the Chewa and Tumbuka communities in each country relative to each country's national political arena. In Malawi, Chewas and Tumbukas are each large groups vis-à-vis the country as a whole and, thus, serve as viable bases for political coalition-building. In Zambia, Chewas and Tumbukas are small relative to the country as a whole and, thus, not useful to mobilize as bases of political support. The analysis suggests that the political salience of a cultural cleavage depends not on the nature of the cleavage itself (since it is identical in both countries) but on the sizes of the groups it defines and whether or not they will be useful vehicles for political competition.
Despite having adopted the political institutions of established democracies, democratizing countries display a systematically
different pattern of fiscal outcomes. This article attributes these differences to the low credibility of electoral promises
in new democracies. We study a model of electoral competition where candidates have two costly means to make themselves credible:
spending resources to communicate directly with voters and exploiting preexisting patron-client networks. The costs of building
credibility are endogenous and lead to higher targeted transfers and corruption and lower public good provision. The analysis
demonstrates that in low-credibility states, political appeals to patron-client networks may be welfare enhancing, but in
the long run, they delay political development by discouraging direct appeals to voters that are essential for credible mass-based
political parties. The model explains why public investment and corruption are higher in younger democracies and why democratizing
reforms had greater success in Victorian England than in the Dominican Republic. (JEL D720, H110, H300, H400, H500, O100)
An influential conventional wisdom holds that civil wars proliferated rapidly with the end of the Cold War and that the root cause of many or most of these has been ethnic nationalism. We show that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 50s and 60s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system. We also find that after controlling for per capita income, more ethnically or religiously diverse countries have been no more likely to experience significant civil violence in this period. We argue for understanding civil war in this period in terms of insurgency or rural guerrilla warfare, a particular form of military practice that can be harnessed to diverse political agendas, including but not limited to ethnic nationalism. The factors that explain which countries have been at risk for civil war are not their ethnic or religious characteristics but rather the conditions that favor insurgency. These include poverty, which marks financially and bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment, political instability, rough terrain, and large populations.
From the 1980s, interest in the study of practice of politics in Africa has centred around interrelations between Africa's weak civil society, neo-patrimonialism, and the continent's development problems. Neo-liberalism has dominated in these studies a majority of which tend to emphasis that neo-patrimonialism and weak civil society, within a restricted socio-political pluralization, are responsible for Africa's economic and political problems. Since the beginning of the 1990s, several countries have implemented economic and political liberalization in different forms. The extent to which the unfolding reform corresponds to aspirations of the society is debatable however. It is apparent that economic and political liberalization has continually glossed over popular demands in the rush to reconstruct neoliberal ideals of competitive politics and power of the markets. This paper appraises political liberalization and subsequent contestation over political space in Kenya. The discussion centres on how, from the colonial period, elite politics have precluded organization and crystallization of popular democracy. The paper specifically examines the historicity of political factionalism and attendant decline of multi-partyism. It also looks at the socio-economic conditions responsible for the weakening of opposition politics.
We investigate the causes of civil war, using a new data set of wars during 1960-99. Rebellion may be explained by atypically severe grievances, such as high inequality, a lack of political rights, or ethnic and religious divisions in society. Alternatively, it might be explained by atypical opportunities for building a rebel organization. While it is difficult to find proxies for grievances and opportunities, we find that political and social variables that are most obviously related to grievances have little explanatory power. By contrast, economic variables, which could proxy some grievances but are perhaps more obviously related to the viability of rebellion, provide considerably more explanatory power.
What enthusiasts took for a global rush to democracy may be reversing direction, with backsliding and stalled transitions in the former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East. So far, one sees disarray or new strongmen much like the old; no competing ideologies seem to be beckoning. Market reforms have not been the cause in most cases. More affluent countries with Western ties seem to be sticking the course better. However the trend plays out, it should lead the administration to rethink democracy promotion. The truth is that U.S. policy is not significantly responsible for democracy's advance or retreat in the world.
Africa experienced a wave of transitions to more pluralist democratic systems after 1989. Most countries of sub-Saharan Africa held competitive party elections that removed some authoritarian rulers. Within a few years power shifted back to authoritarian rulers; only a handful of new democracies progressed toward fully participatory systems. Conjunctural factors explain these developments and situate Africa within the broader dynamics of global economic and political liberalization. The comparative study of these transitions can be furthered by contrasting Africa with theories of democracy and democratization. Special attention is devoted to the emergence of liberal democracy as virtual democracy acceptable to external forces, African leaders' feigned conversion, and factors that bolstered or hindered substantive transformations.
Since the ending of colonial rule, the struggle for independence in Kenya has been seen as a triumph for the nationalist politics of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the party that was victorious in the 1963 elections and held power until 2002. This article returns to the party politics of decolonization to reconsider the alternative vision of Kenya’s future then promoted by KANU’s rival party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU). KADU supported majimboism (regionalism), a proposal for decentralization in which six or more provinces would each have equal status. In the heated politics of the early 1960s, majimboists were derided by KANU as tribalists. Under the de facto one-party state of Kenyatta’s KANU government, the majimboist cause was obscured by the nationalist project. This article returns to the forgotten history of majimboism to argue that the debates of the early 1960s remain relevant in contemporary Kenya. It outlines the politics of the majimbo debate of the 1960s to argue that regionalism was rooted in a colonial system of political mobilization. Those who supported majimboism were minorities, both African and European, fearing economic domination because of the underdevelopment of their regions, or political exclusion in a nation state dominated by more populous ethnic groups. The electoral politics of region and nation took shape within KADU and KANU respectively. The article goes on to analyse the importance of the Regional Boundaries Commission of 1962 in consolidating public support behind the two parties. The conclusion examines the revival of majimboism in the re-emergence of multi-party politics during the 1990s. Many of the constitutional claims made by KADU in the early 1960s are now again under consideration by the National Rainbow Coalition (NaRC) government, and majimboist ideas can be heard from KANU, now in opposition. Majimboism reflects a fundamental tension between region and nation that was not adequately addressed in the independence settlement. Its current revival highlights the limitations of the colonial model of government that Kenya retained. For that reason, regionalism may yet be a more enduring political project than was nationalism.
This article explores a hitherto overlooked consequence of regime change in Africa. It shows how the shift from one-party to multiparty rule in the region altered the kinds of ethnic cleavages that structure political competition and conflict. The article demonstrates how the different strategic logics of political competition in one-party and multiparty settings create incentives for political actors to emphasize different kinds of ethnic identities: local-level identities (usually revolving around tribe or clan) in one-party elections and broader scale identities (usually revolving around region, language, or religion) in multiparty elections. The argument is illustrated with evidence from the 1991 and 1992 regime transitions in Zambia and Kenya.
The legacies of country-wide authoritarian rule and economic statism, as well as the reasons why inherited institutions and relationships were maintained after independence help to explain why opposition parties have largely disappeared in Africa. In Kenya, the regimes' monopoly of resources and sanctions, and its consequent ability to reward its friends and punish dissidents made it costly to be a member of the KPU, the opposition party.-from Author
This is a study of the impact of political and economic liberalisation on modes of socio-economic engagement and accumulation in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi, subsequent to the introduction of multiparty ‘democracy’ in 1992.1 On the one hand economic liberalisation led to a diminished state-provisioning capacity and unwillingness to protect public interests. On the other hand, political conditionalities opened up political space but also spawned anomic tendencies within the regime and among social groups and individuals, with struggles in defence of economic position against each other at one level, and against the state and local councils at another. This account focuses on the political economy underlying the resultant urban banditry in Nairobi. It seeks to demonstrate how a besieged regime facilitates the criminalisation of urban existence in a bid to ensure its survival.The argument here is that beleaguered regimes survive through a twin strategy. They privatise public violence and appropriate private violence. The net effect is the perversion of social order and the emergence of bandit economies. Regime longevity may derive not only from lack of an alternative leadership and organising ideology, but also from the threat to perceived benefits accruing from such informal economies. The ruling elite responds to the possibility of losing power by using neo-patrimonial structures to selectively allocate public spaces to their cronies, thereby subverting social order and undermining democratisation, security and social harmony; this in turn spawns urban banditry. Urban banditry here denotes the unregulated deployment of instruments of coercion by ruling elite and various elements within the citizenry in bids to facilitate acquisition of economic benefits and political leverage.
Faced with the challenge of a new, multi-ethnic political coalition, Presi- dent Daniel arap Moi shifted the axis of the 2002 electoral contest from ethnicity to the politics of generational conflict. The strategy backfired, ripping his party wide open and resulting in its humiliating defeat in the December 2002 general elections. Nevertheless, the discourse of a genera- tional change of guard as a blueprint for a more accountable system of governance won the support of some youth movements like Mungiki. This article examines how the movement's leadership exploited the gener- ational discourse in an effort to capture power. Examining the manipula- tion of generational and ethnic identities in patrimonial politics, the article argues that the instrumentalization of ethnicity in African politics has its corollary in the concomitant instrumentalization of other identities — race, class, gender, clan, age and religion.
In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions' emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and choose, individually and in collective settings. We then tie the processes of learning to institutional analysis, providing arguments in favor of what can be characterized as "cognitive institutionalism." Besides, we show that a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should start at the cognitive level, proceed at the institutional level, and culminate at the economic level.
This article identifies for the first time systematic performance differences between younger and older democracies and argues that these are driven by the inability of political competitors to make broadly credible preelectoral promises to voters. Younger democracies are more corrupt; exhibit less rule of law, lower levels of bureaucratic quality and secondary school enrollment, and more restrictions on the media; and spend more on public investment and government workers. This pattern is exactly consistent with the predictions of Keefer and Vlaicu (n.d.). The inability of political competitors to make credible promises to citizens leads them to prefer clientelist policies: to underprovide nontargeted goods, to overprovide targeted transfers to narrow groups of voters, and to engage in excessive rent seeking. Other differences that young democracies exhibit, including different political and electoral institutions, greater exposure to political violence, and greater social fragmentation, do not explain, either theoretically or empirically, these policy choices.
This paper suggests that explanations of property rights transformation need to move beyond models of relative price change and state enforcement to include accounts that accommodate conflict and competition among actors, and the possibility that state actors may not provide the enforcement that is often taken for granted. The transition from collective to individualized holdings in Kenya’s Maasailand is burdened with politics and procedural problems that can undermine the gains anticipated in that move. Moreover, in semi-arid ecological settings, individualization results in unstable land holdings, necessitating re-contracting, and reaggregation by individual parcel owners.
It is typically assumed that African leaders enact policies that benefit their ethnoregional group using all types of patronage. Crop production and political power are geographically concentrated in many African countries, and this paper exploits this overlap to cast doubt on this conventional wisdom. It shows, using data on 50 country-crop combinations, that cash crop farmers who are ethnically identified with the head of state face higher taxes. Furthermore, democratic regimes impose lower taxes. This paper shows that farmers who have few alternatives face higher taxes. African leaders have used local intermediaries to exert control over the countryside and to ensure that farmers do not support alternative candidates It suggests that as leaders are better at selecting and monitoring these intermediaries in their home areas, they can extract more from the majority at home than abroad using taxes on cash crops, which are regionally but not individually targetable.
Animal migration is a magnificent sight: a mile-long blanket of cranes rising from a Nebraska river and filling the sky; hundreds of thousands of wildebeests marching across the Serengeti; a blaze of orange as millions of monarch butterflies spread their wings to take flight. Natureâs great migrations have captivated countless spectators, none more so than premier ecologist David S. Wilcove. In No Way Home, his awe is palpableâas are the growing threats to migratory animals. We may be witnessing a dying phenomenon among many species. Migration has always been arduous, but todayâs travelers face unprecedented dangers. Skyscrapers and cell towers lure birds and bats to untimely deaths, fences and farms block herds of antelope, salmon are caught en route between ocean and river, breeding and wintering grounds are paved over or plowed, and global warming disrupts the synchronized schedules of predators and prey. The result is a dramatic decline in the number of migrants. Wilcove guides us on their treacherous journeys, describing the barriers to migration and exploring what compels animals to keep on trekking. He also brings to life the adventures of scientists who study migrants. Often as bold as their subjects, researchers speed wildly along deserted roads to track birds soaring overhead, explore glaciers in search of frozen locusts, and outfit dragonflies with transmitters weighing less than one one-hundredth of an ounce. Scientific discoveries and advanced technologies are helping us to understand migrations better, but alone, they wonât stop sea turtles and songbirds from going the way of the bison or passenger pigeon. Whatâs required is the commitment and cooperation of the far-flung countries migrants crossâlong before extinction is a threat. As Wilcove writes, âprotecting the abundance of migration is key to protecting the glory of migration.â No Way Home offers powerful inspiration to preserve those glorious journeys.
This article examines recent violence in Nairobi in the context of increased vigilante activity throughout Kenya, and relates this to the broader political context of violence in the run‐up to the next general election, which is expected to take place before the end of 2002. The starting point for the analysis is the conflict between two rival vigilante groups in Nairobi's Kariobangi North estate, Mungiki and the T<?Pub Caret1>aliban. It is argued that existing scholarly interpretations of Mungiki need to be reassessed in view of recent violent and criminal activities linked to the movement, and in light of the shifting political position of its leaders and the ethnocentric posture they have adopted. The increasing prevalence of vigilante groups in the city is shown to be partly a reflection of growing criminal activities, especially extortion, and partly the consequence of struggles for political control in the city, where the ruling party KANU has only slender support. The ‘New Vigilantes’ of Nairobi exploit urban insecurity for materialist gain, but they have also merged with the Majeshi la Wazee (‘Armies of the Elders’) that have long been deployed to ‘protect’ the interests of their political clients. In this context, heightening urban violence is seen to be both criminal and political in character, and it is argued that it is likely that vigilante groups will again be used as political instruments in the electoral struggle for the city.
Kenya's return to pluralist politics in the early 1990s saw the eruption of political violence that has since laid siege to human rights and democracy. This article discusses the Mungiki movement which, like the Mau Mau movement that waged armed struggle against the British in the 1950s, has sprouted among the Kikuyu. It examines Mungiki within the broader theoretical context of competitive electoral politics and political violence in contemporary Kenya. In addition to tracing the movement's religious and ideological roots, the article shows how ‘informal repression’ or quasi‐legitimization of sectarian violence for political ends by the state, has transformed a ‘moral ethnic’ movement into a ‘politically tribal’ one. As a contribution to the academic debate on Mungiki , the article draws on the rich public debate in Kenya and the author's close study of the movement in 2001–2.
James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and show that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
Ethnicity is an important institution and one that impacts on the quality of governance. This paper focuses on the behaviour of ethnic groups and specifically on their impact on the provision of public goods. The paper shows that ethnic heterogeneity results in under-provision of non-excludable public goods. On the other hand, such societies are associated with a high prevalence of patronage goods. The paper proposes some areas of research such as the economics of ethnic institutions, empirical investigation of the role ethnic groups on public goods provision, tax compliance and institutional reforms to improve governance. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
In late-century Africa, domestic reformers and the international community prescribed political reform as a means for securing policy reform. They sought to put an end to single party and military government and introduced multiparty politics. Using a principal agent framework, the author assesses the logical validity of these efforts. And employing a game theoretic approach, he traces the impact of political reform on political stability. He employs a panel of data from both African and global samples to measure the impact of reform on the economics and politics of Africa. The evidence suggests that reform has measurably curtailed the opportunistic use of politcal power, failed to influence the formulation of macro-economic policy, and increased the likelihood of political disorder. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
The Current Situation of Internally Displaced Persons in Kenya
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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything New York: HarperCollinsLearning, Institutions, and Economic Performance The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis 209 Downloaded by
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In Kenya: The Struggle for Democracy Nasong'o. London and New York: Zed BooksThe Role of the Police in Kenya's Democratisation ProcessThe Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate
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Political Parties in Kenya: Patterns of Opposition and Dissent: 1919Á1969.'' Ph.D. diss., Princeton UniversitySubdividing the Commons: Distributional Conflict in the Transition from Collective to Individual Property Rights in Kenya's Masailand
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Redistributing From Above Uppsala: Nordiska Africanstituet Kayas of Deprivation, Kayas of Blood: Violence, Ethnicity and the State in Coastal Kenya. Nairobi: Kenya Human Rights Commission Where Terror Rules: Torture By Kenyan Police in North Eastern Province
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Before the election, he had told Kikuyus to 'lie low like envelopes' and other politicians were equally virulent in their warningsEconomic Backwardness in Political Perspective
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The Politics of Alliance Building in Kenya In The Politics of Transition in Kenya: From KANU to NARC
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Out for the Count: 1997 General Elections and Prospects for Democracy in Kenya
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The Challenges and Efficiency of Election Monitoring The Politics of Transition in Kenya: from KANU TO NARC
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Leaders of Tomorrow: The Youth and Democratisation in Kenya
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From Abertura to Closure
- R Joseph
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Resuscitating the 'Majimbo Projects': The Politics of Deconstructing the Unity State in Kenya.'' In Challenges to the Nation State in AfricaEconomic Performance through Time
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The Centrality of Ethnicity in Kenya's Political Transition.'' In The Politics of Transition in Kenya: From KANU to NARC
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Politics of Marionettes: Extra-Legal Violence and the 1997 Elections in Kenya In Out for the Count: TheClash of Generations? Youth, Identity, and the Politics of Transition in KenyaFacing Mount Kenya or Facing Mecca? The Mungiki Ethnic Violence and the Politics of the Moi Succession
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Deadly Marionettes: State Sponsored Violence in Africa
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Kenya's 1992 Election and Its Implication for Democratisation in Sub-Saharan Africa
- R Ajulu