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Abstract
This paper examines the lessons learned from Kenya's 2007 post election violence and what has happened since then. It notes that the root causes of the violence still persist, have not been addressed, and easily could be reignited. Faced with a situation where institutions and the rule of law have been weakened deliberately and where diffused violence is widespread, both Kenya's transition to democracy and the fate of the nation remain vulnerable. The argument here is that the problems faced in holding and managing elections in conflict situations often are not simply technical. Instead, in Kenya and elsewhere, many difficulties are symptomatic of larger political and institutional questions related to democratic change that are more difficult to analyze in causal terms or to address.
Acknowledgments
This is a revised version of paper prepared for a ‘Workshop on Elections and Conflict: Promoting Good Practice in Electoral Conflict Management’, The North South Institute, Ottawa, Canada, 29–30 October 2009. Thanks to Phil Keefer, Ron Rogowski, Steve Levitsky, Charles Hornsby, and Stephen Brown for their comments and editorial suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.
Notes
1. Also see note 2.
2. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss fully theories concerning democracy and the transition to democracy.
3. As John Githongo has noted, ‘Indeed, in a cruel irony the much vaunted middle class, supposed to be the driver of modernity, became and remains the most vociferous of Kenya's new ethnic nationalists’. See http://www.marsgroupkenya.org/multimedia/?StoryID=269341.
4. William Reno's work is most closely associated with the term ‘shadow states’. He defines a shadow state ‘as one that is constructed behind the face of laws and government institutions’ and ‘is a form of personal rule’, ‘based on the decisions and interests of an individual, not a set of written laws and procedures’ (Reno Citation2000, 434).
5. The first part of this paper, encompassing the three subsections, summarizes the main points of the article. The original article includes more theory, analysis, and attention to empirical detail. In some places I have used direct quotes from the paper, but being the author, I have not used quotation marks.
6. For a further discussion of this in the Kenyan context, see Mueller, ‘The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis.’ For a discussion of the emergence of ‘shadow states’ elsewhere in Africa, see Reno (Citation2002, 837–58; 2000, 432–59).
7. For a discussion of how repression in Kenya worked and its continuity with the colonial state, see Mueller (1984, 399–427). The biggest crackdown was after the 1982 failed attempted coup.
8. Much of the discussion in this section is drawn from newspaper articles in the Nation and the Standard from February 2008 to the present.
9. For a discussion about why Kenya had not experienced civil war up to 2005 (see Kimenyi and Ndung'u 2005). For a related discussion about rebel groups in the post cold war situation that are able to challenge the state but not confront it directly (see Kalyvas and Balcells 2010).
10. Quotes from private interviews with Kenyans and researchers, 2008–9.
11. For discussions and information collected by human rights groups, see http://blog.marsgroupkenya.org/?p=623; For the United Nations, General Assembly, Human Rights Council (Citation2009), seehttp://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/11session/reports.htm.
12. Private discussions. Also see De Smedt (Citation2009, 581–98).
13. Reports over the past year in Kenya's dailies, The Nation and The Standard, report an increase in crime. This is supported by surveys in which only half of the respondents feel safer than they did six months ago, and with 27% feeling less safe and another 20% feeling about the same. See Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Project (2009, 3), http://www.dialoguekenya.org.
14. As of April 2010, the TJRC was paralyzed with all of its commissioners demanding that its head Bethwell Kiplagat resign because of questions concerning his credibility when he was an official under former President Moi. The new constitution, which still awaits the passage of laws to implement it, contains greater checks and balances on the president, a new Senate, and some level of devolution to the county level, with each of the above changes still being contested by parts of the political elite as too little or too much change.
15. Already since the ICC announced its list of perpetrators there has been an apparent realignment of forces with William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Kilonzo Musyoka teaming up against Raila Odinga in preparation for the 2012 election in spite of the Ruto and Kenyatta having been identified as alleged perpetrators by the ICC.
16. See Branch and Cheeseman (Citation2009), for their discussion of elite fragmentation. For instance, the recent marginalization of William Ruto, who mobilized the Kalenjin vote for Odinga in the 2007 election, by Kibaki and Odinga could either be a precursor to a new Kikuyu Luo alliance in 2012 or a first attempt by key Kibaki stalwarts to strand Odinga in 2012.
17. See http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/doc/doc854287.pdf; http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2009/07/seeking-truth-justice-reconciliation-in.html. Before receiving permission to begin a formal investigation in Kenya, the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) was doing a ‘Situation Analysis’ of the case. This was the first time the ICC's Chief Prosecutor had taken up a case on his own volition. Previously, all cases before the court had been referred to him either by a country itself (known as self referral) or by the Security Council.
18. Those named as suspects by the ICC are Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya's first president, a Party of National Unity (PNU) Deputy Prime Minister and current Minister of Finance; William Ruto, former deposed Orange Democratic Movement (ODM )Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Higher Education, and acknowledged leader of the Kalenjin; Henry Kosgey, chairman of the ODM ,key ally of Raila Odinga, and Minister of Industrialization; Francis Muthaura, the head of the civil service and a close Meru confident of President Mwai Kibaki; Mohammed Ali, former Police Commissioner and current Postmaster General; and Julius arap Sang, host of the vernacular Kalenjin radio station Kass FM. For the ICC's cases and evidence against these individuals see http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/exeres/BA2041D8-3F30-4531-8850-431B5B2F4416.htm
19. Even if the bill is signed by the president, pulling out of the ICC would not affect the current Kenya cases according to Article 127 of the Rome Statute. Also, to pull out, Kenya would have to notify the United Nations Secretary General, with the whole process taking up to a year.
20. Many Kenyans hope and believe that both the ICC's charges against high level perpetrators of the 2007 post election violence and the possibility of some successful prosecutions might be enough to deter future electoral violence.
21. Numerous reports of witness harassment have appeared in the Kenyan press since the Waki Commission finished its work. For recent examples see Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Project (2010, 16–17); The Standard (Citation2010b); Nairobi Star (2010b); The Standard (Citation2010a); Nairobi Star (2010a); Daily Nation (Citation2009); Daily Nation (Citation2010a); Daily Nation (Citation2010b); VOA News (Citation2010).
22. This point also is discussed in Mueller, ‘The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis.’
23. This quotation is from the pre-conference flyer the North South Institute's conference in October 2009 for which this paper was originally prepared.
24. A recent commission suggested increasing MPs salaries and perks to around $210,000 a year (See Daily Nation Citation2010c).
25. Among others, see articles in The Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2, 2002. Also see Southall Citation1999.
