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Abstract
This paper examines Western countries' pressure – or lack thereof – for peace, justice and democracy in Kenya. It analyzes the period since the 2008 National Accord, which defused the 2007–08 post-election crisis, focusing on the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the 2013 elections. The paper draws extensively on interviews conducted in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013 with Western officials based in Nairobi, as well as informed Kenyans. It argues, first, that recent Western pressure is the latest iteration of a consistent pattern of donors not enforcing stated conditions for future support, causing diminishing returns. Second, donors not only have been reluctant to use potential leverage over the Kenyan government, but also have consistently underestimated it and erred by publicly threatening to use it only at the least strategic moment and not when it could have been most effective. Third, Western officials have continued to make short-term decisions favoring stability or peace that actually undermine basic principles of democracy and justice.
Acknowledgements
Stephen Brown made his contributions to this article while Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He is grateful to the centre and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 820-2009-001) for funding and other forms of assistance. Rosalind Raddatz acknowledges the generous support of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. The authors have benefitted from comments and suggestions received from Hervé Maupeu and two peer reviewers, as well as during presentations at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies' Institute of African Affairs, Hamburg, 22 May 2013; at a workshop on the 2013 Kenyan elections, Nairobi, 3–4 June 2013; and at a conference on “Kenya at 50” at Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 26–27 September 2013.
Notes
1. Stephen Brown conducted the 2008, 2010 and 2012 interviews cited in this article. He undertook the ones from 2010 jointly with Chandra Lekha Sriram (University of East London). Rosalind Raddatz carried out the 2013 interviews. Because of sensitivities on the topics discussed, very few interviewees agreed to be cited by name. When they were unwilling to allow any indication of their position, we provide full anonymity by citing them as “unattributable interview.”
2. In 2011, the ten largest contributors of net official development assistance to Kenya were, in descending order: the United States (US$715 million), Germany (US$157 million), the UK (US$142 million), European Union institutions (US$134 million), France (US$93 million), Japan (US$80 million), Sweden (US$77 million), Denmark (US$71 million), Canada (US$42 million), and the Netherlands (US$35 million) (CitationOECD, Query Wizard).
3. For instance, CitationGeisler, “Fair?”; CitationKelley, “D-Minus Elections”; and CitationKelley, Monitoring Democracy, to name but a few examples.
4. CitationCollier, “Failure of Conditionality”; CitationKanbur, “Aid, Conditionality and Debt”; CitationMosley et al., Aid and Power.
5. CitationCrawford, “Foreign Aid and Political Conditionality”; CitationCrawford, Foreign Aid and Political Reform.
6. CitationWhitfield, Politics of Aid; CitationBrown and Harman, African Agency in International Politics.
7. CitationFeyissa, “Aid Negotiation.”
8. CitationFisher, “Some More Reliable than Others.” On the Ugandan government's use of its intervention in Somalia to evade donor censure on governance issues, see CitationFisher, “Managing Donor Perceptions.”
9. CitationWhitaker, “Soft Balancing among Weak States?”; also CitationWhitaker, “Compliance among Weak States”; CitationWhitaker, “Reluctant Partners.” For an account that attributes more power to the United States in this relationship, see CitationPrestholdt, “Kenya, the United States and Counterterrorism.”
10. CitationMcGee and García Heredia, “Paris in Bogotá”; CitationBrown, “Sovereignty Matters.”
11. CitationCrawford, “Foreign Aid and Political Conditionality”; CitationCrawford, Foreign Aid and Political Reform.
12. CitationBrown, “Foreign Aid and Democracy Promotion.”
13. CitationFisher, “The Limits – and Limiters – of External Influence.”
14. CitationBrown, “‘Well, What Can You Expect?’”
15. CitationZürcher, “Conflict, State Fragility and Aid Effectiveness,” 469.
16. CitationPeiffer and Englebert, “Extraversion, Vulnerability to Donors,” 362.
17. CitationLevitsky and Way, “Linkage versus Leverage,” 379.
18. CitationLevitsky and Way, “Linkage versus Leverage,”, 380; also CitationLevitsky and Way, “Linkage and Leverage.”
19. CitationBorchgrevink, “Limits to Donor Influence.”
20. CitationWhitfield and Fraser, “Negotiating Aid.”
21. For instance, see CitationGeist, “Kenya's 1997 Elections”; and CitationElection Observation Centre, Kenya General Elections 1997; as well as analysis in CitationBrown, “Authoritarian Leaders and Multiparty Elections.”
22. CitationBrown, “Quiet Diplomacy and Recurring ‘Ethnic Clashes.’”
23. CitationKiliku Commission, Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee; CitationAkiwumi Commission, Report by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry. See also the summary in CitationKenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), Lest We Forget.
24. CitationBranch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 200, 246–7.
25. For an analysis of the atrocities and their causes, see CitationAnderson and Lochery, “Violence and Exodus in Kenya's Rift Valley”; and CitationMueller, “Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis”; as well as several articles in CitationKagwanja and Southall, a special issue of Journal of Contemporary African Studies.
26. CitationCheeseman and Tendi. “Power-Sharing in Comparative Perspective”; also CitationBrown, “Donor Responses to the 2008 Kenyan Crisis”; and CitationHansen, “Kenya's Power-Sharing Arrangement.”
27. CitationWaki Commission, Report of the Commission of Inquiry, 473; also CitationBrown, “National Accord.”
28. Two unattributable interviews, Nairobi, December 2008; two interviews with Western embassy officials, Nairobi, December 2008. Worth noting is that the creation of the tribunal itself might not have been sufficient to achieve widespread accountability. Lack of government cooperation and witness intimidation have severely hampered the work of the ICC – and it would be easier to sabotage the effectiveness of a Special Tribunal.
29. Interviews with a European ambassador and two Western embassy officials, Nairobi, December 2008.
30. CitationWorld Bank, “World Development Indicators.”
31. Both wings of the coalition contained high-ranking officials who are widely believed to be responsible for the 2007–08 atrocities and they joined forces in an anti-accountability alliance, effectively blocking efforts to present the enabling legislation from ever being debated in parliament; CitationBrown with Sriram, “Big Fish Won't Fry Themselves.” Annan handed over the Waki documents to the ICC in July 2009. The ICC launched an official investigation in March 2010 and laid charges in September 2011.
32. Unattributable interview, Nairobi, January 2010.
33. Interview, United Nations official, Nairobi, January 2010.
34. Unattributable interview, Nairobi, January 2010.
35. Interview with Willy Mutunga, Representative, Ford Foundation, Nairobi, 20 January 2010. On the relative size of donors, see note Footnote2.
36. Interview with Mugambi Kiai, Programme Officer, Open Society Initiative for East Africa, Nairobi, 10 December 2008; unattributable interview, Nairobi, January 2010; interviews with a European diplomat and a Western diplomatic official, Nairobi, June 2012.
37. Interview with Mugambi Kiai, Programme Officer, Open Society Initiative for East Africa, Nairobi, 15 January, 2010; unattributable interview, Nairobi, January 2010; unattributable interview, Nairobi, June 2012.
38. Unattributable interview, Nairobi, January 2010.
39. Interview with a European diplomat, Nairobi, June 2012; unattributable interview, Nairobi, January 2010.
40. Interview with a Western diplomatic official, Nairobi, May 2013.
41. Interviews with a Western diplomatic official, a European diplomat, and an unattributable source, Nairobi, June 2012.
42. Interviews with a Western diplomatic official and an unattributable source, Nairobi, June 2012. The former described Kenya as a “flawed, but sort of a success story as a democracy” and considered some level of electoral violence inevitable, as “it is part of the culture.”
43. Interview with a European aid official, Nairobi, June 2012.
44. Interviews with a European diplomat, a European aid official, a Canadian aid official, and an unattributable source, Nairobi, June 2012.
45. Interview with a Western diplomatic official, Nairobi, May 2013.
46. Unattributable interview, Nairobi, June 2012. The Kenyan government actively exploited division among donors, “defanging” them in the process; interview with a European aid official, Nairobi, June 2012.
47. CitationBrown, “Lessons Learned and Forgotten.”
48. CitationWaki Commission, Report of the Commission of Inquiry. The United States, the UK, and Sweden raised the issue, but other donors considered it “too sensitive”; interview with a European aid official, Nairobi, June 2012.
49. Johnnie Carson, remarks made at the “Kenya at 50” conference, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 26 September, 2013.
50. Interview with a diplomatic official, Nairobi, June 2013.
51. CitationAnalysis Africa, “Nairobi Angers Brussels”.
52. Interviews with a diplomatic official and an aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
53. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
54. Interview with a Western diplomatic official, Nairobi, May 2013.
55. CitationMathenge, “How British PR Firm Helped.”
56. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
57. Interview with a Western diplomatic official, Nairobi, May 2013.
58. CitationLough, “Western Powers Congratulate Kenya.”
59. CitationKelly, “US, UK congratulate Kenyans.”
60. CitationUK Prime Minister's Office, PM Letter to President-Elect Kenyatta.
61. CitationGovernment of Canada, Canada Comments on Election Results in Kenya.
62. CitationDaily Nation, “Kenya Election Reactions.”
63. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, June 2013.
64. Interviews with a diplomatic official and a Western aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
65. Interview with a diplomatic official, May 2013.
66. Interviews with two diplomats, Nairobi, June 2013.
67. CitationDaily Nation, “Kenya Frustrating Justice.”
68. CitationKaberia, “Kenya: ICC Prosecutor Drops Muthaura's Case.”
69. CitationBosco, “Kenya's Blistering Attack.”
70. Interview with a Western diplomatic official, Nairobi, May 2013.
71. Interview with a European diplomat, Nairobi, June 2013.
72. Interview with a diplomat, Nairobi, June 2013.
73. CitationUK Department of Trade and Investment, Increasing Business with Kenya.
74. Interview with a European diplomat, Nairobi, June 2013.
75. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, June 2013.
76. CitationBlair, “Kenyan Leader.”
77. CitationThe Star, “Kenya and UK Strike Deal.”
78. Interview with a diplomat, Nairobi, June 2013.
79. Interview with a Western diplomatic official, May 2013.
80. CitationAFP and Capital Reporter, “ICC Cases Reason for Kenya Snub.”
81. CitationAssociated Press, “Obama Phones Kenyan President.”
82. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
83. One interviewee stated that donors “would all love to see national accountability but no one will stick out their necks”; interview with a European development agency official, Nairobi, June 2012.
84. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
85. Interview with a Canadian aid official, Nairobi, June 2012.
86. On targeted sanctions, see CitationDrezner, “Sanctions Sometimes Smart.”
87. Interview with a Western aid official, Nairobi, May 2013.
88. For instance, see CitationBaker, “Outstaying One's Welcome.”