This issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies is wholly devoted to a single topic, the election crisis in Kenya. In the early part of last year we laid plans to carry a small group of three or four papers dealing with aspects of these important elections in the July issue of 2008, but as events unfolded in the early days of January 2008 and the seriousness of the crisis for the entire region became apparent, the decision was taken to extend our coverage. To accomplish this, Daniel Branch and Nic Cheeseman took on the role of guest editors. They organized two workshops on the Kenya elections, the first held in Nairobi on 6 January 2008, and the second at Somerville College, Oxford, on 17 January 2008. Many of the papers appearing in this special issue were first aired at one of these workshops. Both events were very well attended (40 participants in Nairobi, and more than 150 in Oxford), speakers including many journalists and human rights activists as well as academics. The Nairobi workshop was generously supported by the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the L'Institut francais de recherché en Afrique (IFRA), and the Oxford workshop was funded through the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.
To produce ‘Election Fever: Kenya's Crisis’ so speedily we required the cooperation of a large team of peer reviewers, who returned comments on papers within two to three days of our requests. They must necessarily remain anonymous, but their contribution to the editorial process was essential and is greatly appreciated. Our publishers, Routledge, also deserve thanks for their willingness to bring this issue out at an early date, well ahead of the publication schedule. Routledge have also permitted us to produce an additional paper as a free download on the Journal's web page (www.informaworld.com/RJEA). This paper, compiled by Toni Weis, contains a full record of the presidential and parliamentary election results as they stand at present, and will be updated if there are subsequent changes to the final results. To increase the circulation of this special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies we also plan to make additional copies available for purchase within Kenya through the British Institute in Eastern Africa.
Our guest editors were assisted by many people in organizing the two workshops and in bringing this issue to print. They would like to thank the following: Charlotte Njeru, Gladwell Otieno, Stefan Dercon, Tessa Bold, Peter Kagwanja, Tom Wolf, Ralph-Michael Peters, Oliver Kisaka, Sebestian Elischer, Damaris Seliena, Leigh Gardner, and Chelsea Payne.
Due to constraints of space, we were not able to include in this special issue all the materials on the election crisis submitted to us. We therefore intend to continue the debate on Kenya's crisis in future issues of the journal, and would welcome further contributions on this theme.