Democratization, sequencing, and state failure in Africa: Lessons from Kenya

Branch, Daniel; Cheeseman, Nic

doi:10.1093/afraf/adn065

Cited by 158 publications

(70 citation statements)

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“…Ghana is perhaps the country which in the whole of Africa, since 1992, has made the most strenuous efforts to consolidate its advances in democratic practice, achieved inter alia through reforms in electoral practice, involvement of foreign observers in monitoring of elections and a drive to increase the electoral participation rate (Fridy, 2007;Branch and Cheeseman, 2008;Whitfield, 2009). Each of the five elections since 1992 has been tightly contested between the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

Mosley

Chiripanhura

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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Abstract:We seek to understand both the incidence and the impact of the African political business cycle in the light of a literature which has argued that, with major extensions of democracy since the 1990s, the cycle has both become more intense and has made African political systems more fragile. With the help of country-case studies, we argue, first, that the African political business cycle is not homogeneous, and is rarely encountered in so-called 'dominant-party systems' where a pre-election stimulus confers little political advantage. Secondly, we show that, in those countries where a political cycle does occur, it does not necessarily cause institutional damage. Whether it does or not depends not so much on whether there is an electoral cycle as on whether this calms or exacerbates fears of an unjust allocation of resources. In other words, the composition of the pre-election stimulus, in terms of its allocation between different categories of voter, is as important as its size.1 Our thanks to Helene Ehrhart, Victor Lledo, Vera Troeger, Paul Whiteley and other participants at seminars at the University of Essex and the Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford (March 2010) for most valuable comments on an early version. The paper derives from work done under research contract 156/25/0016, The Political Economy of Pro-Poor Adjustment and Growth, within the ESRC's World Economy and Finance Programme, and we are grateful to the ESRC for their support and encouragement. 2The African political business cycle: varieties of experience 1.IntroductionFor well over a century, the economies of industrialised countries have been subject to systematic economic fluctuations, often known as business cycles. No amount of macroeconomic management has been able to get rid of these cycles, and many have claimed that governments within a democratic system have an incentive to stimulate rather than restrain a pattern of 'stop-go' in their policies. It is tempting, for example, to buy popularity by boosting the economy before an election, for example through tax cuts or monetary expansion, knowing that the costs of doing this, for example, in terms of increased inflation, may not be foreseen by voters 2 , and in any case do not have to be paid until after the election has been won. At that point, the government may well choose to deflate the economy, both in order to pay for the preelection boost and possibly also to restrain wage claims by making the workforce fear for their jobs 3 . Thus, the political process may of itself tend to augment rather than restrain the business cycle -as observed in a number of Western industrialised countries and analysed by, for example, Kalecki (1943), Nordhaus (1975), one of the present authors (Mosley, 1978) 4 , and Rogoff (1990). And the now firmly embedded global economic environment of open capital markets may, as many have discovered to their cost during the recent global recession, amplify the ease with which such shocks once administered can be passed on to other countri...

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

Mosley

Chiripanhura

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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Section: The Role Of International Organisations During Electoral Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among those who argue in favour of a more comprehensive approach to analysing what happened at all levels are Mueller (2008), and Branch and Cheeseman (2008). In both papers, the elections are seen as the immediate trigger of the crisis, and they both also argue that the crisis has deeper and more significant roots, which Branch and Cheeseman (2008) identify as elite fragmentation, political liberalisation, and state informalisation. Branch and Cheeseman (2008; see also Leonard et al 2009;Smith 2009) provide a useful account of relevant elements in the social and political development in Kenya and they also try to put the ethnic factor into proper perspective by drawing on their insight in elite fragmentation over recent decades, demonstrating convincingly that it is too simplistic to refer only to Kenya's ethnic composition (and the relationships between politicians, political parties and ethnic groups) as the primary cause of the crisis.…”

Section: The Role Of International Organisations During Electoral Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In both papers, the elections are seen as the immediate trigger of the crisis, and they both also argue that the crisis has deeper and more significant roots, which Branch and Cheeseman (2008) identify as elite fragmentation, political liberalisation, and state informalisation. Branch and Cheeseman (2008; see also Leonard et al 2009;Smith 2009) provide a useful account of relevant elements in the social and political development in Kenya and they also try to put the ethnic factor into proper perspective by drawing on their insight in elite fragmentation over recent decades, demonstrating convincingly that it is too simplistic to refer only to Kenya's ethnic composition (and the relationships between politicians, political parties and ethnic groups) as the primary cause of the crisis. Behind the use of the ethnic factor, one finds elite fragmentation as it has developed, and which caused some elite fractions to behave differently in 2006 and 2007 from what they might otherwise have done (for a useful survey of the relationship between ethnic groups and parties, see Elischer 2008; see also Leonard et al 2009: 79ff.).…”

Section: The Role Of International Organisations During Electoral Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Role of International Organisations During Electoral Crises: The Case of Kenya 2007–08

Elklit¹

2011

Representation

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International organisations play many different roles during election processes in new and emerging democracies (and in countries hoping to be seen as democracies). These roles-and their impactbecome particularly interesting during situations that develop into 'an electoral crisis'. An electoral crisis is some kind of humanitarian or political (or other) crisis, where administrative or other problems in relation to an electoral process function as the trigger of the crisis. Many such crises have occurred over recent years, but this article will focus on the Kenyan case of 2007 -08. The tragic violence and ethnic cleansing shocked the world during early 2008. The instrument established jointly by the government of Kenya and international organisations to investigate what went wrong and what should be done to remedy the situation was IREC, the Independent Review Commission. The article demonstrates how international organisations were involved during the electoral process and also makes clear that the considerable amount of international assistance before and during the election was of almost no avail, while it was more useful after the election. IREC's surprising conclusion was that the main problems in the elections were not the finalisation of the vote count and the tabulation or the subsequent presentation of results. One has to look to the country's ethnic composition and history, to Kenya's political culture, and to the incompetence of the Electoral Commission of Kenya to understand why the expectations of an exemplary electoral process were turned into such a misery, despite international assistance from the very beginning of the electoral process.The simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and civic elections in Kenya on 27 December 2007 were disastrous. They were not only disastrous because many of the politically most established and well-known losers did not accept their electoral fate-as they might have done if the election results had been credible to them-but also because serious election-related violence erupted, in some places even before results were known. However, most of the emotion and most of the violence only occurred after the official announcement of the winner of the presidential contest, i.e., the incumbent president, Hon. Mwai Kibaki of PNU (the Party of National Unity), and the surprisingly low-key swearing-in ceremony immediately thereafter. In most cases, the protesters shared the opinion that Hon. Raila Odinga of ODM (the Orange Democratic Movement) should have been declared the winner as he-at least by his supporters-was expected to have got more votes than Kibaki.Estimates of the number of deaths due to the violence oscillate between 1,000 and 1,500, the number of rapes and other forms of physical harassment and intimidation is unknown, and the number of internally displaced persons is anybody's guess, but it was probably in the vicinity of 400,000.

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“…Yet when it comes to the political salience of ethnicity, they are poles apart. While mainland Tanzania has never experienced sustained ethnic clashes, intercommunal violence has undermined political stability in Kenya three times since the reintroduction of multi-party politics (Branch and Cheeseman 2009). Similar differences have also been identified in the relationship between ethnic diversity and the provision of public goods, which appears to be negligible in Tanzania but significant and negative in Kenya (Barkan 1984;1994;Burbidge 2013;Miguel 2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

Trust, Ethnicity and Integrity in East Africa: Experimental Evidence from Kenya and Tanzania

Burbidge

Cheeseman

2017

J. Race Ethnicity Politics

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Political economy comparisons of Kenya and Tanzania have often found the political salience of ethnicity to be far higher in the former than the latter, with a negative impact on intercommunal trust. This difference has tended to be explained on the basis of the different kinds of leadership that the two countries experienced after independence. However, these findings have typically been demonstrated using aggregate or survey data. This paper assesses the salience of ethnicity at the individual level for the first time, deploying monetized two-round trust games in urban Kenya and Tanzania. The experimental games isolate the comparative impact of common knowledge of ethnicity and integrity among a quasi-random selection of 486 citizens. Verifying previous findings, we observe higher levels of trust and trustworthiness in Tanzania as compared with Kenya. Further, in comparison with Kenya, any shared knowledge of ethnic identities in Tanzania leads players to transfer fewer resources, while common knowledge that both players are "honest" led to higher transfers there than in Kenya. These results provide robust evidence of higher levels of trust in Tanzania, and of the negative effect in that country of common knowledge of ethnicity on levels of cooperation. The findings demonstrate the way in which political context can shape the impact of ethnic diversity, and encourage further experimental research that looks at the intersubjective dynamics of social cooperation.

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Democratization, sequencing, and state failure in Africa: Lessons from Kenya

Cited by 158 publications

References 0 publications

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

The African Political Business Cycle: Varieties of Experience

The Role of International Organisations During Electoral Crises: The Case of Kenya 2007–08

Trust, Ethnicity and Integrity in East Africa: Experimental Evidence from Kenya and Tanzania

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