Kenya’s Decade of Experiments with Political Party Alliances and Coalitions: Motivations, Impact and Prospects

Kadima, Denis; Owuor, Felix Odhiambo

doi:10.20940/jae/2014/v13i1a7

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“… 33 This quote (emphasis added) is attributed to Environment Minster Kalonzo Musyoka of the Liberal Democratic Party in The Nation on 20 September 2004, as cited by Kadima and Owuor (2006, 197). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Presidential Systems?

Kellam¹

2015

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why do political parties join coalitions to support other parties’ presidential candidates if presidents, once elected, are not bound to their pre-electoral pledges? This article argues that policy agreements made publicly between coalition partners during the campaign help parties pursue policy goals. However, parties cannot use pre-electoral coalitions to secure access to patronage, pork and government benefits under the control of presidents because they cannot hold presidents accountable to these agreements. Quantitative analysis of Latin American electoral coalitions demonstrates that political parties are more likely to form presidential electoral coalitions as the ideological distance between them decreases. Yet presidential electoral coalitions tend not to include non-programmatic political parties, even though such office-oriented parties are unconstrained by ideological considerations.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Presidential Systems?

Kellam¹

2015

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…., little research has been done into the value of these phenomena and why they form in Africa” (p. 94). Kadima and Owuor (2014) state that the “study of pre-electoral alliances and coalition governments in Africa is in its infancy” (p. 174). This dearth of studies may be due to a lack of available data on African governments, the perception that parties and legislatures do not matter in Africa, or to the assumption that coalition cabinets in Africa are rare, and that when they do form, they do not matter as much as they do elsewhere in the world.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan Portfolio Allocation in African Democracies

Ariotti

Golder

2017

Comparative Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What determines partisan portfolio allocation in African democracies? Despite the vast literature on government formation in Europe and Latin America, there have been no studies of partisan portfolio allocation in Africa. Although coalition governments are increasingly common in Africa, most studies focus on national leaders, and, thus, we know little about how ministerial posts are divided among cabinet parties. Using an original dataset of coalition governments in Africa from 1990 to 2014, we show that existing theories of partisan portfolio allocation can be successfully applied to African democracies. We find that African parties receive ministerial portfolios in rough proportion to their size, that formateur parties in Africa receive more ministerial portfolios than their European counterparts, and that the “formateur bonus” is greater in Africa’s presidential democracies than in its parliamentary ones. Our analyses suggest that scholars can benefit from paying more attention to both coalition governments and legislatures in their analyses of African politics.

show abstract

“…While opposition parties reflect on pre-election alliances and coalition for national cohesion, it is critical for them to learn from other African countries such as Kenya"s lessons. Kadima and Owuor (2014) reckon that alliances and coalitions contribute to national cohesion in Kenya by bringing together polarized political parties and their ethnic groups and ensuring a more equitable sharing of national resources. They further argue that party alliances and coalitions tend to weaken smaller parties and the party system in favour of the larger parties.…”

Section: Potential For Opposition Cohesion In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This power-sharing is new in Kenya. In this paper, we note from Kenya"s experience that the opposition parties in Zimbabwe who are contemplating to forge an grand pre-election coalition may have some lessons to learn for the success of both pre-election and post-election alliances (for more details see Kadima and Owuor (2014), article: "Kenya"s decade of experiments with political party alliances and coalitions-motivations, impact and prospects").…”

Section: Potential For Opposition Cohesion In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

Opposition political parties coalition in Zimbabwe: Challenges and possibilities

Teddy¹,

Vhutuza²

2017

Afr. J. Pol. Sci. Int. Relat.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses the prevalent view among ordinary Zimbabweans that only a grand coalition among select opposition political parties could potentially unseat the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) from power in the upcoming 2018 general elections. The paper argues that the prospects for such a grand coalition are only possible if select parties coalesce around the major opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T). This article takes this argument as the starting point for a discussion of the role and character of opposition political parties and party systems in Zimbabwe and further considers aspects of the performance of individual parties to date and the extent to which they fall short of people's expectations, what in this paper constitutes possibilities and challenges in forging a formidable grand coalition given the magnitude of mistrust within and among them. The state-controlled daily, The Herald was examined to ascertain how it framed the coalition of opposition parties in Zimbabwe. Therefore, secondary data analysis and observation through the lenses of a qualitative approach, of the unfolding political environment in Zimbabwe was done. The Herald which is supposed to be a public newspaper is allegedly a mouthpiece of the ruling party ZANU PF. It was concluded that The Herald's representation of the coalition was propagandistic. It was also concluded that despite personality clashes, mistrust, infiltration, bloated ambitions among leaders and party egos, a grand coalition is possible and that this could possibly fare better than if individual parties contest ZANU PF individually.

show abstract

Kenya’s Decade of Experiments with Political Party Alliances and Coalitions: Motivations, Impact and Prospects

Abstract: This article explains the causes, factors and motivations influencing

Cited by 11 publications

References 4 publications

Why Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Presidential Systems?

Why Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Presidential Systems?

Partisan Portfolio Allocation in African Democracies

Opposition political parties coalition in Zimbabwe: Challenges and possibilities

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About