The politics of control in Kenya: Understanding the bureaucratic-executive state, 1952–78

Abstract

Colonial rule in Kenya witnessed the emergence of a profoundly unbalanced institutional landscape. With all capacity resided in a strong prefectural provincial administration, political parties remained underdeveloped. The co-option of sympathetic African elites during the colonial twilight into the bureaucracy, the legislature and the private property-based economy meant that the allies of colonialism and representatives of transnational capital were able to reap the benefits of independence. In the late colonial period these elites not only attained the means of production, they also assumed the political and institutional capacity to reproduce their dominance. The post-colonial state must therefore be seen as a representation of the interests protected and promoted during the latter years of colonial rule. Under Jomo Kenyatta, the post-colonial state represented a ‘pact-of-domination’ between transnational capital, the elite and the executive. The ability of this coalition to reproduce itself over time lay in its capacity to demobilise popular forces, especially those elements of the nationalist movement that questioned both the social and economic cleavages of the post-colonial state. Whilst Kenya may have experienced changes to both the executive and legislature, the structure of the state itself has demonstrated remarkable continuity.

The Strategic Shuffle: Ethnic Geography, the Internal Security Apparatus, and Elections in Kenya

“…Most notably, see Throup and Hornsby () for descriptions of the actions that PA officers engaged in to tilt the election toward Moi. For research on how prior regimes had used the PA to stay in power see Gertzel (), Mueller (), and Branch and Cheeseman ().…”

Kenya: The struggle for a new constitutional order, edited by Godwin R. Murunga, Duncan Okello and Ahders Sjogren, London, Zed Books, 2014, xi+192pp, $134.95 (Hardback), ISBN 978-1-78032-366-4

“…The immediate historical background to what happened in the 2007 election campaigns and the seeds of the violence that rocked Kenya can be traced to the reneging on the memorandum of understanding (MoU) that led to the creation of the pre-2002 election party, the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC) (see Branch and Cheeseman 2006;2008b for a longer historical perspective). The MoU was signed in 2002 between the National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).…”

“…• the centralisation of power in the presidency and concomitant personalisation of the institution of the presidency ; • the dispersal of these powers in the country from top to bottom through a tightly woven and controlled network of provincial administration and an equally networked security and spying system (Branch and Cheeseman 2006;; and • the subsequent arbitrary, criminal and murderous deployment of this power to destabilise and neuter potential foci of organised opposition and to extract compliance from citizens through the use or threat of force (Ajulu 2000;).…”

Regimes and Randomization: Authoritarianism and Field Research in Contemporary Kenya*

“…The postcolonial authoritarian regime can be grouped into three distinct phases that vary with respect to the level of electoral contestation-the hegemonic single-party electoral contestation during Jomo Kenyatta's government and the first years of Daniel arap Moi's rule (1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982), the closed authoritarian period of Moi's rule in the 1980s (1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992), and the competitive electoral authoritarian period following the reintroduction of multiparty elections in the 1990s (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002). Despite the variations in the degree of electoral contestation between these periods, I classify the entire period from 1963-2002 as one regime because of two common features: the dominance of KANU as the ruling party and the importance of "bureaucratic executive" governance through the provincial administration (Branch and Cheeseman, 2006). In the two sections that follow, I describe the colonial and postcolonial authoritarian regimes in more detail and analyze how the legacies of each of these regimes continue to shape the practice of field research in contemporary Kenya.…”

“…For each vignette, I present a brief narrative or set of narratives, and then critically analyze those experiences using two theoretical lenses: institutional theories of authoritarian regimes (Branch and Cheeseman, 2006;Brownlee, 2009;Levitsky and Way, 2010;Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, 2014) and cultural theories of authoritarian cultural practices and power dynamics (Ferguson, 1990;Scott, 1990;Wedeen, 2007). Although this mode of analysis is most commonly practiced in contemporary cultural anthropology, it has an affinity with the methods and approach used in interpretivist political science research (Wedeen, 2002).…”