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This article traces the evolution of an Islamist ideology in Kenya's public discourse, putting Islamist ideas within a longer history of Muslim politics than most other studies. Specifically, it examines internal debates amongst the minority Muslim population of Kenya, and debates between Muslims and the state and Muslims and the wider Christian public, regarding how to improve the Muslim condition in a Christian-dominated country. The immediate background for the emergence of Islamist ideas is then discussed through an examination of trends since the 1990s, including increased contestations of religious and political authority, and responses to Muslim activism by the state and the wider Christian public. The article concludes that Islamist politics in Kenya, and elsewhere, are more often than not a result of local histories as much as they are part of a global Muslim 'victimization' narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the promise of the good governance agenda in African countries since the 1990s rested on reforms aimed at 'getting the institutions right', sometimes by creating regulatory agencies that would be above the fray of partisan politics. Such 'institutional fix' strategies are often frustrated because the new institutions themselves are embedded in existing state structures and power relations. The article argues that implementing Kenya's land law reforms in the 2012–2016 period illustrates this dynamic. In Kenya, democratic structures and the 2010 constitutional devolution of power to county governments created a complex institutional playing field, the contours of which shaped the course of reform. Diverse actors in both administrative and representative institutions of the state, at both the national and county levels, were empowered as 'veto players' whose consent and cooperation was required to realize the reform mandate. An analysis of land administration reform in eight Kenyan counties shows how veto players were able to slow or curtail the implementation of the new land laws. Theories of African politics that focus on informal power networks and state incapacity may miss the extent to which formal state structures and the actors empowered within them can shape the course of reform, either by thwarting the reformist thrust of new laws or by trying to harness their reformist potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics in Kenya remains vulnerable to ethnic tensions despite its openness and vibrancy, but it can also be argued that Kenyan politics is becoming increasingly mature. This article explains the political economy dynamics behind the first two orderly presidential successions in post-colonial Kenya. It proposes a conceptual framework that shows how instrumental ethnicity plays out in a quasi-differentiated society in which ethnic organizations are the key conduits for the flow of rents between political and economic elites. More specifically, it shows how the internal fragmentation of ethnic groups intensifies the structural uncertainties that are commonly associated with intra-elite pacts in weakly institutionalized polities. It is argued that the 1978 and 2002 presidential successions in Kenya were orderly, paradoxically, because some of the crucial political and ethnic organizations were fragmented to the extent that they created conditions of great uncertainty for the elite. In this context, the rule of law was upheld as a last-ditch strategy to mitigate uncertainties in the face of rampant fragmentation. This shows that ultimately elite fragmentation can generate political stability provided that there is enough at stake for the elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly every week there are stories of destructive fires in Kenyan secondary schools. Most of these are suspected arson cases, and the usual suspects are the schools' current students. This article provides the first analysis of the recent spate of school-based fire incidents, based on a comprehensive survey of media, government, and court reports, as well as primary data collected through interviews with students, educators, and administrators. This evidence clearly demonstrates that school-based arson is a phenomenon that spans regions in Kenya, and occurs in boys', girls', and mixed schools, private and public schools, and across school calendars. Current and former students explain this trend in terms of arson's effectiveness as a tactic in protest politics. Based on these findings, I argue that school-based arson is indicative of more than the contested conditions of education in Kenya today. The use of arson by students reflects what this generation has learned about how protest and politics work in Kenya. Students' recognition that destructive collective actions are efficacious in winning a response from authorities highlights that learning and feeds a reactionary mode of governance in which citizens' initiatives tend to be neglected until they pose direct threats to public peace and financing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the elections of 2007, there was a significant increase in public expressions of secessionist feeling on the Kenya coast. During 2010 and 2011, one manifestation of this was the emergence of the Mombasa Republic Council (MRC), which demands independence for the coastal region. The language of secessionism is historical, and revisits the vivid political debates of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when politics in coastal Kenya revolved successively around two constitutional issues. The first was the possibility that the Ten-Mile Strip, nominally the sovereign territory of the Sultan of Zanzibar, might not become a part of independent Kenya; the second was the ‘regionalist’ constitution of 1963–4. This article explores the way that people now retell the history of earlier debates, and argues that these retellings suggest both the power and the plasticity of claims to historical knowledge, and that they reveal a profound fault line within ‘secessionist’ opinion, which separates those who claim political primacy on the basis of autochthony from those who locate their claim to independence in the language of colonial-era treaties. Such divisions are important, because they shape the way that secessionist arguments are framed, and the potential for secessionist politics to undermine the unity of the Kenyan state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the history of Somalis in Kenya. It argues that the precarious citizenship status of Kenyan Somalis is rooted in the institutionalization of state power in Kenya and the ways in which social relations have mediated that power. It focuses on a screening exercise organized by the Kenyan government in 1989 to differentiate citizens from non-citizens. Somalis deemed non-citizens were detained and deported while those declared citizens were granted pink ‘certificates of verification’. The exercise was framed as a response to disorder and insecurity in northern Kenya – problems blamed on the increased presence of ‘aliens’ from Somalia. The 1989 screening is a useful lens for understanding how the institutions of the Kenyan state have negotiated and produced citizenship. First, the screening shows how citizenship is an arena for both inter- and intra-ethnic competition; the way specific social relations are embedded within the structures of the state affects the distribution of rights and resources among different groups of citizens. Second, the organization of the screening reveals that public debates about citizenship in Kenya have not just been about drawing lines between insiders and outsiders, but about which insiders belong to which territorial spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As members of the ethnic group to which the American President's paternal family belongs, Luo people in Kenya and in the diaspora have been eagerly claiming Barack Obama as 'their own' since 2004. This embrace speaks to a range of ethno-political developments in Kenya throughout the twentieth century. Luo identity has been primarily constituted within a diasporic context, beginning with the large-scale labour migrations of the early twentieth century and continuing with the activities of the 'dot.com' generation into the present. Simultaneously, patrimonial politics constituted along ethnic lines have rendered Luos political outsiders and heightened the urgency of securing a powerful patron. Given these two trends, Luo people at home and abroad have reached into the diaspora with hopes of finding their biggest 'Big Man' in the figure of Barack Obama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya's return to pluralist politics in the early 1990s saw the eruption of political violence that has since laid siege to human rights and democracy. This article discusses the Mungiki movement which, like the Mau Mau movement that waged armed struggle against the British in the 1950s, has sprouted among the Kikuyu. It examines Mungiki within the broader theoretical context of competitive electoral politics and political violence in contemporary Kenya. In addition to tracing the movement's religious and ideological roots, the article shows how 'informal repression' or quasilegitimization of sectarian violence for political ends by the state, has transformed a 'moral ethnic' movement into a 'politically tribal' one. As a contribution to the academic debate on Mungiki, the article draws on the rich public debate in Kenya and the author's close study of the movement in 2001-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the political role of the Church between 1986-1992 in Kenya under the leadership of President Daniel Arap Moi. Political situation in Kenya; Churches' critique of the structure of power in Kenya; Effect of the introduction of democracy; Involvement in local or sporadic controversies; Information-dissemination prior to the 1992 elections.

The article discusses the impact of the development of a multi-party political system in Kenya on Kenyan local government. More broadly, the author is concerned with the general trend of democratization in Africa in the late 20th century. Focus is given to the efficacy of Kenyan multi-partyism in light of the government decentralization that began in the early 1990s. The authors begin by tracing the origins of local Kenyan government to to early 20th-century colonialism, and go on to outline government centralization following independence. Political parties discussed include the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD). The authors conclude that multi-partyism has not led to stronger local government in Kenya.

Attempts to explain how the Mau Mau movement in Kenya became a specific means for colonial influence upon Kikuyo women and their political role. Colonial government's use of repression to attempt to impose the construction of gender function; Differences in the women's participation in the Mau Mau and that of the men; Mau Mau movement as the strongest expression of Kikuyo nationalism.

Focuses on racism and politics in Nanyuki District, Kenya, in the 1920s. Discussion of the settler community in the district; Relationship of the retired military officers and the aristocratic settlers in the region; Observations of farmer Arnold Paice.

Presents the proceedings of the conference on political economy of Kenya at Saint Antony's College in England on May 27 to 28, 2004.