Politicians do deals based on the number of voters they can mobilise, while voters expect those they support to funnel development projects to their region. But recent protests threaten to overturn the apple cart, writes Kirk A. Harris.

The upper echelons of Kenyan politics exist in a state of near-perpetual turmoil. Leaders bargain and compete with one another for leadership positions atop the country’s political parties and within government. This upheaval can lead to strange alliances, and political posturing that is disconnected from important policy issues or governance questions.

President William Ruto’s overhaul of his cabinet in July, in the aftermath of massive “Gen-Z” protests against his controversial Finance Bill, is just the latest example of a metaphorical wheel in Kenyan politics that circulates leaders into and out of government.

Making sense of this political volatility requires understanding the context in which Kenya’s elite politicians operate and the incentives they face. From 2018-2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his erstwhile bitter rival, opposition leader Raila Odinga, led a “reform” project, dubbed the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). Critics alleged that it amounted to “constitutional dismemberment” that would undo many of the democratic gains secured when voters approved a new constitution in a 2010 referendum. Amongst these critics was William Ruto, then Kenya’s Deputy President, who remained in office despite having dramatically fallen out with Kenyatta. In the 2022 election campaign, Kenyatta endorsed Odinga while Ruto – nominally the incumbent – ran as a candidate of change and opposition, winning the presidency with just over 50 per cent of the vote.

Kenyan politics have long been profoundly transactional. Citizens anticipate that leaders will provide their communities with resources that will bring about local and national “development.” Perhaps surprisingly for outside observers familiar with rhetoric about “big man rule” and clientelism, these demands for resources are not primarily individual or clientelist in nature: instead of cash handouts or jobs, citizens expect politicians to channel small-scale infrastructure projects like improved schools, water resources, and paved roads to their communities.

This model of leadership – one focused on local development – is partially rooted in the strategy adopted by President Jomo Kenyatta after independence. Kenyatta encouraged Kenyans to “harambee” (self-help) and pull together to finance community infrastructure projects. Local leaders who played a major role in sponsoring “harambee” projects created a set of expectations about virtuous leadership in their communities. Their status as patrons also accelerated their political careers, as they could rely on the support of their local “clients” to power them to office.

The local and regional nature of citizen-politician ties meant that political coalitions often revolved around ethnic identity. Kenyan citizens bemoan the “tribalism” that affects their politics and lament ethnically biased resource allocation by politicians, but expectations that politicians will behave as they always have lead many voters to support co-ethnic politicians at the polls.

The transactional mode of Kenyan politics has also affected how political parties form and build their reputations, or party “brands.” Local leaders leverage their reputations as representatives of their ethnic group to earn leadership positions in new parties. The wealthiest and most influential of these leaders compete with one another to determine who will lead the country’s political parties.

But in all this behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, leaders are stuck with a dilemma: how do they tell which potential allies or coalition partners can mobilise voters and help win elections, and which are simply posturing? While money and ethnic identity are certainly meaningful indicators, they are no guarantee of success. Uhuru Kenyatta’s first presidential run, in 2002, was a disaster. Despite his family’s wealth and personal connections, voters in his home region rejected him as a prop of the deeply unpopular incumbent, President Daniel arap Moi.

Voters seek leaders who can credibly claim to represent group interests and draw resources to the community. Politicians seeking to make the alliances necessary to gain control of the presidency (and the patronage resources that come with it) thus seek out allies who they think have forged this bond with voters.

Constitutional change

This posturing and bargaining even extends to debates over the country’s constitution.  Prior to the BBI saga, Kenya held a pair of constitutional referendums in 2005 and 2010 to consider adopting a new constitution (the first failed, while the second succeeded). The rhetoric during these political campaigns often had little to do with the substance of the constitution. Instead, politicians criticized their opponents and urged their co-ethnic supporters to send a message by voting as a bloc. In 2010, Isaack Hassan, then chair of the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEEC) dubbed the referendum campaign “an industry of insults.”

These referendum campaigns are best understood as attempts by members of the Kenyan political class to position themselves ahead of the next round of elections. Politicians hoped to show they could mobilise voters to make themselves more appealing as coalition partners or as potential party leaders. Aspiring “ethnic kingpins” campaigned aggressively in their home regions, hoping that a display of unity would strengthen their bargaining positions. Allies of William Ruto in 2010 boasted that they would lock down the entire Rift Valley province to boost Ruto’s political fortunes; co-ethnic politicians who campaigned for the draft were threatened with political marginalisation.

All of this drama was covered earnestly in the press, with breathless speculation about how the results of the referendum in different regions would impact the fates of potential candidates for president or deputy president. This cycle nearly repeated itself during the debate over BBI, albeit with an ironic twist: Ruto positioned himself as a staunch defender of the new constitution while Odinga and Kenyatta were accused of undermining the draft they had encouraged voters to ratify in 2010.

What does all of this mean for Kenya’s future? In short, expect more political turmoil and reshuffling. President Ruto’s recent rapprochement with Odinga (whose candidacy for chair of the African Union Commission he has endorsed) holds out the possibility of a more formal alliance between their parties. Likewise, the president’s recent reshuffling of his cabinet is liable to spark opposition to his government from unexpected corners, with leaders arguing that their communities are being marginalised.

How much this matters to ordinary voters is unclear, however. As Ken Opalo, associate professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, points out, the massive Gen-Z protests against President Ruto’s finance bill had nothing to do with the dispersal of high-level cabinet or civil service positions to different ethnic groups. Cries for better service provision or increased economic opportunity are distinct from the claims of group patronage and community infrastructure to which Kenyan politicians are used to responding. All of this suggests a potential breakdown, in which the political system is unable to respond to the political demands of Kenyan citizens. If the “wheel” of elite politics is no longer connected to the “hub” of citizen needs and concerns, then protests like the ones that forced President Ruto to withdraw his Finance Bill are likely to recur.

This blog is based on the author’s journal article “Ethnic politics and party realignment in African constitutional referendums: Understanding Kenya’s ‘industry of insults’” 

Photo credit: Paul Kagame used with permission CC BY-NC-ND 2.0