ELECTORAL VIOLENCE IN KENYA

Abstract

In 2007, Kenya saw the one of its outbreak of violence, with over 1000 deaths and 3000 displaced following a disputed election results. Despite concern over the following elections, the 2013 passed largely peacefully, even though the losing party had appealed the results. Yet, the 2017 elections saw a democratic backsliding with the resurgence in electoral violence after another disputation over the results. Both elections following 2007 had taken place under the new constitution, which saw increasingly independent institutions. Neither had the main incumbent or opposition candidate changed. What then explains for the change in levels of electoral violence in Kenya’s 2013 and 2017 elections? By building on the scholarly literature, this paper address this question through developing a new analytic framework of electoral violence. I argue that as compared to previous approaches this new framework better explains the change in levels of electoral violence by not only integrating current divergent explanations, such as that of structural conditions and elite motivations, but further accounting for a thus far neglected factor of popular legitimacy.