Student No: 057534
The theory of State of Kenya.

To talk about my theory of state of Kenya, considerations must be made to the following factors. Firstly, we cannot talk about a state until we get beyond a single family and until a multitude of men and women (families, men, women and children) are united together. Secondly, a permanent relation of the peoples, both the governors and the governed, to a designated territory. Thirdly, there has to be unity of the whole, the cohesion of the state. Fourthly, the presence of a sovereign possessing authority. The state is not a lifeless instrument, a dead machine: it is a living and therefore organized being (Bluntschli, 2000).

According to Mann (1993), the theories of state include class, elitist and pluralism theories. Mann further explains that according to the Marxist class theorists, the state is functional for modes of economic production and for classes. Modern states have been determined by a politicized class struggle, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The pluralist theory on the other hand, only claim to explain only the modern democratic states. It is noted that pluralism consists of (i) the emergence of institutionalized contestation between politicians and pressure groups representing a plurality of interest in the society and (ii) the widening scope of participation by the public in the contestation. When combined, the contestation and public participation generated genuine democracy which results in the state representing the interests of the individual citizens. The Elite theory emphasizes the increasing power of the political class. A centralized, cohesive and minority will always defeat and control the disorganized masses.

From the time of gaining independence, Kenya as a state has made a transition from a nationalist to an ideological politics faster than its neighboring states (Lonsdale, 1975). This paper would be examining how the locus of political control moves from one political leader to another within the state and how the theories of state are applicable from one administration to the next.

From the time of independence in 1963, the political environment was composed of two national parties, KANU and KADU, which were largely delineated on tribal lines. The country’s new ruling coalition among the two parties was an uneasy combination of competing interests. The political class was made up of a few but well educated groups of politicians, recently promoted cadres of administrative staff and teachers and a growing business community. The ‘radicals’ group in government were mostly represented by Oginga Odinga and Bildad Kaggia, while Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya led the ‘conservative’ camp. In retrospect, the ensuing Odinga–Kenyatta clash seemed near inevitable, the product of a deep division that was papered over in order to secure the transfer of power. (The Changing Face of Kenya Politics, 1966)

In order to widen his leadership base, Kenyatta worked on the art of neo-patrimonialism better than those who were around him. This involved his assimilating into the political system and the government institutions the patrimonial logic of attributing the right to rule to an individual rather than to an office. Kenyatta’s neo-patrimonialism was characterized by what Bratton and Walle (1997) refered to as systematic clientelism, where government jobs, material rewards and economic opportunities were offered as favours to clients who in turn mobilized political support and loyalty to the patron. The corporatist aspirations of the state elites and their dependence on patron-client political connections was largely accountable for the change of the Kenyatta administration to an authoritarian state, where “relations of loyalty and dependence permeate a formal political and administrative system, and officials occupy bureaucratic positions less to perform public services, their apparent purpose, than to acquire personal wealth and status. Although state functionaries receive an official salary, they also enjoy access to various forms of illicit rents, prebends, and petty corruption, which constitute a sometimes important entitlement of office”.

There was a very heavy reliance of the private capital on political patronage and state led commercial opportunities for economic development tended to curtail the opportunity for a large-scale private enterprise sector. Indeed most of the successful capitalists who emerged were mainly Kikuyu elites with close ties to the Kenyatta regime and the Kenyatta family, especially from his Kiambu region. State control over the nature, size, and mix of the emerging African capitalist class appeared to have been hinged on the fact that an “expansive capitalist class would deprive the political leaders of the ability to mobilize economic opportunities and resources for political patronage purposes” (Kasfir 1998).

During his rise in power, Kenyatta developed his personal fortune. As the Prime Minister and President, he was indeed the recipient of many gifts and the subject of numerous requests for favors, and the vast wealth of the Kenyatta family – which remains more than thirty years after his death – began in this period. Kenyatta enjoyed the exercise of power, and attained a collection of cars, land and property, much of it by unclear means. He made full use of the powers vested in the President to make grants of un-alienated government land. By 1965, the Kenyatta family was buying several settler farms as they came on the market and using Kenyatta’s position to excise and allocate government forest land in Kiambu to themselves. Kenyatta therefore found it difficult to control similar inclinations amongst his supporters, who also began to amass wealth via legitimate and not-so-legitimate activities, using their contacts to acquire businesses, extract commissions and win contracts. Although this became a matter of public protest in the 1970s, the foundations for corruption had been laid in the 1960s (Yeager, 1975). This was to continue to the next administration.

Kenyatta became convinced of his own right to rule, and he gave no indication of any plan to retire or to share the vested executive authority. He in a matter of fact became above both the law and any challenge. The emergence of the executive presidency reflected a long history of powerful colonial bureaucracy, respect for the elders, the economic control by the state and a lack of a baronial class able to challenge the presidency. This bureaucratic-executive state led to the further development of a neo-patrimonial system (in which personalized, patrimonial and clientelist forces co-existed with formal bureaucracy and state institutions) when the state was used to impose Kenyatta’s will, but also limited its predatory tendencies, since bureaucratic norms of efficiency remained relatively strong. By the mid-1970s, the Kenyan ruling class was an elite: aloof, capable, complacent and Western-oriented, which dominated business, politics, the civil service and most formal and informal power structures (Hornsby, 2011).

Kenyatta having appointed Daniel Arap Moi as the Vice President in 1967, this charted and cleared the succession path for Moi to the presidency at the passing on of Kenyatta on October 1978. The constitutionally-inherited leadership transition was unique in its own right. It was the first transition during which the baton of leadership, the Presidency, was being passed from one African leader, albeit dead, to another. This was indeed undertaken within the framework of a de facto one-party system and, true to the one-party tradition, elections played its usual symbolic role in determining Kenyatta’s successor (Oyugi, Wanyande and Odbiambo-Mbai, 2003).

Moi then started a process of gradual de-Kikuyuisation of the administration. On taking office, Moi retired several of Kenya’s ambassadors, including Kiambu relatives of Kenyatta, and promoted coastal and Kalenjin figures in their places. In a bid he build for himself his own ruling elite team. He had an uncanny ability to reshuffle his cabinet as and when he wished and to keep those around him in a perpetual state of loyalty. (Hornsby, 2011). The state in both instances under the leadership of Kenyatta and Moi pursued policies that mainly benefitted the ethnic groups and regions that had sworn allegiances to their respective regimes.

As from early 1980s, there was evidence that the Kenyan state was neither a powerless tool of foreign entities nor a puppet of local businessmen, but in part a very independent actor (Kivuva). The Kenyan state has evolved from fully being controlled by a few elite individuals to having a degree of pluralism. Rampant corruption is being address and leadership is to a large extent decided by the electoral.

REFERENCES

Bratton, M and N van de Walle (1997). Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 1997), p. 3.

Bluntschli, J. K. (2000). The Theory of the State. Kitchener, Ontario, CAN: Batoche Books. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

Hornsby, C. (2011). Kenya : A History Since Independence. London, GBR: I.B. Tauris. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

Kasfir, N. (1998). Civil society, the state and democracy in Africa. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 36(2), July 1998, pp. 123-49.

Kivuva, J. M. Restructuring the Kenyan State – Constitution Working Paper Serion No 1. The Regal Press Kenya Limited, Nairobi. Retrieved from www.sidint.net/docs/WP1.pdf

Lonsdale, J.. (1975). Politics in Kenya [Review of Kenya: The Politics of Participation and Control]. The Journal of African History, 16(3), 476–477. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.strathmore.edu/stable/180484

Mann, M. (1993). The sources of social power. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press.

Oyugi, W.O., Wanyande, P., & Odhiambo-Mbai, C. (Eds.). (2003) The Politics of Transition in Kenya, From KANU to NARC, Heinrich Boll Foundation

Realignment in Kenya Politics 1965-1966. (1966). Realignment in Kenya Politics 1965-1966. Africa Today, 13(3), 12–16. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.strathmore.edu/stable/4184701

The Changing Face of Kenya Politics. (1966). The Changing Face of Kenya Politics. Transition, (25), 44–50. http://doi.org.ezproxy.library.strathmore.edu/10.2307/2934286

Yeager, R.. (1975). [Review of Kenya: The Politics of Participation and Control]. The Journal of Developing Areas, 9(2), 293–294. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.strathmore.edu/stable/4190253