Electoral politics and election outcomes in Kenya
Abstract
Kenya has held presidential, parliamentary and local government elections every
five years since independence in 1963 in accordance with the country’s
constitution. For most of the independence period the country operated a one
party system of government. This was brought to an end in 1992 when the country
reverted to multi party democracy following an amendment to the relevant
section of the presidential and National Assembly Elections Act. The change
from one party to multi party system affected both the administration and legal
environments in which elections occurred. Other factors that affected elections
include ethnicity, clanism, nature of political parties, personality of individual
politicians and in some cases religion. Voter turn out has been particularly high
during multi party era and particularly more during the elections of 2002. This
was due to two factors. First was the opposition unity prior to the elections and
secondly the fact that Kenyans had the opportunity to elect a new president after
24 years of rule by President Moi. Moi had served his last term in accordance
with the changes made to the relevant provisions of the presidential Elections
Act in 1992, which for the first time limited presidential term to two five-year
terms. Future elections are likely to be influenced by similar complex factors
discussed in this paper.
URI
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Electoral+Politics+and+Election+Outcomes+in+Kenya&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=BweCUY21OMav0QX1poCgBw&ved=0CDIQgQMwAAhttp://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/18182
Citation
Africa Development,Publisher
Department of Political Science