Political Economy of Kenya - Essay Example

? Political economy of Kenya Political Economy of Kenya This paper examines the issue of ethnic favouritism and views it as the maindeterminant of economic development. Ethnic favouritism emerged after Kenya was declared independent in 1963. Before independent, Kenya was under the rule of European’s colonial government which was of autocratic form. In 1960, Kenya gained the courage of turning over the European government and was led by Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu member. After independence, ethnic groups in Kenya splinted into diverse ethnic groups. Each group occupied different geographical locations in the country. Autocratic form of government did not change even under president Jomo Kenyatta, but transitions came after the second president, who turned it into democratic government. However, during the autocratic form of government, ethnic favouritism was highly practice by political leader. This is supported by the data on road building, found across various districts in Kenya during the period of 1963 to 2011. The data indicates that across the 1963-2011 periods, the co ethic districts with the president received more roads expenditure as compared to non co-ethnic group. However, the new democratic government changed these kinds of biases and brought a lot of changes in the country that led to economic growth (Schwartzberg, 1987). This paper has clearly revealed the importance of democracy in Kenya, a country which is vulnerable to ethnic favouritism. It has defined the term ethnic favouritism and examined the effects it has on the country’s economy. According to the paper, ethnic favouritism has being used in most developing countries by political leaders. However, the way this paper has examined the efforts of reintroducing democracy in order to tackle ethnic favouritism, is quite interesting. It has also provided evidence to illustrate how ethnic favouritism is practiced in developing countries. After reading this manuscript, I have made a number of comments regarding the ethnic favouritism and the value of democracy (Anderson, 1999). 1. The Ethnic groups of Kenya It is possible that the ethnic group of Kenya emerged after independence in 1963 and that every district consisted of a certain percentage of these groups. For instance, according to ethnic data it is reported that Kikuyu consist of 18.8%, Luhya 12.7%, Kalenjin 10.8%, and Luo 13.4% (Anderson, 1999). During the pre colonial period, these ethnic groups did not exist because the authority at the time was personal and local. However, after independence new rules and leaders emerged and led to development of provincial administration. This administration divided the country into provinces, districts, divisions, sub locations, and locations. Ethnic homogenous districts, therefore, emerged in the course of the country’s evolution, leading to segregation and geographical targeting by various races to form ethnic groups. 2. Ethnic favouritism as a political strategy The paper reveals ethnic favouritism as the main strategy used by political leaders in many developing countries. Political leaders may use ethnic favouritism with the fear that without proper tactics in political games, they may lose their positions to other competing politicians. They, therefore, believe that practicing ethnic favouritism increases strongholds that propel them to higher positions in the government (Anderson, 1999). However, since ethnic favouritism is a political game, I would expect the author to elaborate more on the issue. For instance, explaining how politician utilizes ethnic favouritism in weakening their political opponent through silencing their ethnic groups. This can be done through weakening or shutting down the electoral institutions. If a political leader practices ethnic favouritism then he or she is unaccountable and unrepresentative to his or her own people. This is because there are a few people who are favoured while others are being taxed, yet these leaders manage to remain in power for decades. It is possible for a president to remain in power if at all he or she play the political game wisely. Political support of the president mainly comes from the co ethnics, and, therefore, if he or she does not acquire support from this ethnic group, then the probability of losing is very high. However, in order for the president to remain active in the government, he or she need to adopt the strategy called Markov Perfect Equilibrium. According to theoretical framework, this strategy has been proved the best in improving the tactics required in the political game. It assists the president in acquiring skills that can be used in benefiting his or her own group. For instance, upon increasing taxes by president, the taxes increases for both ethnic groups, but one of the groups is brain washed to prevent it from realizing that the president had already provided goods for his or her own group (Hornsby, 2013). 3. Does road building present a good data evidence for ethnic favouritism practices? In this case there are two issues a) The paper provides the assumption of roads as the largest budget expenditure used by politicians in exercising ethnic favouritism. The theoretical framework reveals a clear presidential contest but fails to explain how it takes pace. In my own explanation, each group can have a number of potentials country presidents. In the course of presidential contest, one of these presidential candidates can emerge as the president in power (Hornsby, 2013). He or she, therefore, may decide to use the government’s budget expenditure to build roads in his or her own district ignoring the other districts. b) Expansion of road transportation has a great impact on the economic performance. Different districts have different ethnic group which produces various type of goods as determined by their cultures. They, therefore, require good transportation to deliver their goods to the market. However, if the president in power happens to originate in one of the districts, he or she tends to favour the co ethnic group. For instance, he or she may decide to reduce the taxations of products going to the market. The president may also decide to use the national budget to provide specific public goods to the co ethnic group (Hornsby, 2013). Column 1 of table 1 conforms road building as a strong evidence for ethnic favouritism. According to the coefficient of 1, it is implied that those districts where the president originates from, receives large sum of money for investing in roads. For instance, Kalenjin and Kikuyu population cover 15% of the total Kenyan population (Schwartzberg, 1987). Table 1, therefore, implies that since independent, the districts consisting of these ethnic group receives 30% of the country’s spending on road transport. This, therefore, shows a significant ethnic bias given that roads consume 15% of all the national spending. Column 4 and 5 also consists of a similar coefficient to that of column 1. They suggest that road spending as an ethnic favouritism is more robust in accounting for district specific time trends. The data provided by table 2 can be interpreted as follow, if a district is co ethnic with the president, it acquire an opportunity of receiving large paved roads with long kilometres as compared to the average of a national. In column 4 the coefficient of 3.07 means that the co ethnic districts consist of paved roads that are 4 times larger in length. It, therefore, suggests that paved road tend to be more pronounced in measuring ethnic favouritism as compared to road expenditure. This is because paved roads are visible elements for investing in roads. Political leaders, therefore, view investment in these visible beacons as a modernized way of securing supports from their ethnic group, other than investing in road and track maintenance that are less visible. This form of investment clearly shows the extreme ethnic favouritism of district co ethnics (Schwartzberg, 1987). 4. Ethnic favouritism leads to ethnic division Since ethnic favouritism is driven by self centeredness, the leader’s jurisdictions lead to many societies being divided. A section of the society becomes less able to acquire consensus, less competitive, and more vulnerable to conflict due to marginalization (Schwartzberg, 1987). This type of marginalization leads to underdevelopment and increased poverty. Figure 4 illustrates the alteration of power between Kalenjins and Kikuyus. The author acknowledges that this can be used to test for ethnic favouritism as well as quantifying its magnitude. However, the procedure used for testing ethnic favouritism is not provided. I would like to see that procedure being provided, for instance, the procedure of estimating co ethnic districts that receive more road investments. The switch from autocracy to multi party democracy can also be used to test for democratic institutions constrain and exacerbate ethnic favouritism. 5. Transition of Democracy The paper suggests two transitions. The first one is democracy to autocracy led by the first president of Kenya called Jomo Kenyatta. The second one is the transition of autocracy to democracy led by the second president called Daniel Arap Moi. These transitions enable us identify the impacts caused by political transitions on the ethnic favouritism. However, political transitions can be difficult to understand if one does not have their political history. It is, therefore, important to acquire the history of both autocracy and democracy. Dating Kenya back to the pre-colonial period, it was being ruled by Europeans who had formed their colonial offices. This government made Kenyans work in their own lands under supervision and strict public policies. The Kikuyus in particular, were the most affected people because their lands were very fertile for agriculture. This increased discontent within the group leading to rise of Mau-Mau group which fought the European government (Hornsby, 2013). The Mau-Mau upraising formed the platform for Kenya’s independence where in 1960, the Legislative Council allowed the formation of African political parties after the Lancaster House Conference. KANU and KADU parties were formed. In 1963, the parties challenged each other in the independent election, where KANU led by Kenyatta won. Panel B of table 1 illustrates how members of the ethnic group were represented in the cabinet, but it would be better if the table revealed the political parties that represented these members. For instance, for Kalenjin, Kambas, and Luos it would be better to show whether they are represented by either The Kenya People’s Union or The Kenya Africa National Union. In 1978, President Jomo Kenyatta died leaving Daniel Arap Moi in charge of the government. The cold war facing Africa countries, increased pressure for African leaders to form democracy. In 1992, Moi legalized the first multi party elections which increased the recognition of democracies in African sub Saharan. Figure 1 is consistent with the idea that multi party politics had persistently introduced democracy; this means that he had successful increased the strengths of the president’s office. Democracy can bring a lot of changes in civil society organizations. It is even the main cause of free and fair elections like those performed in 2002 and won by Mwai Kibaki, a kikuyu member, under National Alliance Rainbow Coalition. These multi party elections revealed the first democratic evolution of power in Kenya (Hornsby, 2013). It is possible that democratic transitions can be used to determine whether districts that are co ethnic with the president, acquire large share of the country’s spending on roads. This share is relative to the share found in the national population. Figure 6 in the graphical analysis shows the democratic evolution away from multiparty democracy in 1969, and back again to multiparty democracy in 1992 (Hornsby, 2013). This analysis tries to determine the road measurement for districts that are non co-ethnic with the president and those that are co ethnic with the president. The figure shows that during autocratic period, the ratio of district share of population to district share of road spending is higher for co ethnic districts. This ratio is lower for non co ethnic district hence showing that there is ethnic favouritism. However, during democratic period the ratio is lower and applies on both non co ethnic and co ethnic districts hence implying that there is no favouritism. 6. Road investment Road is considered as an item with the largest expenditure in the national annual development budget. Since 1963 to 2011, road budget is estimated to be 15.2% of the overall budget as compared to the current development expenditure in health, education, and water which account for 5.7%, 5.5%, and 6.7% respectively (Anderson, 1999). In the paper, the road expenditure is primarily centralized where the District and Provincial Commissioners disseminate all project requests to the “ministry of public works.” The ministry works on the requests and prepares a strategy for building the road. However, the author suggests that if a road project is located in more than one district, a GIS is used to reveal the road project layout and the relative kilometres found in each district. The road expenditure can then be decomposed across the specific districts assuming that there is an equal distribution cost along the constructed length of the road. A Michelin Map can be used to capture the physical appearance of the paved roads. The author acknowledge that Michelin Maps are the best in conducting road survey, because they have independent data source on road investment, and that they are not likely to be affected by misreporting. It is possible that Michelin Maps were provided at regular intervals, and the initial Global GIS maps that contain contemporary roads were used to create a GIS dataset. It was also possible for various maps to be used in recreation of GIS maps evolution. For instance, a district year dataset panel of a road’s length, could be created by splicing the district boundaries with the historical road maps. To partly assuage the concern of maps evolution, it could be better if the author supplemented figure 5 with key years that indicated the history of the road map. For instance, indicating the year when the Michelin map was made available before Kenya obtained independence. The author can also use year sequences such as 1969 to 1979 to illustrate the events that occurred during the pre-colonial period and after independence (Anderson, 1999). References Anderson, L. 1999, Transitions to Democracy, Columbia University Press, New York. Hornsby, C. 2013, Kenya: A History since Independence, I. B. Tauris, London. Schwartzberg, G. M. 1987, The Political Economy of Kenya, Praeger, New York. Read More