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Title A Choice of Life and Death: Post-Election Violence in Kenya 2007-8 Explained
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/1887/23798
Date 2013
Author(s) Weerkamp, G.J.F.
Contributor(s) Seymour, Dr. L.J.M.; Willigen, Dr. N.J.G. van
Abstract Post-election violence is often associated with structural conditions including poverty and ethnicity, and/or the strategic behavior of 'big bosses' and/or the electoral institutions. This thesis explains the post-election violence in Kenya 2007-8 by structurally testing existing explanations of this kind of violence. The analysis shows that constituencies in which the opposition won the elections with a small margin of victory experienced most violence after the elections. In these cases the election battle was most severe. After the elections politicians use violence to punish voters of their rival party by organizing violent action including protests and the deployment of criminal gangs. Besides, violence is used as negotiation strategy by both the opposition and the incumbent to influence the formation of a government. Politicians seduce individual citizens to use violence since their supporters depend on clientelist rewards in exchange for their political support. The allocation of state resources follows ethnic lines for which the political competition and the subsequent violence are ethnical in nature.
Subject(s) Kenya; Post-Election Violence; Clientelism
Language en
Type of publication Research master thesis
Repository Leiden - University of Leiden
Added to C-A: 2014-02-20;12:55:03