with Prof John Harbeson
Afrobarometer recently released a comprehensive 2021 survey of African opinion in more than thirty countries, its eighth since its founding in 1999. With Kenya about to conduct the seventh national elections in its post-Cold War democratic era, it is timely occasion to query the status of Kenyan democracy including how Kenyans appraise democracy vis-à-vis citizens of other African countries.
As centrally important as elections are to the quality of democracy, equally important is the larger matter of the bearing of democracy on the political health of the state itself. In an African continent of chronically fragile states, the issue is to what extent in practice democracy strengthens, weakens, or is weakened by, those fragile states, which hinges on one’s working definition of the state. Wide spread tacit reliance on early 20th Century German philosopher Max Weber’s definition of the state as a monopoly legitimate coercive power within a compulsory territorially defined association seems to beg the question of how that legitimate monopoly and that compulsory association are to be acquired. The logical alternative to brute authoritarian force is consent, not just in elections to determine who is to rule that association, but more fundamentally consent to membership in that association itself.
A key question is to what extent have three decades of post-Cold War democratic practice across the continent, and in Kenya in particular, advanced or weakened this larger objective or been weakened by the very state fragility it is intended to ameliorate.
On the one hand, expert opinion by Freedom House and other well-regarded democracy-measuring agencies, including Mo Ibrahim, V-Dem, has been near unanimous that democracy has receded gradually but clearly since about 2005 after a preceding fifteen years of strong progress. Freedom House, for example, scores all countries on 25 key democratic indicators, on scale of 0 to 4, for a maximum score of 100. Freedom House considers countries scoring between 30 and 75 as partly free and democratic. Between 2006 and 2021, average overall country scores have declined considerably from 49 to 42. Kenya’s democratic decline over that period has been among the steepest on the continent, from 66 to 48.
The 25 Freedom House indicators cover seven categories: elections, political pluralism and participation, accountable and transparent governance, freedom of expression and belief, associational freedom, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights. Kenya’s strongest democratic performance has been and remains upholding freedom of expression and belief but it has declined over this fifteen-year period from a very strong 88 in 2006 to 63 in 2021, but at the same time, the country’s biggest decline over this period has been in freedom to participate fully, fairly, and equitably in political party and other political groupings, declining from 78 to 50, followed by a 25 point decline to 50 in electoral performance. Kenya’s worst scores throughout this period have been in transparent governance, 42, and rule of law, 31 both in 2021.
On the other hand, Afrobarometer’s findings from surveys of random samples of ordinary citizens has revealed, continentally and in Kenya, both reassuring popular support for democracy and perceptions that weak democratic performance has failed to strengthen state institutions as intended. 69 percent of Africans prefer democracy to all the authoritarian alternatives, including 75 percent of Kenyans. Only 42 percent felt they are free to say what they think in 2021 down from 49 percent in 2013. 48 percent of Kenyans, by contrast to 65 percent of Africans overall– feel free to join any organization. In 2021, only 48 percent of Kenyans. Kenyans and Africans generally retain a belief in media freedom, 58 and 63 percent respectively. All Africans retain a strong belief in competitive elections but only 45 percent believe them effective in dismissing failed leaders, Kenyans 46 percent.
The foregoing mixed record of support for democratic performance in practice has not been strong enough to sustain democratic state institutions, let alone strengthen them. Only 34 percent of Africans –Kenyans 31 percent – approve of governmental performance in reducing corruption. However, Kenyans retain more trust in presidential institutions than Africans generally by a wide margin, 66 to 51 percent, and in parliament, 49 to 42 percent.
Perhaps most telling, colonially created African states joined ethnic communities, and parts of ethnic communities haphazardly with little over-arching rationale. Nationalist movements and post-independence governments have sought to weld meaningful states out of these multi-ethnic aggregations. After six decades of independence, Afrobarometer surveys find Africans aligning totally or mostly with their nation-states rather than residual ethnic communities have declined over the past decade from only 48 percent tom 40 percent, for Kenyans over the same period even more steeply from 56 to 38 percent.
Democracy must do more than reverse its long-term decline. It is an indispensable means for reforming and strengthening Kenyan and other sub-Saharan African fragile states. (
— Prof Harbeson is a professor of Political Science Emeritus and a professorial lecturer for the African Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University.
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