2 - Election-Related Violence in Kenya and around the World

Summary

Chapter 2 summarizes the nature and extent of election-related violence globally and in Kenya specially. It documents the various forms that such violence takes and provides background on the Kenyan case, noting certain key features that make it particularly useful to study. In particular, it establishes that Kenya is a case where (1) political elites play a primary role in instigating violence and (2) elections are competitive enough that voters have a genuine choice at the polls. It also establishes it as a hard case for testing a theory of elite misperception, as the conventional wisdom holds that violence – working through several of the mechanisms posited in the literature – is an effective tool for winning Kenyan elections. It concludes with some discussion of the special role that ethnicity often plays in the outbreak of violence in electoral competition.