The Anglo-Leasing corruption scandal in Kenya: the politics of international and domestic pressures and counter-pressures

Jérôme Y. Bachelard

Review of African Political Economy, 2010, vol. 37, issue 124, 187-200

Abstract: Mwai Kibaki's election in 2002 raised enormous hopes: after 24 years' repressive and corrupt rule by his predecessor Daniel Arap Moi, an apparently reformist opposition leader had been democratically elected president. The fight against corruption stood high among his electoral promises. Unfortunately, a year and a half after his election, the enormous Anglo-Leasing corruption scandal, and Kibaki's failure to prosecute the ministers involved, marked the end of the anti-corruption war. Building on existing Kenyan literature and international relations scholarship on transnational advocacy networks, this article systematically analyses the impact of both international and domestic pressures exerted on Kibaki to fight corruption. It confirms that this combination of pressures explains Kibaki's initial dismissal of the ministers involved. However, analysis of the ‘counter-pressures’ is also necessary to understand the crisis in all its complexity. Desperately seeking electoral support for the 2007 election, Kibaki acquiesced to ethnically based counter-pressures exerted by the dismissed ministers, and reinstated them.

Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2010.483903 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:37:y:2010:i:124:p:187-200

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2010.483903

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().