Free and fair? Citizens' assessments of the 2013 general election in Kenya

Seema Shah

Review of African Political Economy, 2015, vol. 42, issue 143, 44-61

Abstract: Kenya's peaceful 2013 election came as a relief to domestic and international observers, who feared a repeat of the brutal 2007--2008 post-election violence. Many observers conflated this relative peace with electoral credibility, but analysis of a post-election national opinion poll reveals a more complex picture. Most Kenyans did feel that the 2013 election was free and fair, but their conception of free and fair is rooted more in the historical context of the election than in technical electoral procedures. Personal experiences of irregularities at the level of polling stations do not play a statistically significant role in shaping voters' opinions about electoral credibility. Instead, voters are more influenced by their ethnicities, their confidence in electoral institutions and by how highly they prioritised peace. These findings reveal the importance of local context and history in conceptions of electoral integrity on the ground.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056244.2014.995162 (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:42:y:2015:i:143:p:44-61

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

DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2014.995162

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 ().