Structural Violence: Moving beyond ethnicity towards and understanding of electoral violence in kenya

Abstract

Ethnicity has come to be widely used as an explanation to electoral violence in Kenya. Research on electoral violence has been limited to electoral related violence in relation to the manipulation of the multi-ethnic composition of the country by the political elite. In light of this, this study wishes to move beyond this otherwise simplistic view of electoral conflict in Kenya and relate these occurrences to the wider problem that the country faces. Taking a structural view, this contribution seeks to join other studies that have emphasized the structural causes of conflict in Kenya, but at the same time expose the disconnect in electoral violence studies. The study is based on desk research and digs into books, journals, memoirs, newspapers and official government documents to unearth the underlying structure of Kenya (the actors, institutions, cultural hegemony, history and ideologies) in order to lay out a logical path that explains the manifestations of violence experienced during elections. The contribution does this by first tracing the election periods from 1992 to 2017 and the dynamics that accompanied them. It then sets out to analyse the underlying factors that led to the violence before making conclusions