Local Government and the Return to Multi-Partyism in Kenya

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Periodical article

Title:	Local Government and the Return to Multi-Partyism in Kenya
Authors:	Southall, Roger J. Wood, Geoffrey
Year:	1996
Periodical:	African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society
Volume:	95
Issue:	381
Period:	October
Pages:	501-527
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Kenya
Subjects:	multiparty systems local government Politics and Government
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/723442
Abstract:	If multipartyism is to return to local government in Africa as an aspect of the latest round of democracy, how is it to be combined with devolution whose objective, as much as representativeness, must be the attainment of both efficiency and accountability? This question is addressed with particular reference to the case of Kenya, where multipartyism returned to local government at the same time as it made its re-entry to the national arena in 1992. The authors review the early development of local government in Kenya from colonialism to independence, the centralization of local government under Kenyatta, the deconcentration of local government under Moi, and the push for multiparty democracy in the late 1980s. They discuss the return of multipartyism to local government and the 1992 local government elections, and analyse the achievements of the Nairobi Council over the period 1992-1995. Their conclusion is that the experience of Nairobi offers little to suggest that the return to multipartyism, under existing conditions in Kenya, has done much to promote the cause of democracy. Notes, ref.