Charles Tilly may be alive and well in Kenya.
Parliament has unanimously passed a draft constitution that is one of several key reform steps needed to avoid a repeat of political violence that shook Kenya after disputed 2007 presidential elections.
Kenya’s presidency has enormous powers that are largely unchecked, leading to abuses of power that are believed to have fueled the violence between December 2007 and February 2008 during which more than 1,000 people were killed. This new draft proposes several checks to presidential powers.
…The draft charter passed by parliament proposes several checks to presidential powers, including a requirement that Cabinet and other presidential appointees be vetted by the National Assembly, something that does not happen under the current constitution.
…Among other major proposals, the draft charter introduces for the first time a Supreme Court and allows dual citizenship. It also provides for reintroducing elected county governments.
4 Responses
I might be wrong, but didn’t Tilly argue that war making with other nations, beyond the state’s borders, was what drove their need for revenue => taxation / capital borrowing => bargaining power of wealthy inside state => institutionalised checks and balances of how state spends money.
I don’t see how internal conflict does this, in fact it will lead to opposite surely? e.g. Kikuyu elites raise money for elections, political violence, full civil war hence making deals with their ethnic constituents, hence creating stronger identities and informal institutional political bargaining inside a group. If all the major political groupings do this (kalenjiin, Luo, etc) then you’ll get lots of mini-states.
weak state in Africa as a result of lack of inter-state conflict? Are Eritrea and Ethiopia more strongly formed states?
Maybe I mis-read Tilly.
Maybe “reverse” wasn’t the right word…”negative Tilly” is better, in that the causal flow is the same, but the byproduct is spreading of power rather than concentration.
Not necessarily. In my opinion:
2007 Election violence –> Bargaining for a solution –> Negotiated power-sharing –> formalized checks and balances
A different channel than Tilly, but the general link seems plausible.
Tilly in reverse though, in that the result here is the spreading of power rather than its concentration as a byproduct of conflict.