Elements of Consociational Democracy in Kenya

This paper attempts to apply and test some of the major propositions advanced by the ‘consociational school’ of democratic theory to the case of a Third World country, Kenya. These propositions concern both the specific, highly fragmented ‘plural’ social bases of politics and particular institutional arrangements (such as a ‘grand coalition’, proportional representation, etc.), Kenya is shown to be an interesting, though somewhat ‘deviant’, case in this regard. The analysis is based on available published sources, official documents and data from a general population survey conducted by the author. The concluding section discusses some of the inherent constraints in the Kenyan case and indicates some of the more general limitations of the concept of consociational democracy.