In March 2013, Kenyans took to the polls in what turned out to be another disputed election. Unlike the 2007 elections, however, the 2013 elections and their aftermath were relatively peaceful. Yet a series of crucial mistakes by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission cast doubt on whether the election was, in the parlance of election-observer missions, “free and fair.” Rather than foreshadowing a new institutional equilibrium, the relative peace of the 2013 election may simply reflect a temporary alignment of fortuitous circumstances.
About the Authors
James D. Long
James D. Long is academy scholar at Harvard University and assistant professor of political science at the University of Washington.
Sophisticated technology could not keep Kenya’s August 2017 presidential election from leading to renewed ethnic tensions and a painful standoff from which the country appears only now to be emerging. What went…
In an effort to avoid repeating the 2007 electoral debacle, Kenya’s election commission turned to technology, but its high-tech voter-registration and vote-count processes fell short. Its experience has important lessons…
