Donor-induced democratization and the privatization of state violence in Kenya and Rwanda

Comparative Politics

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2005, Pages

  Roessler, Philip G ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 13544263510     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20072883     Document Type: Review

References (80)

1. See Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), ch. 5; John Mueller, "The Banality of 'Ethnic War,'" International Security, 25 (Summer 2000), 43-71.
2. See Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), ch. 5; John Mueller, "The Banality of 'Ethnic War,'" International Security, 25 (Summer 2000), 43-71.
3. See Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1999), ch. 5; John Mueller, "The Banality of 'Ethnic War,'" International Security, 25 (Summer 2000), 43-71.
4. Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991), ch. 7; Robert D. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," in Patrick O'Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger, and Matthew Krain, eds., Globalization and the Challenges of a New Century: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 34-60.
5. Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991), ch. 7; Robert D. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," in Patrick O'Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger, and Matthew Krain, eds., Globalization and the Challenges of a New Century: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 34-60.
6. Van Creveld, p. 192.
7. Bruce B. Campbell, "Death Squads: Definition, Problems, and Historical Context," in Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner, eds., Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 5.
8. Jeffrey Herbst, "Responding to State Failure in Africa," International Security, 21 (Winter 1996-1997), 120-44.
9. This article is in line with Linda Kirschke, "Informal Repression, Zero-Sum Politics and Late Third Wave Transitions," Journal of Modern African Studies, 38 (September 2000), 383-405, on Cameroon, Rwanda, and Kenya, and the other work done by the human rights group Article 19 (see note 16). It differs from Kirschke's study by reviewing cross-national evidence, identifying limits to the thesis through the case of Malawi, and arguing that the changing nature of the opposition threat due to democratization (that is, the empowering of rural constituencies and entire communities) is a key explanatory variable of privatized state violence, or informal repression.
10. Kaldor, ch. 5.
11. Van Creveld, p. 197; Kaplan, p. 56.
12. Van Creveld, p. 197; Kaplan, p. 56.
13. Mueller, p. 70.
14. Kaplan, p. 56.
15. James Ron, "Varying Methods of State Violence," International Organization, 51 (Spring 1997), 279; Kathryn Sikkink, "Human Rights, Principled Issues-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America," International Organization, 47 (Summer 1993), 411-41.
16. James Ron, "Varying Methods of State Violence," International Organization, 51 (Spring 1997), 279; Kathryn Sikkink, "Human Rights, Principled Issues-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America," International Organization, 47 (Summer 1993), 411-41.
17. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
18. Political conditionalities are demands by foreign donors, primarily western governments and international financial institutions, on aid recipients to reform governing practices and respect human rights or risk losing external assistance.
19. Christian Davenport, "Vs. Citizens: Discovering and Understanding Coercive State Activity" (College Park: manuscript, University of Maryland, 2002).
20. Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, "Introduction," in Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, eds., The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Government Violence and Repression (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984), p. 7.
21. This is similar to what the human rights organization, Article 19, calls "informal repression." Article 19 argues that "informal repression" emerges "[as] governments...come under increasing scrutiny, both domestically and internationally, for their human rights performance [and resort] to covert and surrogate means of repressing their opponents." See its insightful report on this phenomenon, Article 19, "Deadly Marionettes: State-Sponsored Violence in Africa" (London: International Centre Against Censorship, 1997).
22. Mark I. Lichbach, The Rebel's Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
23. Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 202.
24. See Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Political Regimes and Regime Transitions in Africa, 1910-1994 (East Lansing and Ann Arbor: Michigan State University and Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1996-1997).
25. The Pearson correlation between repression and international pressure is 0.285; significance is 0.034 (one-tailed test). Most likely, the causal arrow goes both ways. Political conditionalities were placed on African governments in reaction to their human rights abuses. At the same time, international pressure induced incumbents to open their political systems, exposing them to political challengers that threatened their political survival unless repressed. The analysis was run using the repression (REPRESS) variable and international pressure (INTLPR) variable from Bratton and van de Walle, Political Regimes and Regime Transitions in Africa, dataset.
26. Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 181-83.
27. Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, "Popular Protest and Political Reform in Africa," Comparative Politics, 24 (July 1992), 424.
28. Marina Ottaway, "Nation Building and State Disintegration," in Kidane Mengisteab and Cyril Daddieh, eds., State Building and Democratization in Africa: Faith, Hope, and Realities (Westport: Praeger, 1999).
29. See Andrew Moravscik, "Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics," International Organization, 51 (Autumn 1997), 513-53.
30. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for motivating this line of thought.
31. Kikuyu is the largest ethnic group in Kenya, representing approximately 21 percent of the population. Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, was a Kikuyu. See Jennifer A. Widner, The Rise of a Party-State in Kenya: From "Harambee!" to "Nyayo!" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
32. Luo is the second largest ethnic group in Kenya, representing approximately 14 percent of the population.
33. Widner, p. 170.
34. John M. Cohen, "Foreign Aid and Ethnic Interests in Kenya," in Milton J. Esman and Ronald J. Herring, eds., Carrot, Sticks, and Ethnic Conflict: Rethinking Development Assistance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 103.
35. The Consultative Group for Kenya included the World Bank, the United States, members of the European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and Japan. See Michael Chege, "The Return of Multiparty Politics," in Joel Barkan, ed., Beyond Capitalism vs. Socialism in Kenya and Tanzania (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994).
36. See "World Bank Says Future Aid to Kenya Depends on Reforms," Associated Press, Nov. 26, 1991.
37. Net official development assistance (ODA) in 1990 was responsible for more than 70 percent of gross domestic investment (GDI) in Kenya. World Bank, African Development Indicators: 2001 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2001).
38. President Moi is a Kalenjin, while George Saitoti, the vice president, is a Maasai. See Republic of Kenya, Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee to Investigate Ethnic Clashes in Western and Other Parts of Kenya (Nairobi: 1992); Chairman Justice A. M. Akiwumi, "Report of the Judicial Commission Appointed to Inquire into Tribal Clashes in Kenya" (Nairobi: Daily Nation, 2002); Human Rights Watch, Divide and Rule: State-Sponsored Ethnic Violence in Kenya (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), p. 11.
39. President Moi is a Kalenjin, while George Saitoti, the vice president, is a Maasai. See Republic of Kenya, Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee to Investigate Ethnic Clashes in Western and Other Parts of Kenya (Nairobi: 1992); Chairman Justice A. M. Akiwumi, "Report of the Judicial Commission Appointed to Inquire into Tribal Clashes in Kenya" (Nairobi: Daily Nation, 2002); Human Rights Watch, Divide and Rule: State-Sponsored Ethnic Violence in Kenya (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), p. 11.
40. President Moi is a Kalenjin, while George Saitoti, the vice president, is a Maasai. See Republic of Kenya, Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee to Investigate Ethnic Clashes in Western and Other Parts of Kenya (Nairobi: 1992); Chairman Justice A. M. Akiwumi, "Report of the Judicial Commission Appointed to Inquire into Tribal Clashes in Kenya" (Nairobi: Daily Nation, 2002); Human Rights Watch, Divide and Rule: State-Sponsored Ethnic Violence in Kenya (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), p. 11.
41. Akiwumi, "Report of the Judicial Commission.
42. "Military Assure Moi of Support," The Independent (London), July 11, 1990.
43. Human Rights Watch documents the role the government had in their ethnic cleansing campaign, such as transporting the irregulars in government helicopters and vehicles. See Human Rights Watch, Divide and Rule, pp. 19, 31.
44. The Kenyan electoral law required that the president-elect win 25 percent of the vote in a minimum of five of the country's eight provinces. See David Throup and Charles Hornsby, Multiparty Politics in Kenya (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), p. 249.
45. See Chairman Justice A. M. Akiwumi, "Report of the Judicial Commission Appointed to Inquire into Tribal Clashes in Kenya, Part III: Nyanza and Western Provinces" (Nairobi: Daily Nation, 2002), p. 27.
46. John O. Oucho, Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflict in Kenya (Boston: Brill, 2002), p. 87.
47. Human Rights Watch, Divide and Rule, p. 1.
48. Commonwealth Secretariat, The Presidential, Parliamentary and Civil Elections in Kenya, The Report of the Commonwealth Observer Group, December 29, 1992, p. 40.
49. "How Not to Seek Approval," Economist, Apr. 24, 1993.
50. "Sinister," Economist, Feb. 4, 1995.
51. See BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, "Kenya Ministerial Statement on Land Dispute Clashes," Nov. 8, 1991; Moi quoted in Economic Review (Kenya), Nov. 30, 1992, cited in Throup and Hornsby, p. 342.
52. See BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, "Kenya Ministerial Statement on Land Dispute Clashes," Nov. 8, 1991; Moi quoted in Economic Review (Kenya), Nov. 30, 1992, cited in Throup and Hornsby, p. 342.
53. Organizations that documented evidence of the government of Kenya's complicity with and sponsorship of the ethnic violence include the Catholic Bishops of Kenya, the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), the National Elections Monitoring Group (NEMU), the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and a Kenyan parliamentary select committee. During the 1997 election campaign, the government of Kenya pursued a similar strategy, sponsoring violent irregulars to attack and kill civilians living in opposition strongholds. Most of the privatized state violence occurred in the Coast Province, leading to an estimated one hundred deaths and 100,000 displaced. See Human Rights Watch, Playing with Fire: Weapons Proliferation, Political Violence, and Human Rights in Kenya (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2002).
54. Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 121.
55. Hutu Power was the ideology that guided a group of Hutus close to the president and his wife. It called for the total elimination of Tutsi from Rwandan society and politics.
56. Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 3.
57. African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair, and Defiance (London: African Rights, 1994), p. 57.
58. Evidence showed that the Rwandan government and army trained the Interahamwe, provided the irregular forces with weapons and transportation, and granted the Interahamwe fighters immunity from prosecution. See Des Forges, "Warnings."
59. Timothy Longman, "State, Civil Society, and Genocide in Rwanda," in Richard Joseph, ed., State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 348-50.
60. Gerard Prunier, "The Rwandan Patriotic Front," in Christopher Clapham, ed., African Guerrillas (Oxford: James Currey, 1998), p. 132.
61. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 187.
62. Des Forges, p. 124.
63. Mamdani, pp. 212-13.
64. Timothy Longman, "Rwanda: Chaos from Above," in Leonardo A. Villalon and Phillip A. Huxtable, eds., The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 82.
65. Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1998), p. 94.
66. Des Forges, p. 91.
67. Clapham, Africa and the International System, p. 199.
68. Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford: Kumarian Press, 1998).
69. Article 19, "South Africa."
70. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1992 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), pp. 292-308.
71. Daniel N. Posner, "Malawi's New Dream," Journal of Democracy, 6 (January 1995), 137.
72. "Malawi: Creditors, Condition Aid on Democratization, Human Rights," Inter-Press Service, May 13, 1992.
73. Harvey J. Sindima, Malawi's First Republic: An Economic and Political Analysis (Lanham: University Press of America, 2002), p. 152.
74. Article 19, "Malawi."
75. Posner, p. 132.
76. Deborah Kaspin, "The Politics of Ethnicity in Malawi's Democratic Transition," Journal of Modern African Studies, 33 (December 1995), 595-620.
77. See Kings M. Phiri, "A Case of Revolutionary Change in Contemporary Malawi: The Malawi Army and the Disarming of the Malawi Young Pioneers," Journal of Peace, Conflict and Military Studies (University of Zimbabwe), 1 (March 2000).
78. Richard Carver, "The Army Factor," Africa Report, 39 (January-February 1994), 56-58.
79. Posner, p. 142.
80. See International Crisis Group, "Zimbabwe at the Crossroads: Transition or Conflict?" (Brussels: International Crisis Group, March 2002).