Good Governance And Human Rights; A Philosophical Appraisal Of The Kenyan Experience

Abstract

The purpose of this project is basically concerned with the nature of man and how he relates to the nature of the political order, leading to good governance and human rights protection in the context of the Kenyan experience. The subject matter of the thesis is presented in the course of five chapters. In the first chapter, I attempted to situate governance and human rights in the context of the Kenyan condition. This second chapter focused on aspects of the primacy of the human person. The aim was to elucidate that the human person guides and directs the issues of governance and human rights. The person is both autonomous and social, as expounded in chapter three. As a social being he requires the State for his existence. But the terms in which we become accustomed to discuss the political order obscure the fact that everyman is a person with an intrinsic value based on finality. Here we considered various philosophers and their views regarding the relationship between the State and the individual. The fourth chapter aimed at pointing out the various facts of governance in Kenyan political culture. We elucidated some social facts and how these have been perverted in their nature leading to poor governance and human rights abuse. Finally in chapter five, the study focused on building a political culture for Kenya keeping in mind that any genuine political culture must be pinned down by a proper conception of the human person. In the general conclusion, we have attempted to anchor the reflections of the study.