The Role of Special Interest Groups in Good Governance in Kenya: the Case of Professional Associations

Abstract

Political life in Africa is conducted through a complex web of social forces, institutional settings and interpersonal relationships. If government's structures furnish the context of official interactions in public domain, social groups constitute the fundamental blocks of political actions and interchange1. Governance refers to the process of decision making and the process by which decisions are implemented or not. According to World Bank, governance is where public institutions conduct public affairs, manage public resources and guarantee the realization of human rights; civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights (World Bank,1999). Good governance is anchored on popular participation which in the broad sense is the redistribution of power that enables the citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic progress to be deliberately included in the future. Interest groups are all groups of association which seek to influence public policy in their own chosen direction, while declining to accept direct responsibility for ruling the country. (Wooton,1969: 1) In Kenya special interest groups are organizations with autonomy from government or political parties, and try to influence policy by articulating the demands of their membership to the political authority either as; professional organization like the law Society of Kenya, Business Association like the Kenya Association of Manufacturers and Kenya Private Sector Alliance, Trade Unions like COTU and KNUT and even as ethnic groupings; because of shared culture, history and territorial association, or religious organizations like SUPKEM amongst others. All these interest groups either exist as formal or informal outfits. The formal ones are registered either as associations under the Registrar of Societies Act, others as Non-Governmental Organizations under the NGO Coordination Act and others as trustees registered by the Ministry of Agriculture, if not limited companies under the companies Act or as purely informal outfits. Special interest groups aim towards advancing the interest of their membership and providing avenues and channels for solidarity action and participation in local and national governance. An interest group is a shared attitude group that makes certain claims upon other groups in the society. If and when interest group makes claims through or upon any institutions of government, it becomes a political interest (ibid, 1969:1).