Changing constitutional trends in Africa: Kenya's experience, 1963-1996

Abstract

Constitutional law, being mainly concerned with the allocation and management of power, must ultimately derive its essential character from the elements of the social formation. In the case of Kenya, attempts in the 1960s to adopt a Westminster model constitution did not conceal the disjunction between constitutional form and social formation. This 'lack of fit' remained during two decades of single-party governance, and is likely to remain even with the re-adoption of multipartyism since 1992. Viewed in historical perspective, Kenya's constitutional law has entailed persistent interactions between initiatives to implement doctrinal criteria, and endeavours to be guided by dynamic local forces. The doctrinal criteria mainly took the form of conventional rules long practised in Western democracies, and the local forces mainly comprised traditional unitarian governance methods, the sheer charisma of the nationalist leaders, and the novel and pragmatic governance orientations that were conceived for countries which lacked a background of effective economic and social stratification. The localized phenomena have tended to be dominant