Journal ArticleDOI
A city under Siege: Banditry & modes of accumulation in Nairobi, 1991-2004
TLDR
In this paper, the authors study the impact of political and economic liberalisation on modes of socioeconomic engagement and accumulation in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi, subsequent to the introduction of multiparty "democracy" in 1992.Abstract:
This is a study of the impact of political and economic liberalisation on modes of socio-economic engagement and accumulation in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi, subsequent to the introduction of multiparty ‘democracy’ in 1992.1 On the one hand economic liberalisation led to a diminished state-provisioning capacity and unwillingness to protect public interests. On the other hand, political conditionalities opened up political space but also spawned anomic tendencies within the regime and among social groups and individuals, with struggles in defence of economic position against each other at one level, and against the state and local councils at another. This account focuses on the political economy underlying the resultant urban banditry in Nairobi. It seeks to demonstrate how a besieged regime facilitates the criminalisation of urban existence in a bid to ensure its survival. The argument here is that beleaguered regimes survive through a twin strategy. They privatise public violence and appropriate priva...read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis
TL;DR: Using political economy analysis, the authors discusses three precipitating factors that were ignited by Kenya's 2007 election, which was too close to call beforehand and highly contested afterwards, and explains how and why they arose and what made each so dangerous.
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Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics
Rita Abrahamsen,Michael Williams +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the globalization of private security, power and governance, global assemblages and the security field, and the politics of urban global security assemblage.
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Dying to win: Elections, political violence, and institutional decay in Kenya
TL;DR: The authors examines the lessons learned from Kenya's 2007 post election violence and what has happened since then and notes that the root causes of the violence still persist, have not been addressed, and easily could be reignited.
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Urban youth in Africa
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that African cities are underserved and fiercely competitive economic environments that are negatively impacted by neoliberal development policies, and they make little economic sense and are unusually violent because so many unemployed young men live there.
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Introduction: Kenya – A democracy in retreat?
PM Kagwanja,Roger Southall +1 more
TL;DR: The post-election crisis of January 2008 brought Kenya close to collapse and the status of a failed state as mentioned in this paper, which saw up to 2,000 people killed and as many as 300,000 displaced from their homes.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The division of labor in society
TL;DR: The Division of Labor as discussed by the authors is one of the cornerstone texts of the sociological canon and has been updated and re-translated in this new edition, the first since 1984, by worldrenowned Durkheim scholar Steven Lukes revisits and revises the original translation to enhance clarity, accuracy, and fluency for the contemporary reader.
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Collapsed states : the disintegration and restoration of legitimate authority
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used 11 African case studies in its exploration of the phenomenon of collapsed states and assessed the strengths and weaknesses of various responses, such as UN action, to the situation.
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Vigilantes, violence and the politics of public order in Kenya
TL;DR: Anderson as mentioned in this paper examines recent violence in Nairobi in the context of increased vigilante activity throughout Kenya, and relates this to the broader political context of violence in the run-up to the next general election, which is expected to take place before the end of 2002.
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Challenges to the nation-state in Africa
Adebayo O. Olukoshi,Liisa Laakso +1 more
TL;DR: The challenges facing the nation-state in contemporary Africa are increasingly attracting the attention of scholars interested to understand how the decomposition and recomposition of popular polit... as discussed by the authors,.
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Corruption, firm growth and export propensity in Kenya
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the structure of corruption in Kenya and its implications on the performance of firms and found that Kenyan manufacturers spent significant proportions of their annual sales on unofficial payments including kickbacks on government contracts.