Abstract
This chapter compares the policy practice in the four East African countries—Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda—and examines how far mainstream theory helps explain these practices. It highlights how the countries have evolved different policy regimes drawing on precolonial legacies and their experience since independence. It places these regimes in a global perspective evaluating their position on governance and development indices. There are few outstanding cases although Rwanda’s position on facilitating business and maintaining public integrity are exceptions. Generally, however, the four countries fall at the lower half of these global indices, and in an African comparison, they are neither at the top nor at the bottom. The chapter ends with a discussion of the applicability of three policy development theories—gradualism, punctuated equilibrium, and critical juncture—suggesting that all three help explain parts of the policy process in the four East African countries but more research is needed to enhance knowledge about how public policy is made and carried out.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The six members of the East African Community are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
- 2.
This occurred in 2014 after the Kenya Government revised its statistics and added 25% to its GDP. It followed the initiative of other countries around the world that conducted a similar “rebasing” of their GDP.
References
Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishing Group.
Ake, Claude. 1991. Democracy & Development in Africa. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution.
Ake, Claude. 2001. Democracy & Development in Africa. Ibadan: Spectrum Books.
Andrews, Matt. 2013. The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development: Changing Rules for Realistic Solutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barkan, Joel, and John J. Okumu, eds. 1979. Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tanzania. New York: Praeger.
Baumgartner, Frank R., and Bryan D. Jones. 1993. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bayart, Jean-Francois. 1993. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman.
Cheeseman, Nic. 2015. Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failure and the Struggle for Political Reform. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Crisafulli, Patricia, and Andrea Redmond. 2012. Rwanda Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Forster, Peter G., and Sam Maghimbi, eds. 1999. Agrarian Economy, State and Society in Contemporary Tanzania. Brookfield, MA: Ashgate.
Frinjuah, John P., and Josephine Appiah-Nyamekye. 2018. “Time to Redeem Africa from Corruption”. Afrobarometer Paper. Johannesburg: IDASA, January.
Hasselskog, Malin, and Isabell Schierenbeck. 2015. National Policy in Local Practice: The Case of Rwanda. Third World Quarterly 36 (5): 350–366.
Hyden, Goran. 1973. Efficiency Versus Distribution in East African Cooperatives. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau.
Kjaer, Mette. 2015. Political Settlements and Productive Sector Policies: Understanding Sector Differences in Uganda. World Development 68: 230–241.
Kjaer, Mette, Fred Muhumuza, and Tom Mwebaze. 2012. Coalition-Driven Initiatives in the Dairy Sector in Uganda. DIIS Working Paper 2012:2. Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Studies.
Kopytoff, Igor. 1989. The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Lawson, Andrew, and Lise Rakner. 2005. Understanding Patterns of Accountability in Tanzania: Final Synthesis Report. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute.
Lehmbruch, Gerhard, and Philippe C. Schmitter, eds. 1982. Patterns of Corporatist Policymaking. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Levy, Brian. 2013. Working with the Grain: Integrating Governance with Growth. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lindblom, Charles E. 1959. The Science of ‘Muddling Through’. Public Administration Review 19: 79–88.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy. American Political Science Review 53 (1): 69–105.
Moore, Barrington Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
OECD. 2012. The Busan Partnership for Aid Effectiveness. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Simon, Herbert A. 1957. Models of Man: Social and Rational. New York: Wiley.
Tripp, Aili Mari. 1997. Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hyden, G., Onyango, G. (2021). Kenya: A Comparative East African Perspective. In: Onyango, G., Hyden, G. (eds) Governing Kenya. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61784-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61784-4_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-61783-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-61784-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)