‘A show of numbers’: campaign rallies and performing elite alliance-building in Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT Campaign rallies are commonly understood as events where politicians appeal to a crowd of prospective voters to politically mobilise them. This article argues that an underexplored dimension of rallies is where they are used as performances to shape alliance-building between subnational and national politicians. Through focusing on two rallies organised by gubernatorial campaigns in Marsabit county, Kenya, for the president during the 2017 elections, the article shows how these rallies were used as tools to secure electoral alliances with the president’s campaign. It shows how organisers choreographed the crowd – through colour, props and positioning – to perform to the president their grassroots popularity, to secure electoral and post-election futures. This article builds on scholarship that takes a more complex look at what messages are performed at rallies, by and to whom, and how. It also offers insights on how elite alliance-building and devolution operate in a particular sub-national setting in Kenya.