How Not to Institutionalize Civilian Control: Kenya's Coup Prevention Strategies, 1964-1997

Abstract

Kenya is on the short list of African states that have not experienced military rule. In a continent known for rampant praetorianism, this means only that the coup prevention strategies implemented by its civilian rulers have been successful...so far. The unscrupulous ethnic manipulation, politicization, bribery into the military's "circles of power," and the set-up of a powerful paramilitary as a counterweight to the army have done little to institutionalize civilian control. These strategies, inaugurated by President Jomo Kenyatta and taken to new heights by his successor Daniel Arap Moi, entailed neither military professionalization, military autonomy and political insulation, nor regime-legitimizing policies. The evidence of the case study suggests that the adverse effects of Kenya's civilian control strategies support Samuel Huntington's and Claude Welch Jr.'s hypothesis that only the professionalization and political insulation of the military are more likely to ensure its continued subordination to civilian control. The strategies implemented since independence epitomize the model of civil-military relations that Africa's fledgling democracies should avoid if democratic civilian control of the military is to take root on the continent.