Has Kenya democratized? Institutional strengthening and contingency in the 2022 general elections

Kenya’s 2022 general elections saw – for only the second time in the country’s history – a transfer of power from a retiring president to a candidate that they had not backed. Moreover, despite accusations of electoral malpractice, the Supreme Court upheld the results, fewer petitions were submitted for lower-level races, and political unrest around the election itself was relatively minor. This has led some commentators to speculate that Kenya’s political institutions are becoming robust and that the power of ethnicity is waning – and hence that the country is on a steady path towards democratic consolidation. We counsel against this interpretation, arguing that the 2022 polls were anything but a formality, and rested, at least in part, on a set of contingent factors that may not be reproduced. It is thus important to understand both the structural changes that have transformed Kenyan politics and the challenges that remain. We undertake such an appraisal by considering three areas often seen to be the building blocks of a high-quality democracy: the strength of democratic institutions, how politicians seek to mobilise support, and the independence and vibrancy of civil society and the media.