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The history of elections in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda : what we can learn from these "national exercises"
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Willis, Justin, Cheeseman, Nicholas and Lynch, Gabrielle (2021) The history of elections in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda : what we can learn from these "national exercises". Journal of African Elections, 20 (2). doi:10.20940/JAE/2021/v20i2a1 ISSN 1609-4700.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.20940/JAE/2021/v20i2a1
Abstract
A large literature has described the years after independence from colonial rule as a period of ‘departicipation’. Africa's new rulers – whether driven by personal venality or a sincere commitment to nation-building – swiftly gave up on elections, or at best held elections that, by denying choice, left violence as the central dynamic of African politics. This article draws on the cases of Kenya, Ghana and Uganda in the late 1960s to argue that the emphasis often placed on the ‘speed and ease’ of this process has been overstated. Instead, Africa's politicians and civil servants valued elections as a means to educate and discipline the public, even as they feared their possible outcomes. Building on a literature that focuses on the individual experience of elections rather than the presence or absence of parties, we argue that the rhetoric of politicians and civil servants shows that they saw elections as ‘exercises’ – a revealing term – that would train and test their new citizens. Yet this is not the whole story: voters understood their participation in their own terms and played a role in how early experiments with elections played out. The political closures of these years were real, but their course was unplanned and contingent, shaped partly by popular involvement. These points are not only of historical value, but also provide important insights into the extent to which contemporary elections are instruments of elite power or the drivers of democratisation.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DT Africa J Political Science > JQ Political institutions (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Elections -- Ghana -- History -- 20th century, Elections -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century, Elections -- Uganda -- History -- 20th century, Voting -- Ghana -- History, Voting -- Kenya -- History, Voting -- Uganda -- History, Ghana -- Politics and government -- 1957-1979, Kenya -- Politics and government -- 1963-, Uganda -- Politics and government -- 1962- | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of African Elections | ||||||
| Publisher: | Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa | ||||||
| ISSN: | 1609-4700 | ||||||
| Official Date: | October 2021 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 20 | ||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.20940/JAE/2021/v20i2a1 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 24 November 2021 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 16 February 2022 | ||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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