Political Parties as Instruments of Oligarchy in Transition to Democracy: An Assessment of the Organizational Behavior of Political Parties in Kenya

Abstract

The reforms of the 1990s literally brought to life hundreds of new political parties in Kenya. Regardless of the proliferation of parties in Kenya, there are no scholars that have examined the conduct of these parties through specific models of democracy originally elaborated for Western political parties. This study has analyzed the ideological orientation of major political parties in Kenya (KANU, ODM, TNA, FORD-Kenya) in light of their organizational behavior. An assessment of adherence of political parties to institutional arrangements which includes-candidate selection procedures, coalition arrangements, external regulation of political parties based on public opinions. The study concludes that, whereas these parties claim to be advocates of deliberative, participatory and competitive democracies, in actual practice, they appear to be more inclined to oligarchical practices. These parties tend to be amongst the least trusted institutions in Kenya, often plagued by internal conflicts and suspected to be guided more by the pursuit of power than ideology or principle. It also observes that the performance of these political parties continues to manifest a huge gap between their constitutional prescriptions and actual implementation thus calling for constitutional regulation of their conduct.