Toward an assessment of the relevance of proposed public policy in contemporary African society: A retrospective review of Kenya's now-defunct building bridges initiative, with special reference to post-election violence

Abstract

Whereas competing interests characterize the African public policy sphere today, the lens of mass-elite differences has hardly been employed to study electoral violence. Accordingly, this article juxtaposes the lived experiences of ordinary Kenyan citizens, obtained through focus groups, with the content of the now-defunct Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), a comprehensive set of public policy changes proposed by Kenya's political protagonists Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga in 2017. It poses the following broad question: did the BBI proposals truly intersect with the opinions and lived experiences of the masses? I find that various factors, including the lack of electoral and judicial integrity, and a winner-takes-all democratic system, are responsible for post-election violence according to citizens. A comparative analysis of citizen perspectives and the BBI Report reveals considerable congruence in the understanding of the causes of post-election violence. The study partly concludes that African leaders should continue to engage in policy entrepreneurship.

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