Michelle D'Arcy

Plus ça change? County-level politics in Kenya after devolution

For the first time on 4 March 2013, Kenyans voted for county governors. Devolution has significantly changed fiscal and administrative organization, but has it led to changes in politics? Has it enabled the emergence of new elites, the entrenchment of old ones or rebalanced power between the counties and the centre? These issues are explored, by asking, first, whether gubernatorial candidates were ‘insiders’ who had held public office before, or ‘outsiders’, and whether they were locals or not; and second, how national forces impacted on the gubernatorial campaigns. These questions are answered using original primary data on four counties: Nakuru, Kiambu, Mombasa and Kilifi, and aggregated data from all 47 counties. We find that the majority of winning candidates were ‘insiders’ who won using existing patronage networks, suggesting that the gubernatorial elections led to the entrenchment of existing elites and patronage networks. However, the lack of involvement of national leaders in crucial party primaries allowed for the emergence of powerful local insiders who may challenge national elites going forward. Overall, the first chapter of devolution reflected existing political dynamics in Kenya more than it changed them, although challenges to the resilience of national elites are clear.

The early modern origins of contemporary European tax outcomes

What explains variation in tax outcomes between European states? Previous studies emphasise the role played by political institutions, but focus mostly on the input side of politics – how access to power and policy making is structured – and the institutions of relatively recent times. It is argued in this article that output-side institutions related to the implementation of political decisions also matter and have deep institutional origins. As the classic literature has argued, the early modern period from 1450 to 1800 was formative for the development of fiscal capacity, but European states diverged in the stock of capacity they acquired. This article tests whether these differences still affect contemporary tax outcomes using a novel measure of fiscal capacity, based on the age, extent and quality of state-administered cadastral records. The empirical analysis shows that, on average, countries with higher early modern fiscal capacity have higher tax revenue today, compared to countries with lower early modern fiscal capacity. This association is robust to different model specifications and alternative measurements. The findings have important policy implications as they indicate how deeply the current fiscal problems of the continent are entrenched, but also point to what needs to be prioritised within ongoing tax reforms.

Non-state actors and universal services in Tanzania and Lesotho: state-building by Alliance

In recent years over half of all African states have re-introduced some form of universal basic service provision, though many more have done so in education when compared with health. Most existing explanations of these developments have emphasised the importance of demand side factors associated with democratisation. This paper argues that while democratisation has been important in generating pressure for reform, alliances with actors outside the state – such as donors and non-state service providers – have been the critical enabling factor allowing weak states to overcome their capacity constraints and respond. Two illustrative case studies are used to show how variation in alliance opportunities has led to differences in outcomes both between social sectors and across countries. An inter-sector comparison of health and education policy in Tanzania shows how a difference in donor policy preferences between sectors – donors having converged behind the principle of universal primary education but not universal healthcare – has led to variation in alliance opportunities and hence policy outcomes. A ‘least likely’ case of healthcare reform in Lesotho shows how an alliance with a non-state provider has made difficult reforms possible.