Citizens’ input key in Kenya’s quest for new constitution

• Weak and graft ridden states arise when they are left out

Opportunity

One key factor that seems quite clearly to have differentiated those countries from the others has been that citizens have had the opportunity not only to choose their leaders in competitive multiparty elections, but also to participate, mostly for the very first time, in reshaping the constitutions under which most had been autocratically ruled since independence.

The form and degree of citizen participation in constitutional reform has varied from country to country.  Substantial international assistance has been needed in some cases as counterweights to entrenched autocracy, as in southern Africa.

In those countries, the wishes of citizens were powerfully expressed through the leaders drafting what were nonetheless truly homegrown constitutional charters. 

Significantly, in those countries, constitutional reforms took place prior to initial multiparty elections. 

However, in West Africa, countries like Mali and Benin have become pacesetting democracies on the basis of national conferences featuring extensive citizen participation, in shaping new democratic constitutions.

One way or the other, in each of the pacesetting new African democracies, reformed constitutions have been enacted on the basis of the country’s political leaders acting in response, and ultimately accountable, to energized civil societies. 

Thus, some have termed the last 20 years sub-Saharan Africa’s “second independence.” 

For the citizens of these democracies, it may indeed seem like it was finally the first one.

John Haberson is a professor of political science, City University of New York