A State of Change

• Date: 01 September 2016
• Author: Mai Hassan
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912916653476
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

2016, Vol. 69(3) 510 –521

© 2016 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912916653476

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Article

Many countries that moved toward democracy during

the third wave have increased their number of sub-

national administrative units, including more than

twenty in sub-Saharan Africa. Although leaders of

developing countries have created new units to comply

with donor demands for decentralization, there is little

evidence that new units were made to explicitly remedy

these countries’ most pressing administrative concerns

(Ayee 2013; Green 2010; Grossman and Lewis 2014;

Kasara 2006; Lewis 2014; Malesky 2009; O’Dwyer

2006; Pierskalla 2016).

To explain this phenomenon, I begin from the premise

that the creation of a new administrative unit serves as

patronage to the receiving area, injecting the area with

central government resources and public-sector jobs.1

Much existing literature has focused on how unit creation

can appease local political elites, arguing that leaders cre-

ate new units to co-opt areas that demand state resources

or to “divide-and-rule” areas represented by elites who

oppose the government. These findings, however, may be

a consequence of an empirical focus on non-competitive

electoral systems.2 In actuality, many leaders who over-

see bouts of unit creation face competitive elections

where the threat of losing power is real; they are con-

cerned foremost about their political future.

Accordingly, this paper proposes a new theory on unit

creation that takes into consideration the competitive

political environment that many leaders who engage in

unit creation face. I posit that a leader facing a competi-

tive reelection selectively creates new units based on,

first, the importance of the area to winning the election

and, second, the likelihood that unit creation will guaran-

tee her the electoral support of those in the new unit,

which is based on the magnitude of this patronage gift to

the receiving area. This theory, then, helps refine existing

explanations for unit creation: leaders use this tool to dis-

tribute patronage to co-opt local threats, but these threats

vary across political regime.

I examine this theory during Kenya’s first decade after

the return to competitive multi-party elections in 1992, a

period in which the number of administrative districts—

the primary tier of local governance—nearly doubled.

Using an original time-series dataset of the creation date

653476PRQXXX10.1177/1065912916653476Political Research QuarterlyHassan

research-article2016

1University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mai Hassan, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science,

University of Michigan, 505 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI

48109, USA.

Email: mhass@umich.edu

A State of Change: District Creation

in Kenya after the Beginning of

Multi-party Elections

Mai Hassan1

Abstract

Many developing countries have recently increased the number of their sub-national administrative units. Existing

literature explains this phenomenon by suggesting that because new units serve as patronage to an area, they can help

a leader meet local demand for state resources or divide opposition elites. These explanations, however, overlook

the costs of new administrative units to a leader facing competitive reelection, in part, because they rely largely on

evidence from non-competitive electoral systems. I posit that leaders facing competitive reelection create new units

selectively, limiting the supply to electorally valuable areas where residents of the split unit can best be swayed to

vote for the leader in the upcoming election. I find evidence of these claims using a unique dataset of administrative

district creation alongside archival evidence from Kenya during the country’s first decade after the return to multi-

party elections. This article illuminates the political factors driving decentralization across developing countries that

have transitioned to holding multi-party elections.

Keywords

decentralization, democratization, ethnicity, Kenya