Opportunities for Kenyans to fight corruption

Abstract: In 2013 Kenya implemented their devolution, which is the process of devolving political functions, fiscal resources and administrative responsibilities to sub-national units. The central reason behind this constitutional change was to address the chronic ethnic conflicts of Kenya. A part of the ethnic conflict in Kenya is the plague of corruption, where it has divided the people of Kenya, putting the citizens against each other instead of nurturing a society capable of checking the abuse of the ones in power. The devolution’s purpose was to address these obstacles of development and move away from the strongly centralized system. However, the reasoning of the positive virtues of devolution’s effect on corruption is ambiguous. The purpose of this study is to examine if the devolution has brought about any change for citizens and civil society to mitigate corruption in the new institutional design. This has been examined through a case study in western and central Kenya during a eight-week period in January to February in 2018. The findings suggest that devolution enables citizens and civil society to engage and hold politicians and public officials accountable through the new institutional settings. Although, poorly functioning corrective institutions hampers this affect and reduces the incentives for politicians and public officials to change their behaviour. However, the findings suggest that civil society can foster engagement amongst citizens through civic education on awareness and consequences of corruption. Citizens’ and civil society’s engagement in the fight against corruption could potentially challenge the negative social norms of corruption and the power structures of corruption in their societies.