On the Effects of International Support to Peace and Democracy in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan in the Aftermath of Interethnic Violence

The importance of local political will

Institutional change is often needed to further peace and democracy in a country. Particularly the qualitative literature has consistently reiterated that “political will” in a given country is a quasi-necessary condition to successfully support such institutional change (Fortna and Howard, 2008; Schraeder, 2003).

Often the concept of political will remains unspecified or is applied very narrowly to the political elite of the country. Here Post et al.’s (2010) definition is adapted and political will defined more broadly as: “the extent of committed support among key decision-makers or political coalitions for a particular policy solution to a particular problem”. Larger segments of society, including reform politicians and civil society, can hence be included to determine whether local political will for policy change existed.

Analyzing political will also means taking a closer look at the instruments external actors employ. Cooperative instruments ⁵ imply consent from both sides, usually based on an agreement asking the external actor for assistance. This means that a certain level of local political will exists. But external actors can also use coercive instruments ⁶ if they believe it necessary to try to pressure or force unwilling major political actors to embrace reforms to further peace or democracy. This should make external support to peace and democracy more difficult, as it implies resistance from significant parts of the local elite.

The role of donor coordination

Donor coordination, implying a division of labour amongst the international community, can be essential to avoid duplications when a multiplicity of donors is working on similar issues and hence make support for peace and democracy more efficient. Several theoretical studies emphasize the transaction costs that poor coordination creates for both donors and particularly recipients by overburdening the absorption capacity of a country (Bigsten and Tengstam, 2012; Easterly, 2007; Torsvik, 2005).

Furthermore, one can assume that good coordination also enhances the coherence of donor approaches. Donor approaches are coherent if they further the same overall goal or at least do not conflict with each other. Generally, the realisation that the excessive fragmentation of aid has regularly impaired aid effectiveness in individual countries is spreading and many authors recommend better donor coordination as a means of raising the effectiveness of international support to peace and democracy (see de Zeeuw and Kumar, 2006; Easterly and Pfutze, 2008; Grimm and Leininger, 2012; Paris, 2009).

Dealing with trade-offs: Supporting peace or democracy

Donors face a common dilemma in post-conflict societies: democracy and peace do not necessarily go hand in hand. Most importantly, Mansfield and Snyder (2002, 2005) call attention to the fact that democratization might not be conducive to peace, but on the contrary even have destabilizing effects. A recent quantitative study by Cederman, Hug and Krebs (2010) confirms the relationship between democratization and civil war.

Sparked by these insights, building strong and capable state institutions before introducing and supporting democracy has been advocated by numerous scholars (Fearon and Laitin, 2004; Fukuyama, 2004; Mansfield and Snyder, 2007; Paris, 2004). By now, a widespread awareness of the existence of trade-offs or conflicting objectives between peace on the one hand and democracy on the other hand exists (see for example de Zeeuw and Kumar, 2006; Diamond, 2006). Given that this approach is increasingly pursued by international actors, it is interesting to assess whether prioritizing stability has indeed had positive effects in the two cases.

Although the three factors can theoretically each influence the effectiveness of donor engagement individually, their effect can also depend on one another. Coordination can be crucial when employing pressure to overcome a lack of political will for reforms (Boyce, 2002). Deciding on whether to employ such pressure may depend on the strategy used – if donors fear that by using coercive instruments, they could jeopardize stability, choosing to prioritize stability would explain their choice of more cooperative instruments.

Key concepts

Several concepts are central to the analysis of the effectiveness of donor engagement for peace and democracy presented here. The concept of democracy used in this article is based on Dahl’s (1971) famous minimal definition of polyarchy, which includes participation, contestation, civil rights and the rule of law. Democratization refers to a change in regime quality on a scale from autocracy towards democracy. Democracy support, following Thomas Carothers (1999), regards “aid specifically designed to foster opening in a non-democratic country or to further a democratic transition in a country that has experienced a democratic opening”.

The definition of peace stems from Galtung’s concept of negative peace, “which is the absence of violence, absence of war” (Galtung, 1964: 2). This concept of peace is often referred to as “stability” in the political discourse, which is why the two concepts are applied interchangeably. When identifying and analyzing international support to peace the definition of peacebuilding by former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali (1992: 823) is used, which focuses on “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict”.

Case selection

Kenya and Kyrgyzstan were chosen for a comparative analysis for several reasons. First, they both represent fragile states, based on an understanding of state fragility as a multidimensional problem concerning one or more of the core state functions: authority, capacity or legitimacy. ⁷ Second, the two countries have both experienced many years of autocratic rule, and are struggling to establish a functioning democracy as well as overcome the legacies of interethnic violence. Third, neither of the two countries is highly aid-dependent – in both countries aid in 2012 represented around 8% of the national budget. Nevertheless, all the main multilateral and bilateral donors are active in both countries. Furthermore, there is (or was) a certain strategic interest for Western donors to keep these countries stable – in Kenya because it acts as a hub for access to neighbouring countries, particularly Somalia, and Kyrgyzstan due to its airbase and proximity to Afghanistan. Thereby both countries strongly converge with regard to the enabling conditions of the dependent variable – donor impact on peace and democracy in fragile states.

Analysis and selection of critical junctures

Several theoretical assumptions underpin this analysis of external support to peace and democracy. First, political change, such as a peace or democratization process, is an inherently domestically driven process – it is decided upon and executed but also constrained by local actors and institutions. Following Mahoney (2001), it is reasonable to assume that in periods of political change “critical junctures” significantly determine the future development of a country. Mahoney (2001: 7) defines critical junctures as: “choice points that put countries (or other units) onto paths of development that track certain outcomes – as opposed to others – and that cannot be easily broken or reversed”. A final, central assumption of this paper holds that crucial external support to the development of peace and democracy in a country must have left its mark on those critical junctures. And inversely, if external engagement had a significant influence on a specific critical juncture, arguably it also impacted the larger political process.

The dependent variable of the analysis is the effectiveness of donor support to peace and democracy. Donor engagement was effective, and therefore successful, if it positively impacted on the critical juncture (and thereby on the larger political process). Impact can be established if international actors are among the main factors that help to explain the outcome of a critical juncture (e.g. why elections were free and fair or not). ⁸ Impact can theoretically be both of procedural nature or with regard to contents. Two possibilities for ineffective international support to peace and democracy exist. Both cases where donors were highly active but did not contribute to positive developments and cases where their engagement instead exacerbated negative developments constitute unsuccessful and ineffective donor engagement.

In line with the main assumption that domestic processes shape democratization and stability, the analysis takes the domestic political process as its starting point, in order to assess the impact of international interventions. Three strongly similar critical junctures were selected for both Kenya (ending interethnic violence in 2008, the adoption of a new constitution in 2010 and the 2013 elections) and Kyrgyzstan (ending and overcoming the interethnic violence of June 2010, the adoption of a new constitution in 2010, the parliamentary elections of 2010).

Combining a within-case and a paired case comparison

In order to identify whether external actors had an impact on peace and democracy in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan and if yes why, this study combines a within-case comparison with a paired comparison between cases. First, several critical junctures are analyzed and compared country-wise to establish whether international actors impacted on these processes or not. Second, the paired comparison between the two cases is used to assess the hypotheses, i.e. the factors explaining impact (Tarrow, 2010; Collier, 1993). The two cases represent rather similar cases which, as the analysis will show, display considerable variation on the dependent variable – both strong and weak as well as effective and ineffective donor engagement with regard to peace and democracy could be traced.

The case studies consist of in-depth analysis of the six critical junctures. Next to written sources, the findings are based on 80 semi-structured interviews conducted in Nairobi and Bishkek with national and international stakeholders and analysts in May and September 2014. ⁹ Interlocutors were national stakeholders from the government, administration and civil society (including think-tanks and the media) as well as international representatives from the diplomatic and donor community (including bi- and multilateral donors as well as INGOs).

Ending post-electoral violence in 2008

Triggered by a disputed election and fuelled by historical grievances, violence erupted and spread across Kenya in the aftermath of the presidential elections in 2007, leaving more than 1100 dead and 600,000 displaced (Barkan, 2013). The elections initially proceeded rather peacefully, but after the elections suspicions of fraud rose dramatically as clear irregularities had become known with regard to the tallying of votes. The final results presented by the Electoral Commission of Kenya indicated a close race with the oppositional candidate, Raila Odinga, receiving 4.3 million and the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, 4.5 million votes (Gibson and Long, 2009). Despite allegations of fraud from national and international observers, Kibaki was declared the winner of the elections and quickly sworn into office (Brown, 2009). Violence between different political and ethnic communities erupted immediately afterwards, partially showing clear signs of prior planning (CIPEV, 2008). ¹⁰ Calm was restored because international mediation, headed by Kofi Annan, enabled the signing of a peace and power-sharing agreement on 28 February 2008. Based on the agreement a national unity government was created in April with Kibaki as president and Odinga as prime minister.

In order to end hostilities it was tremendously important that mediation was accepted by all sides and successful. Without mediation, the violence would have continued, leading to greater suffering and possibly even to civil war. That mediation was successful can be attributed to the high-profile and good mediation tactics of the team and of Kofi Annan in particular. ¹¹ Furthermore, international and national pressure were amongst the factors keeping all sides at the negotiation table, when in several instances the process was in danger of collapsing. ¹²

In order to maintain stability it was not only vital a peace agreement was reached, but also that the agreement was upheld. ¹³ International engagement supported this outcome. The mediation team itself stayed highly active after the agreement had been signed, including through a permanent office of the panel on the ground (Call, 2012). Also the international community more generally played an important role here: “the international community’s unified backing, both through public support and funding and through behind-the-scenes pressure, ensured that the process stayed on track” (Kanyinga and Walker, 2013: 11).

The constitutional review process 2010

It was the tragic events of post-electoral violence that gave way to a successful constitutional reform process, a pending issue in Kenya since 2000. Based on the mediation agreement, a Committee of Experts (CoE) was assembled, which produced a draft constitution in less than a year. Thereby in August 2010 a major milestone was reached: a new constitution, including a strong diminution of the power of the president and devolution, passed a national referendum with overwhelming support of 68%.

Introducing a new constitution, which significantly limited the powers of the president, was highly important to maintain stability and further democratization in Kenya. That this constitution was written and adopted remains surprising because in fact covert resistance by politicians to endorsing constitutional reform can be traced throughout the entire constitutional review process, particularly in the writing stage. ¹⁴ It was because of the dedication of most members of the committee in charge of drafting, the Committee of Experts (CoE), that a new constitution was nevertheless written.

The international community’s most important contribution to the constitutional review process lies in its support to the CoE. ¹⁵ First, three foreigners were part of the CoE, which helped to at least partially neutralize the fear that the CoE would be partisan. ¹⁶ Second, and most importantly, donors stepped in to fund the work of the CoE as well as support its outreach strategies when the government was not willing to do so. As one interviewee put it: “The donor community helped bridge the financial gap that occasioned that process. So that funding of the process actually was fundamental, and indeed it made a very big difference”. ¹⁷ Given the resistance that the CoE faced from politicians, the constitutional review process could have derailed without donor support.

The elections in 2013

The transitional period of the national unity government, created through the power-sharing agreement of 2008, ended with the 2013 elections. As in 2007 the results were very close and disputed, but the situation stayed peaceful. The winner, Uhuru Kenyatta was surprisingly able to pass in the first round by a very slim margin of 50.51%. His main opponent, Odinga, appealed against the result in the Supreme Court, but accepted its ruling that Kenyatta was the rightful winner (Long et al., 2013). However, this final result remains highly disputed in Kenya, largely due to the fact that the elections were marked by serious organizational flaws.

The 2013 elections could have marked a step towards both peace and democracy in Kenya. Instead, important but critical opinions were suppressed for the sake of maintaining stability and, most importantly, many local analysts, and in fact large parts of the Kenyan population, do not believe that the elections were truly free and fair, due to irregularities and stark problems with the voting technology employed. ¹⁸

Donors invested massively in the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to support their efforts to organize free and fair elections (Barkan, 2013). Already early on there were strong indications that the IEBC was struggling to organize clean elections, but donors looked the other way and continued to support the IEBC. ¹⁹ Coming out of post-electoral violence in 2007/2008 donors wanted to make sure these elections fared better and invested large amounts of money to this end. This enabled the IEBC to have materials printed and buy technology that, however, failed to work. The IEBC did not make use of the technical components of the program and donors were not able to insist they do so. It is possible that development partners were deliberately kept out of these issues. ²⁰

Overall, the international community has had quite a considerable impact on the peace and democratization process in Kenya since 2008. First, donors enabled important developments by supporting mediation in 2008 and the CoE in 2010. In fact, at both critical junctures it is possible to argue that international engagement was crucial, because they would likely have had a different outcome had external actors not been active here. However, in the 2013 elections major donor engagement was ineffective, exacerbating negative dynamics.

Ending and overcoming interethnic violence 2010

Whilst it remains disputed exactly why violence broke out in Southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, most analysts see the starting point in the power vacuum that ensued from the April revolution, which caused then president Kurmanbek Bakiev to flee and an interim government, headed by Roza Otunbaeva, to take over control (see Melvin, 2011; Radnitz, 2010).

On the evening of 10 June, a fight between young ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in front of a casino in Osh escalated − both sides called for support from their communities, which quickly turned into large crowds clashing throughout the entire night. Whilst initially both sides were involved in the fighting, the violence later evolved mainly into attacks on Uzbeks. By 14 June, violence started to decrease and eventually phased out leaving 470 dead, 2000 injured and 300,000 internally displaced (KIC, 2010).

During the violence over 2800 properties, mostly belonging to Uzbeks, were damaged and quickly needed to be rebuilt in order to stabilize the situation in the south. Enabling swift reconstruction was a strong, positive contribution by the international community after the violence. ²¹ Most importantly, the international community pursued a conflict-sensitive approach. The mayor of Osh, Melis Myrzakmatov, wanted to resettle many of the centrally located Uzbek houses and neighborhood units, so called mahallas, to multistorey houses on the outskirts of the city, a way of removing Uzbeks from the city centre and further marginalizing them (Melvin, 2011). Donors very clearly signalled that they would not be willing to support this approach, insisting on regular reconstruction instead. ²² Had the international community not stepped in, a resettling of the Uzbeks against their preferences could have fuelled further grievances.

In order to reduce the chances for renewed conflict in the future, it would have also been highly important to stipulate a reconciliation process in the country. ²³ International engagement to initiate such a reconciliation process proved futile. Upon the personal request of the interim president, Roza Otunbaeva, an international inquiry commission (Kyrgyz Inquiry Commission − KIC) was invited to Kyrgyzstan to investigate the causes of the violence. Whilst their report was internationally well received, the local reaction was the opposite. The most vehement opposition to the report came from the parliament that declared the chair, Dr Kimmo Kilijunen, persona non grata, withdrawing from him the right to visit Kyrgyzstan (Matveeva, 2011). In hindsight, it seems that the report was “a little bit too harsh and a little bit too truthful” and “just dumped in the laps of the Kyrgyz parliament”. ²⁴ The uncompromising content and presentation of the report prevented it from having a positive impact. ²⁵

Furthermore, donor engagement in this area was marked by a “strange acceptance of the persona non grata decision”. ²⁶ Several international actors had promised the commission that they would take it upon themselves to press for the recommendations to be implemented. Because the report drew such negative reactions, donors were then afraid to do so, fearing to erode the working relationship with the government and to further destabilize the country. ²⁷ Through the international commission donors could potentially have impacted this component of the critical juncture, but failed to do so.

The constitutional review process 2010

Only two weeks after the bloody clashes in the south a new constitution was endorsed in a referendum, introducing a semi-parliamentary democracy in Kyrgyzstan. Headed by the interim government’s first deputy, Omurbek Tekebaev, a “Working Group on the Drafting of the Constitution” had been able to deliver a draft constitution by the end of April, only months after the interim government had come into power. Together with the new constitution the population simultaneously voted for and accepted Roza Otunbaeva as the official interim president until January 2012 and the dissolution of the constitutional court.

Writing a new constitution was a crucial step in Kyrgyzstan’s transition to democracy. Had the process stalled, political paralysis and potentially turmoil could have ensued. As in Kenya, it was therefore important that the constitutional review process did not derail during the drafting process or in the referendum.

Donors played a minor, positive role in the Kyrgyz constitutional review process. During the drafting process expert opinion and technical advice was provided. ²⁸ At a later stage, donor engagement was geared to enable the dissemination of and encourage discussion on the constitution. However, donors were not able to prevent these discussions from being framed almost entirely as an issue of stability rather than focusing on the actual content of the proposed constitution. Finally, the international community was not particularly active in organizing the challenging constitutional referendum in June 2010, which took place only two weeks after the violent clashes in the south. ²⁹

The parliamentary elections 2010

In October 2010 parliamentary elections were held under the new constitution. In the end only five of the 29 competing parties were able to master both the national (5%) and regional (0.5%) hurdles and move into the parliament (Huskey and Hill, 2011). Since then three governing coalitions have broken down. Nevertheless the parliament elected in 2010 managed to survive until the next parliamentary elections in 2015.

The parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan had mostly positive effects on the Kyrgyz democratization process, as they constituted the first free and fair elections the country has ever witnessed. Although the electoral campaigns often relied on nationalism, election day proceeded rather smoothly and all parties accepted that many of them did not make it into parliament.

In the 2010 parliamentary elections donors played a very small role. Several international programmes actively supported the parliamentary elections in 2010, working on issues such as compiling voter lists, engaging in civic education, training personnel, revising electoral legislation and providing technical support to the electoral commission. Whilst these programmes had a supportive role, no clear impact on the process could be traced.

Overall, the international community did not have a particularly strong impact on the peace and democratization process in Kyrgyzstan after 2010. Both in the constitutional review process and in the parliamentary elections, donors played only a minor role. With regard to ending and overcoming violence, international influence was stronger, but both effective and ineffective: supporting reconstruction efforts was important to stabilize the situation in the aftermath of the conflict. However, despite an international inquiry commission a truth and reconciliation process could not be stipulated in Kyrgyzstan.

Local political will

Contrary to the first hypothesis, the analysis of several critical junctures in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan suggests that local political will is a sufficient, but not necessary condition for effective donor support to peace and democracy.

Both the Kyrgyz constitution writing process and the parliamentary elections are examples of positive critical junctures where local political will ensured that they proceeded as swiftly and smoothly as they did. But this also meant that international actors’ role was reduced to a minor one.

More interestingly, the analysis shows that external actors can enable important developments by helping to overcome a lack of local political will, especially among the elite. Mediation in Kenya would not have been necessary if the main political actors had wanted peace anyway. Similarly, the CoE might have failed due to resistance to constitutional reform by politicians, had it not had the financial and moral support of the international community. Also in Kyrgyzstan donors’ choice to go against the wishes of the mayor of Osh regarding reconstruction exemplify this case. Local political will therefore is not a necessary condition for successful external engagement. Instead, in these cases, external actors were able to make crucial contributions by enabling developments that would otherwise not have taken place.

Overcoming this lack of elite support was only possible because political will for these issues existed within other or larger segments of the society. For example, most members of the CoE were strongly dedicated to writing a new constitution and determined to do so. Additionally, the Kenyan population was strongly in favour of constitutional reform. Similarly, not only donors wanted to establish peace in Kenya in 2008 − Kenyan civil society, the private sector and the churches were equally engaged and responsible for making peace possible. International efforts were hence successful because they connected to broader, local endeavours.

Two examples show that international actors were not able to overcome a lack of political will at the elite level, if their efforts were not properly embedded in the local context. The first is the international inquiry commission in Kyrgyzstan that aimed to investigate the causes of the June violence. The purely international commission delivered a report of high quality, which was however, refuted by local elites due to its uncompromising stance. A potential remedy for these problems could have been to establish a joint commission, rather than a purely international one. Including national voices could have enabled national support for the report and hence increased the chances of producing recommendations that could have been implemented.

The second example of where international engagement failed to connect to broader segments of society is diplomatic pressure against the Jubilee Alliance in the elections in 2013. Their presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and his running vice-president, William Ruto, both faced charges for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Public international statements by the US Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson and diplomatic missions were interpreted as clearly opposing the Jubilee Alliance (Brown and Raddatz, 2014; Mueller, 2014). Aided by a British PR firm, the Jubilee Alliance made a deliberate campaigning strategy out of these statements and combined them with their charges in front of the ICC to claim a Western conspiracy against them (Mueller, 2014). Here international actors acted jointly, but there was no similar protest from within Kenyan (civil) society. ³⁰ Thereby this international engagement had the adverse effect – it actually fuelled support for Kenyatta and Ruto, rather than discouraging it. ³¹

In both cases the strong, confrontational approach of the international community lacked substantial backing from other political or social actors in the respective societies. Instead of enabling positive developments these approaches led to strained relations between the main international and national actors, making international support to peace and democracy more difficult.

Coordination

With regard to the influencing factor in the second hypothesis, namely coordination, the analysis demonstrates that it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective donor support to peace and democracy.

In all of the critical junctures in which donors had a positive impact they coordinated rather well. Coordination at times can even be central to an explanation of the positive impact of donor engagement, as the mediation in Kenya demonstrates (Kanyinga and Walker, 2013; Kaye and Lindenmayer, 2009). Kofi Annan was aware of the threat a divided international community could pose to the mediation process. Already before travelling to Kenya he therefore spoke with various foreign representatives to ensure that he had the international community’s full support. ³² It was this undivided support by the international community that gave the mediation team additional leverage in the negotiations to pressure the two sides to come to an agreement. ³³ This was made possible by the fact that donor interests aligned around keeping Kenya stable – in contrast, if political interests had strongly diverged, as is often the case, good donor coordination would have been impossible.

Poor coordination was mainly found with regard to local peacebuilding initiatives after the violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan, making donor engagement less effective. ³⁴ The main challenge was the high number of actors and the large amounts of funds available in the aftermath of the violence. This led to competition amongst donors, but most importantly to duplications and contradictions between different approaches. ³⁵ For example, parallel structures with conflicting concepts of mediation were created. Poor coordination clearly reduced the overall effectiveness of donor engagement, mainly because it undermined the sustainability of peacebuilding efforts and created reputational costs for donors.

Most interestingly, support to the IEBC in the elections in Kenya in 2013 serves as an example that very good coordination does not per se increase the effectiveness of international support to peace and democracy. Whereas the elections in 2007 received around US$12 million of donor funds, in 2013 it was over 100 million. ³⁶ Most of the support to the elections in 2013 was provided through a UN basket fund and was focused on the IEBC. The IEBC nevertheless clearly failed to organize and deliver smooth elections. It was the massive donor support that made the use of technology (that later failed or was tampered with) possible in the first place. Whilst providing most of their resources through the basket fund ensured a certain level of coherence and avoided duplications it was also over-centralized to a certain degree, resulting in a very high number of resources being focused mostly on only one vital institution in the electoral process. ³⁷

Prioritizing peace over democracy

Peace was clearly prioritized over democracy in two critical junctures, with mixed effects for donor engagement, calling into question the third hypothesis. Here prioritization meant that despite being about democracy, donor engagement in these critical junctures – the elections in Kenya in 2013 and the constitutional review process in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 – was mainly focused on stability.

In the Kenyan elections in 2013 donors were clearly more focused on keeping peace than ensuring fully democratic elections, clearly limiting donor engagement’s effectiveness with regard to democracy. ³⁸ Even before election day it had become clear that the IEBC was immensely struggling to ensure free elections and that several democratic principles were being violated by them. However, they were not held accountable or subjected to criticism because donors feared that this would have a destabilizing effect. ³⁹ In the end the IEBC failed to organize free and fair elections and their democraticness is widely doubted. Trust in this institution was further eroded through the fact that the shortcomings of the elections and the IEBC were not discussed openly in the aftermath of the elections.

In contrast, in the constitutional review process in Kyrgyzstan, prioritiziation was a partially successful strategy to further democratization. ⁴⁰ Although the constitutional review process enabled Kyrgyzstan’s transition to democracy, it was mainly framed as an issue of stability. This had the positive effect that a new, democratic constitution was written quickly and accepted by a large share of the population.

With regard to peace the effects of prioritizing stability in the context of critical junctures geared towards democratization are less clear. In the short term the situation around these two events remained stable, whereby the strategy could be seen as successful. However, potential negative long-term consequences of prioritizing stability exist. In Kenya the fact that the elections were marred by several flaws but nevertheless declared free and fair led to resentment and frustration in large parts of the population. ⁴¹ The consequence of Kenya’s and the international community’s focus on stability thereby was that yet another democratically questionable election has put Kenya on an uncertain path for the future with regard to stability (Elder et al., 2014). Protests against the IEBC in mid-2016, which have resulted in at least two fatalities, underline this point.

A possibly negative effect of framing the constitutional review process in Kyrgyzstan more as an issue of stability than democracy was that the opportunity to truly rally the people behind the new constitution and political system of the country was missed. This lack of support might become critical in the future.