Incumbent-led militia violence can strategically exploit land conflicts to deter opposition support.

Evidence

Large-scale violence and coerced displacement accompanied the election. As a direct response to the democratic transition, violence began over a year prior to the elections. It intensified in the months preceding the election and continued after. While people were killed and displaced in several parts of Kenya, the violence centred on the Rift Valley Province (and along its border with Nyanza and Western Province), which saw the largest share of parliamentary seats and where mass support for Moi was crucial (Kahl, 1998: 111–112). Violence was levied strategically to establish KANU dominance, by playing on prevailing land conflicts between the ‘indigenous’ groups (Kalenjin, Maasai, Samburu, and Turkana) and more recent settlers in the region. The violence targeted mainly Kikuyu, Kisii, Luhya, and Luo – groups associated with the opposition. It served to appropriate the promised (land) resources for KANU-supporting communities, to secure the support of the Kalenjin community, and punish opposition voters (Boone, 2011: 1328; Throup & Hornsby, 1998: 195–197). — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 59

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s threatened-privilege framework: here the KANU regime deploys ethnic ‘indigenous’ vs settler land grievances as anticipatory violence against opposition ethnic groups — a mobilization of insider privilege in an authoritarian context, bearing directly on whether threatened-privilege mechanisms replicate beyond pluralist democracies. — connects to: Inclusive versus exclusive authoritarian ruling coalitions shape electoral violence risk. — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 94
• ADDENDUM: Supports ‘Grafting & Growth on Trees as Infrastructure’ only tenuously via land/resource competition, but more directly parallels the reader’s established mechanism research on zero-sum, threatened-group mobilization.

Broader Connections

• Inclusive versus exclusive authoritarian ruling coalitions shape electoral violence risk. #expands (0.75) — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 94