Decision Making and Kenya’s Foreign Policy Behaviour: The Moi and Kibaki Presidencies in Perspective

Kenya’s foreign policy has overly been characterised by continuity and change, with idiosyncrasies of the president informing most foreign policy decision outcomes.  This reality is further reinforced by institutional and structural discrepancies associated with periodic elections, some of which have had significant changes on the presidency as a core institution in Kenya’s foreign policy decision making process. Such was the case in 2002 general elections that witnessed the end of President Moi’s twenty-four-year rule, and ushered in Mwai Kibaki as the third president of Kenya. In an attempt to explore the continuity and change in Kenya’s foreign policy behaviour during the Moi and Kibaki presidencies, this paper adopts decision making theory as a framework of analysis. The actor-specific decision-making theory conceives the individual human decision maker as the focal ontological unit, whose actions whether singly or in groups are responsible for state behaviour. In this paper I argue that, continuity and change exhibited by Kenya’s foreign policy behaviour during the Moi and Kibaki presidencies was informed by individual decision makers, acting singly or in a group, within the constraints of existing institutions of the state, where internal and external influences are channelled through to inform state behaviour. &nbsp

Regional Organizations and Conflict Management in Africa: A Contextual Assessment of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Somalia

The role of regional organizations in managing protracted conflicts within and among Member States cannot be overemphasized.  This has been the case of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Horn of Africa, a region characterised by protracted conflict, instability and state failure as in the case of Somalia. Established in 1986 as Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD), the organization was re-established in 1996 as IGAD with its mandate expanded to include regional peace and security. Adopting diplomacy of conflict management as an approach towards conflicts in the Horn of Africa, IGAD has visibly been involved in the continued search for peace in the embattled state of Somalia.  Political stability and sustainable peace in Somalia however remains elusive as new actors and interest in the conflict emerge. While acknowledging IGAD’s critical role towards political stability in Somalia and the larger Horn of Africa, I argue that IGAD lacks institutional capacity to sustainably resolve complex and protracted conflicts as in the case of Somalia, which calls for multiple approaches to conflict management than those provided for in the IGAD’s founding Agreement