UC San Diego

What explains the emergence of human and democratic rights in historically authoritarian and dependent regimes? Based on interviews with movement leaders and participants, as well as longitudinal analysis of news media, and policy and movement documents, the study's central finding is that certain fundamental human and democratic rights became more widely recognized, practiced and protected in Kenya between December 1991 and December 2002 due to the political impact of a transnational social movement dedicated to these goals. This finding challenges central assumptions in dominant theories of human rights and democratization in political science. To explain the puzzles posed by the Kenyan case, the study puts forth a new theoretical framework that integrates state, societal and international levels of analysis, and builds on social movements and legal mobilization theories. Specifically the study argues for the analytical value of three social movements concepts -- mobilizing structures, political opportunity structures and framing process-- to explain movement emergence and development. To explain movement impact, the study examines how legal mobilization strategies enabled movement actors to: (1) sustain a common reform agenda and sense of collective identity among diverse movement actors; (2) increase citizen awareness of internationally and constitutionally recognized human and democratic rights, and the role of state institutions in protecting them; (3) facilitate institution-building at state, societal, and international levels to promote rights protections; and (4) ultimately force a resistant regime to concede important human and democratic rights reforms. Despite the impressive achievements of this transnational movement, the study also finds that at each stage of its development, majoritarian features of Kenya's Constitution constrained movement reform efforts. Particularly detrimental was Kenya's majoritarian electoral system. Not only did this system directly contribute to large-scale ethnic violence leading up to and following Kenya's 1992 and 1997 multiparty elections, but it also largely explains Kenya's protracted democratic transition. Based on evidence dating to Kenya's independence in 1963, the study concludes that the more closely Kenya's emerging democratic system approximates a liberal democracy with consensus, rather than majoritarian, institutions, the greater the likelihood that Kenyans' human and democratic rights will be promoted and protected by this system