Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the plural forms of power and authority that have emerged among pastoralist communities in northern Kenya’s political landscape following devolution in 2013, and the roles that these actors play vis a vis violent conflict involving their communities.

Paper long abstract:

In parts of Kenya’s arid north, seasonal escalations in violence among pastoralist communities are also accompanied by larger explosions of conflict – coinciding with Kenya’s election cycles – which are commonly diagnosed as being ‘traditional’ or drought-driven. These arguably reductive portrayals largely sideline the strategic motivations and machinations driving the conflict.

This paper explores the plural and emerging forms of power and authority among pastoralist communities in (northern) Kenya’s political landscape following devolution in 2013, and the roles that they play amid violent conflict involving their communities. In particular, the paper centres on the Samburu community, based on interviews and ethnography conducted through 2022-23. The paper applies the lens of ‘public authority’, which encompasses elites from the formal political and government spheres, spiritual and customary leaders and other actors. The paper investigates the roles that these actors play in driving, negotiating and resisting conflict, and the political ends that such violence serves for them.

It is tempting to assume that, in the wake of seismic political, socio-economic and environmental changes in this part of Kenya, traditional systems of authority within the Samburu and other pastoralist communities have been eroded to the point of collapse, giving rise to upticks in unbridled and chronic conflict. In fact, the paper illustrates a more complex picture, of hybrid and fluctuating public authority, whereby customary, spiritual and ‘modern’ political systems interact within the community, at times in competition but at other times in concert, in pursuit of winning local elections and expanding political territory.