Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the 'hidden' violence of the Kenya 2013 and Tanzania 2015 elections. These elections were framed as a potential threat to security and marked by a pervasive politics of fear, which has significant implications for democracy and the democratic process.

Paper long abstract:

There is an increasing scholarship that is beginning to explore the phenomenon of election-related violence across a number of contexts, debating its conceptualisation, its causes and drivers, and its consequences. Much of this literature has focussed upon high-profile episodes of widespread or intense election violence - such as that of Kenya in 2007, Zimbabwe in 2008, and Cote D'Ivoire in 2010. Far less attention, however, has been paid to elections that experience more low-intensity forms of the phenomenon, despite the fact that existing research has found this to be a more pervasive form of election violence across sub-Saharan Africa (Straus and Taylor 2012). This paper seeks to address this existing gap in the literature through an analysis of the Kenya 2013 and Tanzania 2015 elections. These elections have widely been hailed as being successful and relatively peaceful, seeing a transfer of power from outgoing presidents to new challengers. However, these elections were marked by a significant securitisation of the electoral process and a pervasive politics of fear. The emphasis on order and security, the uncertainty with which the elections were widely perceived, and the low-intensity forms of violence that took place in the lead-up to the elections, on polling days, and in the immediate aftermath, have significant implications for democracy and the democratic process.