Edinburgh Napier University

  Much of the literature on human rights and elections-related violence in Kenya focuses on the patterns and nature of the human rights violations and assessment of the relevant norms that these acts transgress. Explanations of why the violations occur have received little critical attention in these analyses.¹ This is hardly surprising as the human rights approach has traditionally privileged the ethical evaluation of conduct over their socio-scientific explanation.² Additionally, many analysts have focused on the ethnic dimensions. While this presents an important perspective to the violence, merely characterising the violence as between two ethnic communities is to provide a statement...