INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJRISS)

ISSN No. 2454-6186 | DOI: 10.47772/IJRISS | Volume X Issue III March 2026

Neopatrimonialism, Traditional Authority, and Faith Institutions in

Western Kenya: The Political Logic of the Luhya Council of Elders

¹Kerry Muhati., ²Dr. Reginald Nalugala, PhD

¹Postgraduate PhD Student Field of Peace and Security Sustainment

²Lecturer, School of Arts and Social Sciences Tangaza University

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2026.100300202

Received: 11 March 2026; Accepted: 16 March 2026; Published: 31 March 2026

ABSTRACT

Neopatrimonialism gives a good grid to scholars to analyse governance in Africa and was used as a description

for state-society relations in Africa. This article takes the example of the Luhya Council of Elders in western

Kenya and examines the council's political survival and the significance of its institution. A neopatrimonial

approach is used to explain the continued possible existence of councils of elders in spite of the constitutional

reforming and electoral democratization processes in Kenya. Such councils have played an influential role in

mobilizing political support to leaders, in aggregating ethnic constituencies and building moral legitimacy. The

article offers a historical-institutional analysis based on secondary academic literature, media archives, policy

documents and religious literature with an aim of explaining the ways in which the Luhya Council of Elders

functions as a strategic intermediary in the neopatrimonialism order of Kenyan politics. Although the council

lacks state support, it is run along Luhya cultural lines, and aided by the support of faith-based organizations.

The article advances an analytical model consisting of three layers: cultural legitimacy, moral endorsement and

patronage brokerage which explains how the layers are interrelated in terms of the role that the council plays

within contemporary Kenyan governance. The research recognizes traditional authority as being composite and

dynamic in nature and still in the process of reproduction in the contemporary context of politics. These findings

add to growing debates over African political traditions, the consolidation of democratic regimes, and society-

versus-institutional relationships.

Keywords: neopatrimonialism, governance, Luhya, traditional authority, elders, Africa, political development,

Kenya, patronage, clientelism

INTRODUCTION

The Puzzle of Persistent Traditional Authority

Background: Hybrid Governance in Kenya

Kenya's political history since independence has been thoroughly marked by ethnic loyalties in public life. A

constant tension is shared between the formal structure of the modern state and the perpetuation of the impact

of informal ethnic institutions. Since independence in 1963 successive governments have endeavoured to

centralise power and construct a coherent national policy. Notwithstanding these efforts, the informal institutions

have continued to play a big role in the political process. Ethnic associations, customary councils and religious

organisations continue to have an influence on political behaviour and public decision making. These institutions

work in parallel to formal constitutional institutions and feed into to political participation in the local and the

national level.

Scholars have been describing the co-existing of modern state institutions and informal governance structures in

different ways, with such terms as institutional hybridity, neo-traditionalism or what Bayart (1993) famously

described as the 'politics of the belly.' A good example of this dynamic is in Kenya. In this context, ethnicity not

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only act as a marker of cultural identity, but also plays a crucial role of a central organizing principle of political

competition, access to resources and social belongingness.

The Paradox: Modern Constitutional Democracy vs. Enduring Ethnic Councils

For this reason, Kenya's 2010 Constitution is one of the most progressive of its kind on any legal framework in

Africa. It enshrines devolution, human rights and gender equity as well as accountable governance as bedrock

principles. Yet, paradoxically, election in Kenya still bears the strong imprint of ethnic endorsement, of

customary rituals and the pronouncements of councils of elders whose authority derives from neither

constitutional mandate nor constitutional right but from cultural tradition. Presidential candidates seek the

blessings of elders and parliamentary aspirants ask the ethnic councils for approval. Political legitimacy,

therefore, seems to be as much a question of tradition as a matter of election. This paradox the survival of

informal traditional authority in a formally democratic order forms the analytical paradox of this article.

Why the Luhya Case Matters

The Luhya are the second largest ethnic group in Kenya with about seventeen sub-groups that are widely spread

in the counties of Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia, Vihiga and Trans Nzoia, western Kenya. With a population of

more than seven million people, the Luhya block is a significant electoral constituency and indeed its political

orientation has been decisive in many national elections. Yet numerical strength has been by history inadequate

as a basis for the Luhya to convert their demographic weight into commensurate political power by reason of,

not least, internal fragmentation along sub-ethnic and clan lines. It is in this setting that the Luhya Council of

Elders has emerged as one of the particularly significant institutions performing one that tries to aggregate

various sub-group identities, to define collective political interests and to invest legitimacy in preferred

candidates and positions. Examining the council as such brings on broad issues of ethnic solidarity, political

intermediation and tradition and modernity in African democracies.

Research Questions

This article is organized around three interrelated research questions:

How can neopatrimonial theory explain the political relevance of the Luhya Council of Elders?

How do faith institutions shape the moral legitimacy of traditional authority in western Kenya?

What does this case reveal about the broader nature of state-society relations in Kenya?

Central Argument

This article suggests that the Luhya Council of Elders is not an anachronism of tradition reduced to become in

the heat of the moment of the pressures of modernity an empty political structure, but instead it is actually an

intermediary and strategic device in the neopatrimonial political order of Kenya. The council owes its republican

powers to both the Luhya ethnic identity (cultural), and strong faith institutions (religious) in western Kenya.

Rather than being in opposition to the modern state, the council acts symbiotically with the state, rendering

ethnic solidarity and moral authority as neopatrimonialism political capital. In order to understand this dynamic,

it is necessary to go beyond the romanticisation of tradition on the one hand or the teleological assumptions of

the modernisation theory on the other hand.

Methodological Note

This article is not grounded on primary empirical research. It applies a historical-institutional methodology,

which is based on secondary sources, such as articles in peer-reviewed publications, electoral studies, media

archives, church publications and policy documents. This is methodologically defensible: the study of the

abovementioned institutions over time, pattern recognition of political behaviour and the theoretical

generalizations that would be extremely difficult to reach through a single-site ethnographic study alone can be

carried out with historical-institutional analysis. The absence of fieldwork is recognized to be a shortage, yet the

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range of the existing body of secondary literature on the politics of Kenya and Luhya political organization is

plentiful to support the analysis claims made here.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

Neopatrimonialism Revisited

Neopatrimonialism is among the most popular concepts to interpret African political science. Originally based

on Max Weber's dichotomy between patrimonial and legal rational authority, this concept was adapted and

applied to post-colonial Africa by such scholars as Eisenstadt (1973), Clapham (1985) and Sandbrook (1985).

In its classic formulation, neopatrimonialism refers to a system composed of some mixture of formal rational-

legal institutions and personal rule where public office is treated as a private resource and political loyalty is

guaranteed through the dispensing of material rewards and patronage (Médard, 1992; Bratton and van de Walle,

1994.

The idea hasn't been without its critics. Scholars like Mkandawire (2001) and Pitcher, Moran and Johnston

(2009) had argued against neopatrimonialism as too broad a concept for it risks explaining everything and hence

nothing. It has also been criticised for pathologising African politics as inherently dysfunctional while ignoring

structural and historical factors such as colonialism, unequal terms of trade and Cold War geopolitics. These are

valid concerns. Nevertheless, used judiciously and aware of the historical context, the neopatrimonial framework

remains of major explanatory value in understanding the role played by informal institutions such as councils of

elders in the political economy of Kenya. The main thing is that you don't take it as something that is the only

analytical tool of several, but rather as an analytical tool of several.

In the Kenyan context, neopatrimonialism invades political competition in the form of dominance of ethnic

patronage networks, instrumentalization of the use of state resources as a reward for political allegiance and the

importance of informal mediators such as councils of elders that broker access between political patrons and

ethnic constituencies (Branch, 2011). Political leaders amongst the Luhya have to deal not only with the formal

requirements of electoral democracy but also with customary expectations, institutionalised in the Council of

Elders.

Traditional Authority Beyond Weber

Weber's typology of authority traditional, charismatic and legal-rational has long formed a basis for

understanding political legitimacy. According to Weber (1978, p. 215) traditional authority is based on "an

established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under

them." Although this framework still retains some degree of analytical utility it requires a good deal of

modification for application to modern Africa. The Weberian model comes with an assumption of a certain stasis

and boundedness to traditional authority which is not obvious in the dynamic, adaptive and politically strategic

character of such institutions as the Luhya Council of Elders.

African scholars have for years referred to the need for decolonizing political institutionalism. As Mamdani

(1996, p. 8) argued in his seminal piece, colonial powers fundamentally changed customary authority by freezing

and coding what previously had been fluid and disputable traditions. The result was a bifurcated state one that

ruled urban citizenry according to legal-rational standards and the rural subjects according to customary authority

with deep consequences for post-colonial rule. It is therefore necessary to understand the Luhya Council of

Elders within the context of this colonial legacy and accept the fact that what seems to be tradition is partly a

colonial and post-colonial invention (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983).

This concept of institutional hybridity thus is more analytically useful than either the Weberian model or that of

simple constructivism. Hybrid institutions represent elements of formal and informal government and customary

and modern authority and official and unofficial recognition in ways that fit no neat categories. The Luhya

Council of Elders is an example of such hybridity, since it is not constitutionally legally recognised, yet its

endorsements have tremendous political weight; it focuses on the sources of ancient custom and tradition, but

yet its modern existence is conditioned by the exigencies of multi-party electoral competition.

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Religious Legitimacy and Political Authority

Faith institutions hold a special position in Kenyan political life. Christianity in particular has been embedded in

the social fabric of western Kenya since the late XIX century, having been introduced through a series of waves

of missionary organisations including the Friends Africa Mission (Quakers), Church Missionary Society and

Mill Hill Fathers. Today, church attendance in the region is close to 100% and religious leaders have immense

moral authority. In this context, the relationship between the faith institutions and traditional authority is not

incidental or purporting to be merely ceremonial in nature. Churches and councils of elders exist in a complex

field of mutual reinforcement and occasional tension in which religious sanction gives customary authority an

increased moral legitimacy, while customary authority allows churches to tap into ethnic political networks.

As Haugen and Doering (2010) have noted in their analysis of faith-based political engagement in Africa,

religious organisations often play moral intermediary roles in political processes and provide or withdraw moral

legitimacy to political actors in ways that have material political consequences. In western Kenya when a senior

church leader is portrayed, or prayed for, to support the political positions of the Luhya Council of Elders, this

is not a symbolic act alone. It endows the ethnic authority of the council with the moral vocabulary of religious

sanction and vastly increases the scope and power of its political pronouncements.

Analytical Framework: A Three-Layer Model

Drawing together these strands of theory, in the course of this Article, a three-layered analytical model of the

political logic of the political system of the Luhya Council of Elders is proposed. The first is cultural legitimacy

- the authority that the council claims derived from its representation of the Luhya ethnic identity, and from the

fact that it is based on genealogical seniority and customary tradition. The second layer is that of the moral

endorsement - the strengthening of the authority of the council of by the alliance with the institutions of the faith

and the usage of the religious discourse to sacralize the political pronouncements. The third layer is patronage

brokerage The role of the council as an intermediary in the neopatrimonialism political economy of Kenya, by

means of which cultural and moral authority are transformed into political capital, which in turn can be

exchanged in patronage networks These three layers are analytically distinct from one another but practically

intertwined, and it is the sum of the three layers that explains the political longevity of the council in general.

METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES

Research Design

This article is based on methodological-institutional approach of analysis. Historical-institutional analysis,

therefore, is concerned with questions such as how institutions evolve over time, what specific historical

configurations help to explain the construction of institutions, how institutions respond to novel circumstances,

and how the past ends up influencing the present (Thelen, 1999). This approach lends itself to the study of the

Luhya Council of Elders because the contemporary political value in the Council can only be understood in the

context of historical development in the colonial and post colonial times. Process tracing is used to reveal causal

connections between past and present political dynamics and discourse analysis is used to examine the way

political and religious actors construct and contest the council's authority.

Sources

Four categories of secondary sources provide information for the analysis. First, academic literature on Luhya

political organisation and Kenyan politics more generally including monographs, peer-reviewed journal articles,

and edited volumes on African governance, ethnicity and religion forms the first scholarly source for the study.

Second, electoral studies and electoral reports from other institutions like the Electoral Institute for Sustainable

Democracy in Africa (EISA) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) contain empirical documentation of

electoral dynamics in western Kenya. Third, there are policy documents and constitutional texts, which are the

formal institutional context in which the council operates. Fourth, media archives such as those from the Daily

Nation, The Standard and regional media companies contain the intervention of the council in electoral politics

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and public affairs. Church publications and statements from religious organisations in western Kenya

demonstrate evidence of the faith-institution aspect of the legitimacy of this council.

Analytical Methods

Three analytical approaches are utilized in the course of the article. Language in which the council, and their

allies, demonstrate their authority and encourage their authority is their object of study in analysis of discourse.

Process tracing is being employed in finding sequences of causality between histories and political dynamic

today. Institutional analysis is used to contextualize the council as hybrid institution in the wider governance

context of western Kenya.

Limitations

The major drawback of this work is that there is no primary empirical data. The analysis cannot pretend to reflect

the internal deliberations of the council, subjective understandings of its members, or the local variation in the

reception and response of various sub-groups of the Luhya to the activities of the council. These are important

gaps which should be covered by future primary research. A further limitation is the relative rarity of systematic

academic literature directed specifically towards the Luhya Council of Elders as a political institution and which

therefore need to be reconstructed from a range of sources not originally created to this analytical purpose.

Despite these limitations, the study makes a substantive contribution theoretically in applying the neopatrimonial

framework to an understudied institution as well as developing a novel three-layer analytical model.

Historical Evolution of Luhya Traditional Authority

Precolonial Governance Structures

The precolonial political structures of the Luhya were massively decentralised, a result of the diversity of the

seventeen sub-groups of whom a bigger Luhya is composed. Unlike the strongly centralised kingdoms of other

parts of the Great Lakes region, Luhya political organisation was based on segmentary lineage systems, whereby

political power was not concentrated in the single paramount chief but was diffused among the rainmakers, clan

elders and religious specialists (Were, 1967). Councils of elders called abakhala, abasinde or whatever other

name was given to the council depending on the sub-group in question, mainly to settle disputes, distribute land,

regulate matters of marriage and lineage. Leadership was based on genealogical seniority and gave authority of

a kind of wisdom rather than institutional power in the formal sense.

This order of precolonial times was not static. The emergence of long-distance trade, inter-community conflict

and the progressive adoption of new agricultural and pastoral practises meant that governance arrangements

changed from time to time. Some of the sub-groups of the Luhya developed more hierarchical structures as a

response to the outside pressures, and some had relatively egalitarian elder-based governments. What is

important to recognise is that even in the precolonial period Luhya traditional authority was flexible and

situational a characteristic that as this article demonstrates has continued in the contemporary era.

Colonial Transformation and Indirect Rule

British colonialism affected the governance systems of the Luhya in a significant way. Through the system of

indirect rule, the British attempted to rule their subjects in Africa through the co-option or codification of

indigenous structures of authority where they appointed or recognised chiefs who could serve colonial

administrative interests (Mamdani, 1996). In the case of the Luhya, it meant the creation of a hierarchy of chiefs

and sub-chiefs who were registered and paid by the colonial administration and given control of territorial units.

This process served at the same time to distort and freeze tradition: It converted the more fluid, negotiated

authority of the elders into a structure sanctioned by the state, while at the same time fettering the principle that

if it was to govern it required a basis of traditional authority.

Western Kenya also witnessed the growth of Christian missionary activity develop rapidly during the colonial

period. Missionary education offered new opportunities for social mobility in terms of literacy, formal

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employment and access to colonial institutions which bypassed to some extent the established social order of the

elders. Yet missionaries also in some ways shored up aspects of that order, in codifying customary laws in written

language and assuming the structures of governance, based on elders, into new ecclesiastical arrangements. It

was during the colonial period, therefore, that the foundations of the alliance between the faith institutions and

traditional authority, which characterise contemporary politics in western Kenya were first established.

Post-Independence Ethnic Mobilization

At independence in 1963, the Luhya community was a community in an ambiguous position - at least politically

speaking. Although the Luhya were of considerable numbers, they were not blessed by the political centralization

of the Kikuyu nor by the martial standing of the Maasai and at first had trouble converting their numerical weight

into political influence. Early post-independence politics saw Luhya leaders such as Masinde Muliro and Moses

Mudavadi playing important, but ultimately secondary roles in national politics, often co-opted into the dominant

KANU political structure without gaining commensurate political returns for their community (Lonsdale, 2008).

It is in this context then that ethnic solidarity became more useful as a political resource. As part of a response

to the perceived need for some sort of unified institutional voice that could aggregate the disparate Luhya sub-

groups and project on the national stage a coherent political identity the revival and formalisation of the Council

of Elders in the post-independence period amongst the Luhya people was in part a response to such perceived

need. This process of institutionalisation was not a simple return to precolonial tradition, but the invention of a

new institution in modern political forms, which, although using the symbolic capital of tradition, made claims

to legitimacy while it fulfilled decidedly contemporary political functions.

Institutionalization under Multi-Party Politics

The reintroduction of multi-party competition in Kenya in 1991 saw a great increase in the political significance

of ethnic endorsement institutions. With the relaxation of the one-party monopoly of KANU, electoral

competition became more intense as a struggle between ethnic voting blocs, and the ability to mobilise ethnic

constituencies emerged as a critical determinant of electoral success (Ndegwa, 1997). It was against this

backdrop that the councils of elders throughout Kenya such as the Luhya Council took an explicitly political

orientation, endorsing candidates, issuing political declarations, and organizing collective ethnic action. During

this period, the Luhya Council of Elders became a recognized, if not officially, actor in the politics of western

Kenya, with its endorsements being treated as significant political events by candidates and parties and the media

as well".

Neopatrimonial Logic in Western Kenyan Politics

Ethnicity and Patronage

In western Kenya, or anywhere else in Kenya, ethnicity and patronage are closely linked. In return for ethnic

loyalty, political patrons use distribution of material benefits in the form of development projects, government

employment, business licences, and other state resources and ethnic groups supply bloc votes to ensure that

political patrons receive the electoral victories that allow them to access those resources in the first place. This

circular logic, with ethnicity and patronage depending on each other, creates the structural foundation of Kenyan

neopatrimonalism (Bratton and van de Walle, 1994). Understanding the role of the Luhya Council of Elders

requires locating it very firmly in this structural dynamic.

Electoral Mobilization and Endorsement Politics

The political endorsements of the Luhya Council of Elders is not out of bounds of Kenyan electoral politics, it

is at its heart. Where the council makes its meeting before a major election to deliberate and tell preferred

candidates, this is considered a politically significant event by candidates, parties and the media. The approval

by the council is acted as a signal for the common folk living at the community that a certain candidate is of the

same collective interest and customary values of the Luhya's community. Candidates who receive the council's

stamp of approval have something that no amount of conventional political advertising or campaign spending

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can match-citizenship to the culture. On the other hand, the candidates who are rejected or made scornful by the

council in public, are faced with the problem of overcoming the widely publicized declaration of customary

illegitimacy. This dynamic of endorsement is a good example of that which Scott (1985) called the symbolic

economy of politics which is the ability of cultural and moral symbols to deliver political resources with some

measurable impact on political outcomes. The political authority of the council is not as much based on legal

status as it is on the general perception, shared by both political elites and normal voters, of its pronouncements

as authentic expressions of collective Luhya sentiment mediated through customary wisdom.

The Council as a Political Broker

The concept of political brokerage is important to understanding the council's role to the neopatrimonial order.

The brokers are intermediaries, i.e. these intermediaries work between political patrons (who hold the control

over state resources) and political clients (who provide vote and political loyalty) (Stokes et al., 2013). The

Luhya Council of Elders occupies this brokerage position directly and consequentially. By aggregating Luhya

political sentiment and communicating it up to political elite, and, at the same time, by rendering political

messages from elite political leaders in the cultural vernacular of Luhya tradition and communicating them down

to ordinary members of the community, the council isimos performing an intermediary function that is

indispensable within Kenya's patronage driven political economy.

Public Endorsement Rituals and Symbolic Authority

The various political endorsements of council are often accompanied by public ceremonies for the dramatic flair

of the council's symbolic authority. Elders might perform blessing ceremonies, offer libations or appeal to

ancestral spirits in favour of favoured candidates. These rituals are serving multiple political purposes

simultaneously. They validate the council's usual credentials and perform traditionality in audiences made up of

community members and national political elites. As such, they also invent newsworthy events that generate

media interest and also help in the elevation of the political pronouncements of the council. Perhaps the most

important of all, they localise political endorsements into a moral and spiritual framework which makes symbolic

dissent from the council's position socially and culturally expensive.

Faith Institutions and the Moralization of Authority

Christianity and Political Discourse in Western Kenya

Western Kenya is one of the most heavily Christianized regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The high degree to which

the region became involved with British Quaker missionaries in the late-nineteenth century and the establishment

of an extensive network of Catholic, Anglican, Seventh-day Adventist, and Pentecostal churches in the twentieth

century produced a society in which Christian discourse permeates public life, including politics (Gifford, 2009).

Church membership is almost universal; church leaders command great social respect; and political action

routinely uses Christian language and imagery to legitimise their claims, and mobilise their constituencies.

It is against this background that the relationship between the faith institutions and the Luhya Council of Elders

needs to be understood. The council does not function in a secular political space where tradition and religion

are beautifully separated. Rather, it operates within a political culture where customary and religious authority

are embodiments of each other and where the two often blend together. Church leaders attend and blessing

ceremonies at councils, council elders participate in political forums organised by church and the political

pronouncements of the council often have explicit religious dimensions.

Church-Elder Alliances

Complementary interests and political goals result in a strong relationship between church and council leadership

in western Kenya. For church leaders, joining the alliance with the council gives them access to the Council's

extensive ethnic networks and customary legitimacy which give churches more political resonance and boost

their organisational reach into communities where their penetration is incomplete. For council elders, alliance

with church leaders brings moral and spiritual authentication capable of having legitimacy for the council beyond

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the intimate, ethnic and customary domain to the community members who may be more amenable to religious

than to customary authority. These alliances manifest themselves through the issuance of joint press statements,

mutual platforms at political rallies, and joint campaigns on elections and issues of mutual concern. In western

Kenya one is not uncommon to see senior church leaders and council elders together at political events, this is a

powerful visual and symbolic combination of moral authorities, reinforcing the political power of both parties.

Religious Narratives and the Production of Legitimacy

Religious stories are used strategically here, both by the leaders of the church and by the councillors elders, as a

way of sacralizing the political power that the council has. Biblical examples of righteous leadership, community

discernment and prophetic guidance have been invoked in describing the council's political pronouncements not

as mere manifestations of ethnic practice but as manifestations of divine will. This sacralization of political

authority is no less pithy than is the case in the African context where the boundaries between the political and

the religious, between the customary and the prophetic are often porous (Meyer, 2004). For the regular members

of the community, the combination of customary and religious sanction is a powerful argument of legitimacy

that is difficult to argue against. Once a political choice is characterised in terms of loyalty both to an ancestral

tradition and to the will of God, the social cost of political devience significantly increases. This is the mechanism

by which institutions of faith help accentuate the political power of the Luhya Council of Elders not by adding

capacities over time but by transforming its character from ethnic and customary to moral and transcendent.

Tensions between Constitutionalism and Traditional Authority

Not everything about the church-elder alliance is in tune with Kenya's constitutional order. Kenya's new 2010

Constitution explicitly prohibits the use of ethnicity in political competition, and it provides for equal rights for

all citizens of Kenya irrespective of ethnic identity. The council's function as a body of ethnic endorsement and

his tion is in tension with these constitutional nomian and it is this tension which comes to the fore from time to

time in public debate and legal challenge. Similarly, the council's quasi-judicial role where, for example, land

and marriage is concerned, can be incompatible with formal legal processes.

Faith institutions in western Kenya are not equally content to be shaped by the political roles that they are being

asked to play. Denominational differences create different stances towards church-elder relations nonetheless,

including the more conservative evangelical and Pentecostal churches sometimes positioning a greater distance

from overtly political activities than do mainline Protestant and Catholic churches. These internal tensions in the

faith community means the church-elder alliance is not an uncontested and unconditional political resource.

Hybrid Governance and Institutional Intermediation

Traditional Authority as an Informal Institution

The Luhya Council of Elders is one such example of what North (1990, p. 3) defined as informal institutions -

the 'rules, norms, and conventions that organise behaviour in the absence of formal support of law.' As an

informal institution, the council draws its power from social sanctions rather than from legal force, from

reputation rather than from statutory force, and from cultural resonance rather than from bureaucratic procedure.

This informality is of course in no way a sign of weakness, on the contrary it has significant advantages over

formal institutions in situations where legal enforcement is unreliable and where the institutions of the state are

perceived to be corrupt or lacking in legitimacy.

In Kenya, where public confidence in formal institutions such as the judiciary, the police, and the electoral

commission have been repeatedly tainted by high-profile scandals, the informal authority of institutions such as

the Luhya Council of Elders represent a significant political asset partly because it is not tainted by association

with a discredited state apparatus. The authority of the council is based on cultural authenticity in a perceived

connexion to something genuinely embedded in the community life which the formal institutions find difficult

to replicate.

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Mediation between Citizens and Political Elites

The council has an important mediating role to play in Kenyan political life as a point of contact between the

everyday members of the Luhya communities and the national political actors. For the community as a whole,

the council is a channel through which shared interests and sentiments can be conveyed to (remote and

unaccountable) political elites. To political elites, the council is an avenue of access to a large organised ethnic

constituency whose political behaviour cannot easily be manipulated by traditional campaign devices. This

interdependence helps the council maintain the brokerage status of the text and its political relevance despite

changes in the formal constitutional structure.

This mediating function tends to be evident especially in the run up to major elections, when political actors

make a great deal of effort to curry the favour of the council's blessing. The spectacle of senior politicians going

to meet council elders, engaging in traditional ceremonies, asking the council's blessing in public send an

important political message - that even the most powerful political actors respect the authority of traditional

community institutions. This performance simultaneously reinforces the legitimacy of the council, while as well

as signalling to the ordinary members of the community that their customary representatives have been

successful in securing access to political power on their behalf.

Parallel Legitimacy Structures

One of the most analytically significant features of the Luhya Council of Elders is the parallel structure of

legitimacy it represents alongside and sometimes in competition with the formal structures of the constitutional

state. In practice, politics in western Kenya is often shaped by two competing legitimacy claims: one grounded

in constitutional procedures such as elections and legislative processes, and another grounded in customary

procedures such as elder council endorsements and ethnic solidarity. Candidates who win elections without

traditional endorsement may find their authority contested in the social sphere, while candidates endorsed by the

council but defeated at the polls may continue to be regarded as moral leaders deserving of deference.

Implications for Democratic Consolidation

The survival of parallel legitimacy structures with major implications for democratic consolidation in Kenya.

On the one hand, institutions, such as the Luhya Council of Elders, can play a positive role in the democratic

governance process by providing mechanisms of accountability for political elites; provide a platform for

political communication between communities and parties; and facilitate collective expression of interests that

are often not addressed by formal political institutions. On the other hand, the council's emphasis on ethnic

solidarity and traditional hierarchy may not be consistent with the constitutional principles of individual rights,

equality and non-discrimination. Democratic consolidation in Kenya does not require the abolition of informal

institutions like the council an outcome which would be neither desirable nor achievable but rather development

of arrangements through which such institutions can complement, rather than get in the way of, Constitutional

governance.

DISCUSSION

Rethinking Neopatrimonialism

Symptoms or Stabilizers?

A central question raised by this analysis is whether councils of elders such as the Luhya Council A central

question raised by this analysis is whether councils of elders such as the Luhya Council are to be seen as

symptoms of neopatrimonial dysfunction, or as stabilising institutions providing governance functions in the

absence of effective formal institutions. This article suggests that the answer must be both or neither. The council

is a symptom of the neopatrimonialism in the sense that the political prominence of the council is a symptom of

the failure of formal democratic political institutions as a means of channelling political competition apart from

ethnic loyalty and patronage networks. Yet it is also a stabiliser in the sense that it provides mechanisms for

collective decision making, political accountability and social conflict resolution which might otherwise not be

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available. This dual character presents a challenge to the sort of normative frameworks that western political

science has most typically used to measure informal institutions in Africa. Rather than seeing the informal as a

departure from some uniformly instituted norm of democracy, it may be better analytically to see it as some

concrete institutional configuration reflecting certain historic conditions and social conditions one which entails

both risks and rewards for democratic development.

The Limits of Weberian Dichotomies

This analysis also shows the shortcomings of Weber's dichotomy between traditional and legal-rational

authority. The Luhya Council of Elders falls in between these two neatly and is not tidy. It is not purely

traditional, in the sense of being unchanging, static, and based on immemorial custom only, nor is it purely legal-

rational. Rather it is what we would call a strategically adaptive institution which mixes traditional symbolic

resources with modern organisational forms and contemporary political objectives. Council leaders are not just

keepers of ancient form; they are sophisticated political players who use traditional authority as an instrument

in a modern competitive political process.

The concept of institutional hybridity, developed by a number of scholars such as Olivier de Sardan (2011) and

Boege, et al. (2009), is in this context more analytically productive than Weber's dichotomy. Hybrid institutions

are institutions that have mixed elements from different institutional orders formal and informal, customary and

modern, religious and secular, specific to context and time. Analysing such institutions demands anthropological

and historical sensitivity instead of the application of universal typologies.

Implications for African Political Theory

The study of the Luhya Council of Elders has wider implications for the political theory of Africa. It supports

the contention made by scholars such as Ekeh (1975), Mbembe (2001) and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) that African

political life cannot be appropriately grasped in terms of concepts developed mainly in and for European political

settings. The persistence and vitality of institutions such as the Luhya Council of Elders call for a theoretical

vocabulary that is attentive to the specificity of African political experience including the centrality of ethnicity,

the importance of moral and spiritual authority, and the hybrid character of governance institutions. At the same

time, the article avoids the temptation of African exceptionalism the assumption that African politics is so

different from politics elsewhere as to require entirely separate analytical frameworks. The neopatrimonial

framework appropriately qualified and critically deployed maintains value in the understanding of the structural

conditions of operation of institutions such as the Luhya Council. The challenge is to adapt existing concepts in

creative and critical ways and not to apply them uncritically and not to abandon them altogether.

Comparative Insights

Brief comparison helps make the analysis claims of this article stronger. The Luhya Council of Elders is not

unique in the Kenyan context, and we find equivalent institutions amongst many other Kenyan ethnic

communities such as the Kikuyu Council of Elders, the Kamba Akamba Council of Elders, and others amongst

many other ethnic groups. Across sub-Saharan Africa, there are similar institutions in widely different contexts

such as in South Africa traditional leaders are represented in a formal House of Traditional Leaders; in Uganda

the Buganda kingdom still has significant informal political influence; and in Ghana the National House of

Chiefs has advisory input to the formal government. Comparative analysis suggest the survival of traditional

authority institutions within formally democratic states is a widespread phenomenon in Africa, one that deserves

systematic theoretical explanation rather than being distorted as collection of country specific anomalies.

CONCLUSION

Summary of the Argument

This article has argued that the Luhya Council of Elders is a strategic intermediary, which is contextualised

within the framework of a neopatrimonial political order in Kenya. Rather than a vestige of tradition in a process

of withering under the pressures of modernization and constitutional democracy, the council is a dynamic,

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adaptive institution that converts ethnic solidarity and moral authority into political capital. It owes its political

relevance to the following three layers of power: cultural legitimacy of Luhya ethnic identity, moral support of

faith institutions and patronage brokerage within Kenya's neopatrimonial political economy.

Theoretical Contributions

The article contains three important theoretical contributions. First, it recasts traditional authority not as a

residual category but as an actively constituted hybrid institutional form that is produced and reproduced in

modern political fields. Second, it constructs an analytical model of three layers of cultural legitimacy; moral

endorsement; and patronage brokerage - that can be used in the analysis of similar institutions on the African

continent and elsewhere. Third, it contributes to the critical revision of neopatrimonialism now in progress by

having shown how informal institutions can serve as governing actors which may perform functions that are not

provided by formal institutions.

Policy Implications

The findings have very significant policy implication in the context of governance reform in Kenya and

elsewhere. For example, reform efforts to build up formal democratic institutions will have to engage with, rather

than try to work around the informal governance landscape. Specifically, policymakers and development

practitioners should consider the mechanisms by which the institutions like the Luhya Council of Elders can be

formally acknowledged and made accountable within a devolved governance framework - without being

completely subsumed under state control in a manner that undermines their cultural authenticity. Constitutional

provisions for the recognition of traditional authorities, on the lines of those found in South Africa and Uganda,

require serious consideration in the Kenyan context.

Future Research Directions

As this article is based on secondary sources some important empirical questions are left unanswered. Future

primary research is urgently needed to document the internal dynamics of the Luhya Council of Elders, its

membership, its decision-making processes, its internal power relations. Research is also needed on the reception

and response of the council's political endorsements to the ordinary members of the Luhya community and effect

of receptivity. Longitudinal study of the council's history of endorsements and its impact on elections for several

election cycles would allow for systematic study of the political effectiveness of the council. Finally,

comparative primary research focusing on the role of councils of elders in the various ethnic communities in

Kenya would create a more rigorous foundation for testing the intraparietal theoretical claims of this article.

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