Since the NARC opposition victory in 2002, Kenya has had three parliamentary terms: the 9th (2003-07), the 10th (2008-13) and the 11th (2013-18). Table 1 below shows the number of legislative seats of the major parties corresponding to each parliament, the party of the president and prime minister, and the parties in the Assembly majority. Table 1: Kenyan general elections results since 2002 Number (and percentage) of National Assembly seats of major parties Party Elections for 9th Parliament (Dec. 27, 2002) Elections for 10th Parliament (Dec. 27, 2007) Elections for 11th Parliament (Mar. 4, 2013) National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) 125 (61) 3 (1) 3 (1) President: Mwai Kibaki Kenyan African National Union (KANU) 64 (30.50) 14 (7) 6 (2) Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD-People) 14 (6.70) 3 (1) 3 (1) Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) — 99 (47) 96 (27) Prime Minister: Raila Odinga Party of National Unity (PNU) — 43 (20) — President: Mwai Kibaki The National Alliance (TNA) — — 89 (25) President: Uhuru Kenyatta United Republican Party (URP) — — 75 (21) Wiper Democratic Movement (WDM) — — 26 (7) Total Seats 210 210 350 Notes: ‘Major parties’ included in this table are defined as those with over 5 percent of the seats in at least one of the three parliaments. Data was acquired from the Inter-parliamentary Union Parline online archive. Bold type indicates the party/ies in the majority coalition in the Assembly. The 9th parliament: 2003-08 The 9th Parliament opened on February 18, 2003. It was the first time that the KANU and Moi were in the opposition minority since independence. Elischer (2008) describes the Kenyan party system from 2003 to 2008 as a period of partisan fluidity, in which it was
Figure 1: Decreasing intra-party dissent Notes: Vote data was gathered from the Hansards provided at info.mzalendo.com. The y-axis indicates the mean rate of dissenting votes within each party. Thus, 0 indicates no dissent, and .3 indicates that on average 30 percent of MPs dissented from their party majority on roll call votes. Using probit models with dissent as a binary outcome variable, and 9th, 10th, and 11th parliament dummies as key variables, we can control for more variables than the bar graph in figure 1 allows. Table 2 shows the estimates of four different probit models. In model 1 none of the control variables are included. In model 2, two MP-level dummies are controlled for: party and county. In model 3 two legislation-level dummies are controlled for: the legislative procedure (e.g. clause, second reading, adoption of report), and the substantive issue of the motion (e.g. electoral, constitutional, budgetary). In model 4, all four control variables are included. I also cluster standard errors by legislative motion for each model. Table 2: Probit models of MP dissenting votes Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 9th to 10th parl -.5043** (.1859) -.3940† (.2036) -.1796 (.1385) .0046 (.1527) 10th to 11th parl -.4925* (.2297) -.6758** (.2461) -.5265* (.2199) -.7387* (.3074) Party dummies — Included — Included County dummies — Included — Included Issue dummies — — Included Included Procedure dummies — — Included Included Constant -.9402*** (.1312) -6.465*** (.6150) -.6385* (.3137) -6.392*** (.7360) Psuedo-R2 .0599 .0933 .1472 .1838
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