Power politics and law book by Githu Muigai

The literature on constitutional development in Africa has increased markedly in quantity, yet an interrogation of the forces that drive these changes has not been sufficiently made. What explains this neglect despite the outburst of constitutional reforms?

This book attempts a down payment on how constitutional outcomes in post-colonial Kenya originate from everyday political struggles. The objective is not to emphasise the primacy of politics but to illuminate simultaneously the societal-based forms of power and the constraints these exert on constitutional politics. By retelling historical chains of events, from the establishment of company government in Kenya in 1897 to the most recent attempts at constitutional change in 2022, this book demonstrates that though powerholders hardly yield to social demand for constitutional reordering, social pressures have asserted their deterministic influence on constitutional change processes.