The Peace-Building Paradox: Unintended Consequences of Institutionalizing Electoral Peace Education Programs in Kenya

Abstract

The paper presents a major paradox in peacebuilding: the institutionalization of electoral peace education, intended to avert violence, ends up contravening the conditions it seeks to cure. Based on the conceptual assessment of Kenya's vast infrastructure of peace education, this study identifies the establishment of a complex apparatus that governs the symptoms of conflict by both state-initiated and civil society efforts to avoid transformative political practices. Based on theories of governmentality, institutional isomorphism, and hybrid peacebuilding, the paper shows how institutionalization has led to the emergence of a professionalized peace industry where technical solutions, standardized actions and donor compliance are universally favored over political change, contextual insight, and community agency. The findings reveal startling tendencies of depoliticization in which the peace education programs and curriculum do not engage with structural inequalities and historical injustices. Equally, co-option in local peace efforts are used to legitimize the state but not to empower the communities. This study holds that Kenya has been comparatively successful in preventing mass electoral violence since 2008. However, this is argued to represent a false impression of a deeper failure to change the political economy of conflict, resulting in what can be called a "negative peace," which is characterized as the absence of violence but without justice. The conclusion of the study is that to attain meaningful peace education, it is necessary to go beyond technical approaches and adopt critical pedagogies that directly deal with power, resources, and historical memory. To monitor and evaluate these emerging dynamics, new frameworks are required to evaluate not just the reduction of violence, but also the reforms in the political agency, the redistribution of resources, and structural changes. The study provides valuable lessons to African democracies that may face similar problems. In this case, unless the political roots of the conflict are addressed, the institutionalized peacebuilding process will engender the strife it is meant to resolve.