Continuity despite change: Kenya's new constitution and executive power

What explains the continuation of strong executive power despite the introduction of new formal constraints on presidents? This article focuses on the elites working within the state agencies that execute presidential power, who benefit materially from their authority and have incentives to defy formal constraints placed on their own power. To evaluate this claim, I examine Kenya's 2010 constitution, which intended to reduce the power of Kenya's “imperial presidency” through formal constraints on the executive. As implementation has progressed, however, the executive bureaucracy – the Provincial Administration (PA) – has not changed in size, structure, or function, contrary to the explicit goals of the constitution's drafters. Using original interview and archival evidence, I find that the persistence of this agency – and by extension strong executive power – is due to PA administrators’ attempts to protect their material interests. This article shows that formal rule change may be insufficient to spur democratization in the face of entrenched authoritarian bureaucracies with strong incentives to maintain their pre-existing interests.