the state as protection racket

Recently I went to get my research permit extended at the ministry of education. Or rather- I had the requirement of a permit extension foisted upon me. My goal was to get my permit extended to cover research in a number of other districts (collecting administrative data from all 8 of Kenya's administrative provinces). I suspected (correctly) that this might provoke some resistance from my good friend in the Research Permits office- when I presented him with the list of districts, he said that this was a different project and that I would need to reapply for a new permit. When I complained about this and asserted that I was not initiating any kind of large scale work in these districts, he relented a bit, offering to only renew my permit for a fee of $150 (only half of the full fee-what a bargain!). He was correct in noting that my permit expires in January, meaning that to continue work here in any capacity (which I intend to do), I would need to renew it anyhow. What irked me about the whole process is how fucking arbitrary the whole thing seemed. To my eye, it seems little different from paying a mobster so that your grocery store doesn’t start looking a bit flammable. Little about the setting made me feel as if the matter were being handled fairly- the fact that (like the last time) the guy put the money in his pocket, the fact that there were no really clearly published guidelines, and above all the only change was a few extra words on a piece of blue card stock that was otherwise identical to the one I already had. At the same time the whole thing worked- I need to do the research, and I can’t really afford to have some district officer or chief prevent me from working because he feels my documentation is incomplete (this has happened twice). Although the Research permit office does little in the way of its official duty of facilitating and regulating research, it seems to work quite efficiently as a tool for the government (or some agents of it) to extort funds from foreigners.

This was hammered home when I went to meet with the assistant provinicial commissioner for the coast province in Mombasa. The purpose of the meeting was to ascertain what administrative data they have that I can use for my cross-district comparison. Although the fellow was helpful enough, the entire meeting wound up in frustration as I once again continued to be tormented by research permit problems. The issue with the research permit is this- talking to people in villages, no one even asks for it at all, and yet when you talk to a government official (such as a provincial administrtor, district administrator, or chief) it is MEANINGLESS- they refuse to do anything without a letter from their immediate superior (in this case, the office of the president).


Why would one government ministry issue a document which is meaningless to other branches? Part of this seems to be inter-organizational politics that stem back to the Moi era, and showcase how that period differs from some trends in the current period. During the 80s and 90s, all research was cleared through the office of the president, which also houses the provincial administration and internal security departments. This is indicitave of the tendency in the Moi era for things to be concentrated in the office of the president, which was largely congruent with KANU (the ruling party) leadership, at least at the highest levels. Thus administrative tasks, rather than following a logic of specialization, were centralized to maximize the gatekeeper power of the president and the president’s circle. Around the time of the switchover to Kibaki, formal power over research permits was transferred to the ministry of Education, Science, and Technology. However, it seems that this was left out of the provincial administration training manual- what seems to matter most is not the permit itself, but a letter- and ideally from higher up in the office of the president. The assistant PC coast revealed this when he was on the phone to the Research Permits office in Nairobi- he said that a fax might be acceptable, but that a memo sent through the Office of the President would be the best. However, when I called to follow-up with the man who works in the research permit office, he wouldn’t hear of sending it to the Office of the President, and instead insisted on sending this directly to me. (Its also worth noting that I was only able to get through to him after about 6 tries of being routed to the wrong person by the switchboard operator).

In the end this all worked out- I got the letter from a courier and every subsequent official has been much more accomodating (although at some other time, I'll rant about the difficulty of obtaining disaggregated data). At the same time, I was able to do this because i had the time, money, and sheer pig-headed determination to get what I wanted. Many Kenyans are simply deterred from even trying, due to the reputation that things were much, much worse than this during the KANU period, even though in reality the quality of service provision varies a lot from ministry to ministry and office to office.