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Scandals, Media and Good Governance in China and Kenya
Jonathan Hassid and Jennifer N Brass
Journal of Asian and African Studies published online 13 May 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0021909614528865
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JAS0010.1177/0021909614528865Journal of Asian and African StudiesHassid and Brass
JAAS
Article
Scandals, Media and Good
Governance in China and Kenya
Journal of Asian and African Studies
1­–18
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0021909614528865
jas.sagepub.com
Jonathan Hassid
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Jennifer N Brass
School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, USA
Abstract
Conventional wisdom holds that democratic governments listen to their populations, while authoritarian
governments do not. This paper questions the extent to which this dynamic applies in cases of government
scandals, using the illustrative cases of China and Kenya. We expect democratic countries with free media
to be responsive and authoritarian states to ignore public pressure. Counter to this expectation, however,
authoritarian China is more responsive to public pressure to clean up scandals than democratic Kenya.
Using case studies and quantitative analysis, we argue that while democracy and free media are important
for government responsiveness to scandal, they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions. We assert
that political will, state capacity to respond and high public expectations for state action are also necessary.
Keywords
Scandal, regime type, governance, public expectations, political will, state capacity, China, Kenya
In 2007, central China’s Henan TV revealed the existence of illegal brick kilns in Shanxi province
where kidnapped children were forced to work long hours as industrial slaves. After reports
spread across the Chinese media, the kilns were shut down and dozens of colluding government
officials were fined, jailed or executed, despite the general reluctance of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) to hold corrupt party officials accountable at the time (Zhu Zhe, 2007). In contrast,
just nine months earlier and half a world away in Kenya, the Goldenberg scandal, festering since
1993, reached its ignominious end with news that the no one would face any charges related to the
disappearance of nearly US$600 million, despite years of media pressure and the creation of an
anti-corruption watchdog agency. After the verdict, leading newspaper the Daily Nation (2006)
proclaimed, ‘the war on graft is, indeed, lost.’
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Hassid, China Research Centre, University of Technology, P.O. Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia.
Email: [email protected]
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Journal of Asian and African Studies 
These contrasting anecdotes pose a challenge to the received wisdom that democracy and free
media are necessary for good governance. Political and civic freedoms are core Western values,
strongly promoted by international development organizations. Yet in the developing world, countries like China and Kenya appear not to fit the mold. Democratic countries with a free media can
sometimes have more unresolved scandals than authoritarian states with strict press control.
We demonstrate below that democracy and free media are not required for government responsiveness to scandal. Drawing on case study evidence, we emphasize other necessary factors: citizens’ historically and culturally grounded expectations for their governments, as well as those
governments’ willingness and capacity to respond. Where expectations are high and the government has the will and ability to respond effectively, authorities tend to react quickly – regardless of
the degree of electoral or media freedom. In contrast, in countries where few expect the state to
take scandals seriously, or the state lacks the ability or political will to enforce laws, democratic
institutions and free media are often insufficient. Under such conditions, scandals can smolder for
years, defying the efforts of activists and the predictions of social scientists.
Understanding the role of citizen expectations and state capacity allows us to deepen our comprehension of the conditions under which governments respond to scandals, and it expands our
understanding of regime types. Our evidence suggests that some features social scientists normally
consider characteristics of democracies can in fact sometimes be observed in autocratic regimes.
This observation matters when we attempt to apply theory developed in wealthy Western countries
to the developing world.
Rather than look at median countries, we deliberately chose outliers on the spectrum of states:
China is an unusual autocracy and Kenya a weak democracy. This study of deviant cases using the
crucial-case method (Gerring, 2001), allows us to ‘inductively identify variables and hypotheses
that have been left out of existing theories’ (Bennett, 2004: 38). In other words, by selecting such
different cases, we show the inadequacy of common theories about how democracies and dictatorships function.
To arrive at these conclusions, we first outline understandings of scandal and of the relationships among media freedom, democracy and government responsiveness. Next, we examine our
cases, China and Kenya. Democratic Kenya does not respond effectively to scandals, despite its
open and free media; authoritarian China swiftly responds once scandals are exposed, even under
conditions of heavy media censorship. Drawing on a combined two years of field research in these
countries, as well as an original survey from Kenya, we argue that while free media and democratic
institutions are often correlated with responsive governance, they are not sufficient to produce it.
Next, we suggest possible explanations, highlighting the role played by popular expectations,
political will and state capacity. We conclude by calling for improved quantitative data collection
to assess these claims better.
Understanding scandals, media and regime type
Scandals, defined as ‘actions or events involving certain kinds of transgressions which become
known to others and are sufficiently serious to elicit a public response’, often provoke government action (Thompson, 2000: 13). We call such state action in the face of public outcry ‘government responsiveness’. Note that we differentiate responsiveness and accountability, the latter
concerning the ability of the people to punish state officials for mistakes. In other words, responsiveness refers to how the state reacts to the people, while accountability refers to how the people
(can) react to the state.
Social scientists and policymakers have long argued that democracy and press freedom encourage better state response to scandals. Besley and Burgess (2001), for example, claim that a developed press and high level of political participation make governments more responsive to popular
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Table 1. Press Freedom and Elections.
Holds Democratic
Elections
Significant Press Freedoms
Yes
No
Yes
United States,
Djibouti
Kenya
No
Bhutan (pre-2008)
Syria, China (except
at village level)
demands, irrespective of GDP. A free press, they contend, allows information to flow and enables
citizens to monitor political behavior. Specifically, media circulation levels and electoral accountability mechanisms are the main factors in determining government responsiveness. Mass media
reports, they argue, incentivize official response (Besley and Burgess, 2002: 1415).
Likewise, Freedom House (2011), a global good-governance watchdog, asserts that, ‘A free
press plays a key role in … contributing to greater accountability, good government, and economic
development’. In short, ‘Every dictator dislikes free media’ (Egorov et al., 2009: 645). The World
Bank’s Robert Stapenhurst (2000) agrees, citing the crucial role of media in fighting and deterring
corruption. World Bank scholars also contend that the media influence government responsiveness
by acting as a ‘watchdog’ on public actors, protecting the public from incompetence, corruption
and misinformation (Odugbemi and Norris, 2010: 380). According to the British Department for
International Development, a free press helps check state abuse of power and allows citizens to
make informed decisions when they vote (DFID, 2008). Most scholars and development agencies
thus agree that a free press is critical to keeping politicians working for the public (Rose-Ackerman,
1999; Brunetti and Weder, 2003).
In democracies, of course, voters have regular opportunities to remove unresponsive leaders
from office. As one scholar notes, ‘elections discipline governments to be accountable to the electorate’ (Lines, 2009: 8). Markovits and Silverstein (1988) go further, arguing that political scandals
are only possible in liberal democracies because only these have public involvement in governing.1
Other scholars focus on the relationship between citizen participation and responsiveness, finding
that such participation is critical to the proper functioning of organizations (Hirschman, 1970;
Kuklinski and Stanga, 1979). In principle, electoral consequences exist for politicians who refuse
to clean house in the face of voter anger. While authoritarian governments can rarely completely
ignore public unhappiness, democracies are structurally much more attuned to mass opinion.
Drawing from these theories of the relationship between free media and democratic institutions
on one hand, and government responsiveness to scandals on the other, we argue that there are four
possible configurations of states, as shown in Table 1 below. In the upper left-hand corner are states
that have both significant press freedom and democratic institutions; in the bottom right, neither
press freedom nor democratic institutions. In the alternate corners are states with either press freedom or democratic institutions, but not both.
We expect countries in the top left box to have the highest degree of government responsiveness, with those in the lower right having the least responsive government. Theory predicts that the
countries in the alternate diagonals have a mixed response.
Examining the puzzle through case studies
We used the crucial-case method to examine this puzzle, meaning that we selected cases in which
results are ‘unexpected in light of the causal inference under investigation’ (Gerring, 2001: 220).
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Journal of Asian and African Studies 
These cases emerged from conversations in which the authors, a China specialist and an Africanist,
realized that the two countries respond very differently to uncovered scandals, but both with
responses that challenge contemporary theory. Specifically, our ‘least-likely’ case (the case in
which the theory is least-likely to hold), China, proves positive, while our likely case, Kenya,
proves negative. Studies of crucial cases like these are important not only because they can disconfirm existing theory (Gerring, 2001), but also because they allow us to identify variables that are
missed in the study of typical cases (George and Bennett, 2005). In other words, each of these two
very different cases shows the inadequacy of common theories about how democracies and dictatorships function; combined, they also shed light on alternative explanations. In later sections of
the paper, we draw on both cases to hypothesize alternate causal paths to government responsiveness. The fact that such divergent cases point to the same missing variables lends support to these
hypotheses.
Returning to Table 1, then, we see that Kenya is largely a functioning democracy with free
media, whereas China is clearly authoritarian with highly restricted media. The Kenyan government regularly asserts its democratic standing. It lists democracy as a key aspect in achieving its
forward-looking Vision 2030 plan (Government of Kenya, 2007). According to Freedom House,
however, Kenya receives a score of 3.5, or partly free, compared to China’s 6.5, or not free, on a
scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free) (Freedom House, 2010). This places China among the 17
least free countries in the world, but puts Kenya in the company of countries such as the Philippines,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Guatemala.2 The ‘partly free’ ranking corresponds to survey research
conducted by one of the authors in 2008, in which 93% of 501 respondents described the political
system as a democracy, albeit one that 42.5% described as having ‘major problems’.3 Kenya also
has a much more autonomous press, ranking 70th most free of 178 countries, compared to China’s
position as 171st, according to watchdog Reporters Without Borders (2010). Both the Kenyan
government and members of the press in Kenya publicly mention media freedom in the country
(see, for example, Captial Reporter, 2010; The Star Editorial Board, 2012).
We recognize the limits associated with selecting these two cases. First, we do not claim that
the institutions of democracy function fully in Kenya, only that the country is significantly better
than China on both counts – democracy and media freedom – and should therefore also be more
responsive to media reports of scandal. Additionally, in spite of the fact that in 2013 a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry asserted, ‘China has no media censorship,’ Chinese media are generally not allowed to report on scandals that might prove embarrassing to the CCP.4 In 2008, as
China prepared for the Olympics, for example, strict press censorship suppressed a Southern
Weekend report on dangerous chemicals added to baby formula (Bandurski, 2008). Only after the
Olympics ended – and thousands of babies had been hospitalized – did the story break. Nor is the
Kenyan media always ineffective. Intense media coverage on the two murder trials of Tom
Cholmondeley, grandson of a founder of British rule in Kenya, is thought to have led to a guilty
verdict during his second trial.5
Contrary to accepted wisdom, however, we demonstrate that scandals are actually more likely
to result in reported punishments in China than in Kenya. Qualitatively, we draw on some of the
most notorious scandals of the past decade in the two countries. While not chosen at random,
these stories are representative scandals for both countries. Quantitatively, we employ a computer
content analysis of over five hundred newspaper articles pertaining to these and other scandals in
both countries.
To avoid problems with domestic press censorship, especially in China, we rely on international press coverage. This choice means that only the biggest scandals are likely to receive
coverage. We feel this a worthwhile tradeoff since Chinese censorship rules ensure that many
scandals, even serious ones, receive little press coverage in local news. Chinese journalists
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Hassid and Brass
who report scandals frequently face punishment, including dismissal, fines or imprisonment
(Brady 2008).
Scandals that do receive domestic press scrutiny, moreover, are generally already solved and the
offending parties punished. Citizens often hear of government corruption only when it is announced
by official news outlets. There are exceptions, but a reliance on the Chinese domestic press would
erroneously imply that all corruption that comes to official attention is punished harshly. This is not
true – only six percent of provincial disciplinary infractions are turned over to the court system, of
which most receive minor sanctions (Wedeman, 2004). International press coverage is not hampered by these restrictions and is unlikely to vary systematically across international borders.
Scandals in China: call and response
Among the most famous scandals in contemporary China is one involving college-educated
migrant worker Sun Zhigang. In April 2003, police detained Sun in Guangzhou for not carrying his
temporary residence permit. While in police custody, he was beaten to death by the facility’s staff.
After the aggressive Southern Metropolis Daily reported the circumstances of Sun’s death, newspapers throughout China reprinted the article in the face of a national uproar. Pressure on the government was so great that the CCP repealed the twenty-year-old law authorizing the use of internal
detention facilities. Public pressure triumphed, forcing the authoritarian regime to implement popular changes (Liebman, 2005; Hand, 2006).
In many ways this case is the archetype of how the CCP responds to contemporary scandals (see
Table 2 for a list of recent scandals and their outcomes). Cases generally begin when intrepid
reporters discover and publicize official abuse of power, despite the dangers inherent in challenging Chinese power holders (Hassid, 2011). Once a scandal has gained national attention, the CCP
simultaneously increases censorship and acts decisively to solve the problem, ensuring that public
anger is quickly mollified.
The melamine milk scandal of 2008 fits this pattern. Although reporters and editors at the Southern
Weekend knew in July 2008 that the dairy company Sanlu had for months been selling milk contaminated with melamine, heavy press controls during the Olympics kept it quiet until after the Games
ended (Bandurski, 2008). Following an understandable domestic and international uproar, Beijing
moved to contain the damage, executing two businesspeople and imprisoning six others, despite their
close ties to the state (Zhu Zhe and Cui Xiaohuo, 2009). The head of China’s national Administration
of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine was forced to resign, as was the powerful boss of
Shijiazhuang city, the location of Sanlu’s headquarters (Xinhua News Agency, 2008).
A similar result is evident in one case of high-level corruption in education, in which one of the
highest-ranking officials in the rich city of Shenzhen facilitated the production and mandatory
distribution to all Shenzhen middle schools of a film his daughter Niu Niu made. Schools were
required to pay a hefty 20 RMB (US$3) per student to view the film. With a population of over 10
million people, this amounted to a substantial revenue stream in a country renowned for extremely
inexpensive pirated DVDs (Dimitrov, 2009). After complaints appeared online, however, several
of China’s bolder newspapers began investigating. They revealed that in addition to the viewing
fees, Niu Niu obtained 7.69 million RMB (US $1.2 million) in investment capital from the government (via her father) (People’s Abstracts, 2004). After newspapers revealed the scale of corruption,
the high-ranking official was put under investigation and quickly removed from his powerful position in Shenzhen.
While in the past punishments were rarely meted out to very senior officials, the 2011 imprisonment of Railway Minister Liu Zhijun for ‘primary leadership responsibilities for the serious corruption problem within the railway system’ is an encouraging exception (Osnos, 2012). Liu, known
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Journal of Asian and African Studies 
Table 2. Major Scandals and Their Outcomes.
Country
Scandal
Type of Scandal
Outcome
Kenya
Goldenberg (1993 to
present)
Corruption
Anglo Leasing (2004)
Corruption
Grand Regency (2008)
Corruption
Tom Chomondeley killings
Murders
Human Rights Activists
Murdered (2009)
Murder
Some involved granted immunity or
exemption from prosecution. Saitoti
resigns; reappointed late that year. Case
is still pending; plea bargains may be
negotiated. No one convicted.
Private firm returned the full down
payment it received. Fizzled court cases.
No convictions.
Then-Finance Minister Kimunya is
censured and resigns; reappointed within
six months as Minister of Trade. No
convictions.
Chomondeley imprisoned for
manslaughter.
No arrests or convictions.
China
Sun Zhigang (2003)
Murder
Niuniu (2004)
Corruption
Melamine contaminated
milk scandal (2008)
Corruption
Liu Zhijun (2011)
Zhou Yongkang (2013)
Corruption
Corruption
Abolition of internal migrant detention
facilities, prison terms for reporters and
editors who broke the story.
Dismissal of corrupt official (Li Yizhen)
from his powerful position, and ultimate
removal from government service several
years later.
Dismissal, imprisonment or execution
of responsible officials; supposed
improvement in inspection procedures,
though contaminated milk continues to be
found.
Suspended death sentence for corruption.
Dismissal of associates, investigation of
very senior national politician.
as ‘boss rail,’ was for years seen as untouchable because of his institutional power and high-level
political connections. He even kept the media in thrall, in part through a system that distributed
otherwise unobtainable rail tickets to reporters during peak travel times.6 Eventually, however,
media pressure grew and the aftermath of a crash in 2011on China’s vaunted high-speed rail opened
the floodgates to negative coverage. After the media uncovered Liu’s ostentatious corruption,
including his having 16 cars, more than 350 apartments and 18 mistresses, he was sentenced to a
(suspended) death sentence that in practice will result in a prison sentence of at least ten years
(Kaiman, 2013).
More recently, the new administration led by Xi Jinping has aggressively moved to ‘swat tigers
as well as flies’ and to pursue major corruption cases – the so-called ‘tigers’ – that were hitherto
ignored. The investigation of former ‘security czar’ Zhou Yongkang and his associates announced
in late 2013 is a powerful move in this direction, as ‘it is the first time since the founding of the
People’s Republic of China that an official who has held such high office has been the focus of a
formal corruption investigation’ (Ansfield and Buckley, 2013). Zhou was previously a member of
the nine-person Politburo Standing Committee, the highest political agency in China and one
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whose members were previously considered sacrosanct. Although in the past the CCP has proved
reluctant to investigate graft cases involving those at the very top of government, Party officials
seem to have recognized that maintaining credibility increasingly requires that scandals and corruption be tackled at the highest levels. In other word, the CCP has shown clear signs that it is
moving toward holding officials accountable at all levels of government, rather than merely concentrating on local officials.
Kenyan scandals: ignoring the obvious
In Kenya, in contrast, media exposure of scandal often leads to public and government outcry, followed by a return to business as usual after only a nominal punishment or a judicial dismissal of
charges (see Table 2). Kenya presents an interesting case because it has become significantly more
democratic over time, though it is still not a consolidated democracy (Branch and Cheeseman,
2009). Conventional wisdom and international development rhetoric suggest that the government
should have become more responsive to scandal as it liberalized; but it has not. In fact, unlike in
China, even low-level scandals rarely result in punishment.
Kenya’s Goldenberg scandal, the most prominent scandal in the past 20 years, follows this
pattern perfectly. Goldenberg involved members of the Kenyan government allegedly subsidizing exports of non-existent or smuggled gold for 35% more than it was worth (Karanja, 2003).
The proceeds were paid to Goldenberg International, a company co-owned by former President
Moi and with close connections to former Vice President Saitoti and other senior politicians and
judges. The scandal cost Kenyan taxpayers around US$600 million (BBC News, 2004), the
equivalent of 10% of annual GDP, and is considered to be the principal cause of the near-collapse of the Kenyan economy in the 1990s (Transparency International Kenya, 2003). When the
scandal first broke, in 1993, a number of implicated senior politicians and civil servants resigned
their posts – only to resume work quietly some time later. At that time, Kenya was not a democracy (Freedom House score, 5.5), so this pattern of behavior fits with received wisdom about
democracy and responsiveness.
When free and fair elections in 2002 brought the first party change since independence, the new
government began a much-publicized inquiry into the affair. Despite considerable rhetoric, however, action was minimal. Moi has not been formally accused and Saitoti remained a cabinet minister until his death in 2012. Under a law passed before the elections in 2002 giving amnesty to
those who return proceeds of corruption, Kamlesh Pattni, a founder of Goldenberg International,
reportedly obtained immunity from prosecution by transferring ownership of the Nairobi Grand
Regency hotel to the government of Kenya in 2008 (BBC News, 2008). No one has yet been punished. Despite democratization and increasing media freedoms, the pattern of non-response to
scandal remained unchanged.
Another major scandal broke in May 2004 (Freedom House score, 3.0). The press reported
that the government had contracted a deal with Anglo Leasing and Finance for a computerized
passport system for approximately €32 million – even after the firm that would supply the system to Anglo Leasing offered to sell the equipment directly to the Kenyan Government for only
€6 million (Vasangar, 2005). The scandal returned to front-page news in 2006 after a report
written by Kenya’s ‘anti-corruption tsar,’ John Githongo, was leaked. Several cabinet ministers
temporarily resigned, and toothless investigations quickly cleared their names. Other ministers,
such as David Mwiraria, simply returned quietly to the Cabinet (BBC News Staff, 2006b) and
Kiraitu Murungi escaped conviction and was reinstated as Energy Minister after nine months,
despite being audiotaped attempting to bribe Githongo into halting the investigation (BBC
News, 2006a).
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The sale of the same Grand Regency hotel that featured in the Goldenberg Affair was the subject
of a separate highly publicized 2008 scandal. After Goldenberg principal Pattni released the hotel
to the government, the Central Bank of Kenya sold it to a group of Libyan investors for US$45
million, rather than its recorded value of US$115 million, reportedly in a non-competitive bidding
process (BBC News Staff, 2008). The Finance Minister at the time, Amos Kimunya, was accused
of corruption and the parliament made a public spectacle by censuring him. His name was quietly
cleared several months later following a (secret) official inquiry, and he returned to the Cabinet
(Business Daily Staff, 2008).
Not all of Kenya’s scandals involve accusations of high-level fraud. In 2009, for example, two
prominent human rights activists were assassinated in Nairobi – on the day that the government
accused their non-governmental organization (NGO) of being a front for criminal gangs. Many
Kenyan civil society NGOs attributed the murders to police acting on government orders and a UN
representative who worked with the deceased called for a foreign-led investigation of the murders.
The US offered the services of the FBI, but the Kenyan government declined, perhaps because
witnesses reported that one of the assailants was wearing a police uniform. Three officers who fired
rounds at the University of Nairobi while retrieving the activists’ bodies were arrested, but the
government did not arrest or accuse anyone of the murders, despite public outcry (Rice, 2009;
Hawaii Free Press, 2009; Amnesty International, 2010).
While Kenyan journalists are generally free to publish at their discretion, they occasionally feel
the government’s wrath after reporting official involvement in scandals. For example, in September
2009, a media informant was arrested and put on trial for ‘spreading false information’ after news
reports cited him as contradicting the government’s official statement on the destination of tanks in
a Ukrainian cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates (Amnesty International, 2009).7
Quantitative results
Content analysis of news articles on the two countries paints a similar picture, showing that media
reports of scandal in China are strongly correlated with negative repercussions. To arrive at this
conclusion, we downloaded 787 English language articles on Chinese and Kenyan scandals from
the EBSCO newspaper archive, using pairs of keywords containing the country name (either
Kenya or China) and the words ‘corruption,’ ‘scandal,’ or ‘graft’. We choose these keywords
because scandals in both countries frequently relate to them. Only articles with available full text
were selected, divided roughly equally between China (390) and Kenya (397), all from the period
2000–2010. Of these, 258 articles on China and 248 on Kenya were relevant and on-topic; the
remainder were discarded. As discussed above, all articles are from the international press.
Next, computer content analysis (CCA) software was used to provide a comparison of the words
in the articles with a ‘dictionary’ of pre-defined keywords.8 To determine whether the government
responded to scandals, we created categories of words that suggest a judicial response – specifically words related to prison, punishment and the judiciary.9 Analyzing words in these categories
allowed us to measure how frequently scandals result in sanctions for those involved. These results
are presented in Table 3, along with similar results from a baseline comparison of randomlyselected articles, which ensure a legitimate point of comparison.
Two categories of words show statistically significant differences between press coverage of
Chinese and Kenyan scandals: words related to prison and to punishment. These results suggest
that when the media reveals Kenyan scandals, those involved are less likely to be punished than
their Chinese counterparts. Indeed, articles on Chinese scandals are nearly three times as likely as
those about Kenya to mention imprisonment and almost twice as likely to mention other punishments, suggesting a substantive difference in outcomes between the two countries. This difference
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Table 3. Content Analysis Results with Baseline (T-test).
Judiciary
Prison
Punishment
Article word count
Country
Mean Number
of Words Per
Scandal Article
Mean Number
of Words Per
Baseline (nonscandal) Article
Mean Difference
(China-Kenya,
Scandal Articles)
Mean
Difference
(China-Kenya,
Baseline)
Kenya
China
Kenya
China
Kenya
China
Kenya
China
1.73
1.68
0.62
1.80
0.35
0.58
978.34
959.76
1.45
0.30
0.60
0.54
0.21
0.11
786.61
652.37
−0.05
−1.15**
−0.06
−0.10*
−161.24**
1.18**
0.23*
18.58
**p<.001 *p<.05
is especially pronounced compared to the baseline, non-scandal articles, which discuss the judiciary and punishment more in Kenya than China.
Although the absolute difference seems small – around one extra ‘punishment’ word per four
articles about Chinese scandals compared to Kenya ones – nearly twice as many newspaper articles
mention punishment in China than in Kenya. Content analysis, especially of newspaper articles
that average approximately 1000 words, often produces such seemingly small differences (Hassid,
2012). Indeed, because the newspaper corpus reflects dozens of articles on each individual scandal
at all stages from discovery to resolution, we should not expect to see wildly divergent reports
between the two countries. Here, the results suggest meaningfully higher reports of punishment
and imprisonment in Chinese scandals compared to Kenyan ones.10
Why democracy and media freedom fail to improve
responsiveness
Scandals in China, even those involving prominent national political figures, thus seem to be
resolved more quickly than is the case in Kenya. Clearly, government responsiveness in this case
cannot be explained by the ‘sunshine’ provided by the media or democratic processes. Why do
these mechanisms fail in Kenya and elsewhere? Two features of democracy in less-developed
countries help to explain why they are insufficient for government responsiveness.
First, the democratic process may itself reduce popular pressure for accountability, because citizens understand that they may eventually remove public officials who are not adequately responsive. In Kenya, for example, the 2007 parliamentary elections saw over 60% of Members of
Parliament (MPs) seeking reelection removed from office. Popular opinion at the time, as well as
research conducted later, suggested that MPs lost their offices largely for being unresponsive to
citizen demands, particularly with regard to mismanagement of Constituency Development Funds
(CDF) (Gutierrez-Romero, 2010). These funds, introduced in 2002, disperse 2.5% of government
revenue each year through MPs to use for local development projects. In the lead-up to the 2007
elections, reports of CDF misuse were widespread in Kenyan newspapers, but protests regarding
this misuse were rare. Indeed, in a 2008 survey of 501 adult Kenyans, we found that only 12% of
respondents had ever attended a protest or demonstration. These facts suggest that the Kenyan
public is willing to wait for elections to reprimand those involved in scandals rather than
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Journal of Asian and African Studies 
demanding immediate relief. However, the violence following the 2007 elections (and the lack
thereof in 2013) shows both Kenyan unwillingness to accept rigged elections and their desire for
democracy to function (Dercon and Gutierrez-Romero, 2012).
In authoritarian states like China, in contrast, citizens may resort to more extreme means of
protest if demands are not met quickly. Members of China’s ruling CCP must therefore remain
constantly vigilant and responsive to reports of scandal, in the face of a public mood that can
quickly turn ugly. Despite spending as much each year on internal policing as on external defense
(Tsinghua University, 2010), the number of Chinese protests or ‘mass incidents’ continues to grow,
to an astonishing 127,467 in 2008 (China Labor Bulletin, 2009). Many of these ‘incidents’ are mass
protests against official corruption, demonstrating the willingness of many Chinese to confront
even a coercive state apparatus in a search for clean, responsive government (Chen, 2000).
Since the CCP wishes to retain power, it generally responds to protests by punishing those
involved in scandal. As Susan Shirk (2011: 17) writes, ‘The elite’s extreme nervousness about
potential protests makes them highly responsive when the media report on a problem … Once the
media publicize an issue and the issue becomes common knowledge, then the government does not
dare ignore it’. The end result is that those exposed often face jail time or worse.
In a democracy, in contrast, even leaders of an angry populace rarely have to fear overthrow;
instead, regularized succession ensures that popular anger is usually directed toward ‘throwing the
bums out,’ rather than remaking the political system anew. Elections can maintain popular anger at
scandals at a slow simmer rather than a raging boil. While media freedom and democracy should,
in principle, improve governance, other researchers have noted that levels of corruption often tend
to be lower in dictatorships than in partial democracies (Montinola and Jackman, 2002). China and
Kenya fit this trend. Indeed, Transparency International’s 2010 Corruptions Perception Survey
ranks China as the 78th cleanest country in the world, far from good but an enviable position compared to Kenya’s 154th place (Transparency International, 2010).
Possible explanations
What then, does explain the difference between these two cases? We speculate below about necessary conditions, drawing on our research in the two countries.
Political will
The experiences of Kenya and China demonstrate that political will may be a necessary component
for government responsiveness to scandals, particularly combined with adequate state capacity.
In less-developed countries, democracy is often unconsolidated, suffering from weak political
parties and corruption. Because of this, conditions of ‘partial democracy’ override some of the
government responsiveness we expect of mature democracies. In the case of Kenya, parties are
anemic, lacking distinguishable ideology or platform. Parties die and are formed with each election
cycle, each remaining little more than amalgams of ever-shifting elite politicians (Murunga and
Nasong’o, 2006). As a result, corrupt actors from previous and current regimes interweave, making
it difficult for voters to respond systematically to scandals of prior administrations (Wolf, 2006).
Thus we encounter the ‘politics of collusion’ among the political elite in Kenya, who lack the will
to respond to scandal.
In China, on the other hand, the Party has the necessary political will. Despite the importance of
informal politics and factions inside the CCP, China’s sustained economic growth has been impressive enough that Party legitimacy is increasingly tied to meeting ever-stricter economic performance standards, not ideological ones (Downs and Saunders, 1998). With economic growth
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slowing somewhat, however, the government cannot rely on this alone for legitimacy. Chinese
officials thus appear increasingly to feel they must act quickly to assuage public anger when scandals appear, especially those involving corruption or abuse of power. Anything less risks a wholesale challenge to the fundamentally performance-based legitimacy of Communist rule. While in
Kenya the unconsolidated democratic process itself gives the incumbent regime a measure of insularity from legitimacy crises, Chinese officials are constantly worried that if perceived performance drops too low they may lose their jobs. This system, then, creates huge political will to act
quickly on most scandals.
Low expectations
Is the presence of political will sufficient to explain the finding that authoritarian China is more
responsive to scandals than democratic Kenya? Clearly, enforcement mechanisms matter, but both
countries’ judiciaries are so feeble and corrupt – especially when dealing with government officials
– that we can effectively discount the independent influence of these bodies (Wedeman 2004;
Ringera 2007), though this may be changing in Kenya. We argue that another factor, public expectations, may be the critical missing link needed for government responsiveness. Looking at the
relative expectations of the Kenyan and Chinese publics, we find that in China, expectations for
state action and responsiveness to scandal are quite high; in Kenya, they are extremely low. This
difference is based on, and reinforced by, both countries’ political institutions.
In China, heightened expectations exist for at least three reasons. First, the CCP is reluctant to
loosen its monopoly on addressing social problems and it retains deep suspicions about even
innocuous extra-party organizations. Long wary of civil society, the CCP generally attempts to coopt social organizations and to suppress those it cannot co-opt. The end result is that far from challenging or monitoring state action, NGOs and other civil society groups often actively curry favor
with the powerful (Gallagher, 2004). This ensures that citizens turn directly to state authorities
when problems arise. Put simply, the Party/state is the central actor in Chinese public life and
remains the natural focus of citizens’ demands.
Second, the Chinese central government itself has deliberately raised expectations of its good
intentions and effectiveness. At the national level, the government in Beijing takes care to ensure
that it deflects anger from central leaders to local ones, maintains social stability and appears to be
acting in the best interest of all citizens. The central government tends to involve itself in high
profile or particularly serious cases and once it does concessions to an angry public are more likely.
At the local level, state officials are most responsive to public outcry over scandal where
they are ‘embedded’ into local communities in China. Lily Tsai (2007) found that Chinese officials enmeshed in ‘solidary groups,’ often local temples and heritage associations, are more
likely to provide reliable and honest public service provision than those without strong ties to
local communities. Ultimately, these local ties provide a strong motivation for many public
officials to act honestly; indeed, given that there are no electoral consequences to graft, media
investigations, cultural norms and public outcry seem to provide the only incentives for clean
local government.
Finally, the Chinese public itself demands that the government responds quickly to scandals.
For example, the 2005 World Values Survey found that nearly 80% of Chinese rate democracy as
‘absolutely important’ or very important, and 55% believe that one of the ‘essential’ criteria of
democracy is that ‘criminals are severely punished’ (compared to only 17% in the United States, of
valid answers only). We interpret this to mean that as long as the CCP remains responsive to public
outrage over individual scandals and punishes wrongdoers, pressure to reform the political system
and institute national electoral democracy may remain low.
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Journal of Asian and African Studies 
In Kenya, in contrast, society appears to be more indulgent of scandal, though there are signs
that this is changing. Relative tolerance in Kenya can be attributed to the way that government and
citizenship were created and institutionalized, and to learned powerlessness. The combination of
these factors has produced a situation where it is arguably rational for individuals to maintain low
expectations of government responsiveness to scandal.
In one of the most widely-cited essays on African institutions, Peter Ekeh (1975) explains that
the manner in which African governments have developed has created a situation in which use of
public office for personal or group gain is largely, if begrudgingly, accepted. Colonialists built
Africa’s government institutions, transferring them to Africans upon decolonization. Because the
institutions were considered foreign instruments of domination, Ekeh (1975: 108) argues, ‘it
[became] legitimate to rob the civic public’ – especially if the benefits are (mostly) distributed to
one’s tribal and voluntary associations. State-based patronage became the norm in most of Africa,
holding deeply divided, multi-ethnic societies together through strategic distribution of resources
(Bates, 1981). Corruption, a major precursor to scandal, is often seen as amoral if the corrupt are
fleecing the state for the benefit of their ethnic or religious associations. Moreover, citizens rely on
their community patron retaining ties to the state. As long as voters expect to benefit from the
patronage system, systematic pressure to solve corruption scandals withers.
In these relatively new states, moreover, high-level officials are also given discretionary leeway
by the nature of the relationship between rulers and ruled. According to Michael Schatzberg (2001),
for example, state leaders act – and are treated as – father figures to their citizens. Schatzberg
details how power in Africa is a fine balance between an acceptable appetite on the part of the
‘father’ and political corruption. Individual Africans often act more as subject populations than as
citizens will full rights and responsibilities (Mamdani, 1996; Schatzberg, 2001).
In such situations, individuals may not feel empowered to act, even when scandal is brazen.
Some non-state elites recognize this phenomenon, though it baffles them. In an op-ed in Kenya’s
leading newspaper, for example, Willy Rotich (2010) writes about Kenyan ‘indifference to blatant
corruption, at times an inexplicable attraction to people indicted in graft, impunity or whatever
evil’. Rotich describes the efficient, modest-living public servant as the object of ridicule and highlevel crooks and bandits as objects of reverence.
This is not to say that Kenyans are satisfied with low state responsiveness to scandal. Indeed,
politicians, the mass media, civil society organizations and public opinion polls provide a steady
drumbeat of complaint against the status quo (Mutua, 2011). But while demands for change are
high, expectations for change are low. Scandals produce outcry, but outcry that is tempered by
(exasperated) acceptance. Countering Rotich’s cynicism, it may be that many Kenyans have, in
essence, ‘exited’ the system (Hirschman, 1970). Rationally, if perhaps not consciously, these citizens have recognized that their government will not punish official malefactors. Getting involved
in attempts to change the status quo often leads to anger and disillusionment, as anti-corruption
NGOs in Nairobi experience.11 As one scholar argues, ‘Repeated breaches of trust can generate an
attitude of deep mistrust among some sectors of the population; individuals may be inclined to
distrust, not just particular leaders … but politicians per se’ (Thompson, 2000: 255). In interviews
Brass conducted with NGO leaders and civil servants between 2005 and 2008, many respondents
mentioned that the Kenyan people don’t expect much from government and are even empathetic to
the government’s inability to provide [citation redacted]. The end result is a ‘culture of impunity,’
as identified by former US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger (Hepple and Smith, 2010).
In interviews and surveys Brass conducted, for example, she found that popular support for both
Kenyan political leaders and the civil service is quite high – indeed surprisingly so.12 In a 2008
survey of 500 secondary school students replicating work from the immediate post-independence
era (a time of great optimism), for example, we find that – contrary to popular scholarly opinion
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– legitimacy levels in Kenya have not fallen. In addition, in a second survey of adults in 2008,
Brass found that 65% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that, ‘the Government of Kenya
shares my values and does the right thing’. Moreover 74% of respondents reported ‘a great deal’ or
‘quite a lot’ of confidence in the Government of Kenya generally.
We find that even in middle class neighborhoods of Nairobi, where access to news is universal,
few challenge the legitimacy of the central state. When asked about confidence in the President and
the Government generally, 71% and 60% respectively reported high confidence ratings. This phenomenon has been dubbed ‘expectation-disconfirmation theory’, where citizens rate government
performance higher when they have very low expectations than when they expect more (Van
Ryzin, 2004). These survey data suggest that most of Kenya’s officials need not be overly concerned with state legitimacy, and they have few worries that even festering scandals will result in
a loss of confidence in the government.
CCP officials, in contrast, remain concerned about their perceived legitimacy, a worry sharpened by events like the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese activist Liu
Xiaobo. Many analysts regarded the Chinese response – weeks of denunciations followed by the
creation of a ‘competitor’ Confucius Prize – as an extreme reaction conditioned by fears that the
regime lacked political legitimacy. When a government feels secure, as it does in Nairobi, it has a
less urgent need to respond to every social scandal or uncovered crime. Insecure governments, in
contrast, must fear that every unresolved scandal can conceal the germ of revolution.
Individual Kenyans, then, are rational to have low expectations for government responsiveness
to scandal. After decades of living with the pattern ‘media exposure of scandal; government outcry;
nominal (often temporary) punishment; return to business as usual’, most Kenyans have become
resigned to the status quo. In a situation where not a single high-level official has been convicted for
a scandalous crime – in a country where one scandal cost 10% of GDP – disillusioned ‘exit’ from
participation makes sense. Unfortunately, a vicious cycle of expectation and response can develop,
where the lack of government responsiveness to scandal lowers public expectations of a response.
Conclusions
In China, a one-party dictatorship with a muzzled press, authorities react quickly to punish officials
involved in scandal, satisfying public expectations by rapidly quelling public outrage. In Kenya, in
contrast, politicians act with impunity and even egregious scandals fester unsolved for years,
despite democratic elections and a free press. This suggests that our perceived wisdom about the
role of democracy and free media in government responsiveness to scandal may not be entirely
correct. Some authoritarian regimes are more responsive than their democratic counterparts. We
hypothesize that crucial factors explaining this include political will and the expectation among
ordinary citizens that the state authorities will act.
Neither the Kenyan nor Chinese public is happy about scandals, and both publics in surveys and
interviews demand that these problems are resolved quickly. While ordinary Kenyans demand
responsive government, however, they certainly do not expect it. The weak consolidation of
democracy, political structures dominated by ethnic identity and strong patron-client relationships,
and decades of official negligence have all gradually reduced public expectations for clean
government.
Kenya is hardly unique. Major Western democracies like Italy maintain a similar level of unaccountable corruption and unresolved scandals for decades, despite pluralistic competition and a
free media. As Colazingari and Rose-Ackerman (1998: 469) write, ‘A shift from authoritarian to
democratic rule does not necessarily reduce payoffs’. In other words, democratization may not be
the right approach to increasing responsiveness to scandal. Italy’s example also provides some
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Journal of Asian and African Studies 
positive news, however, suggesting that when public expectations change, even entrenched corruption can be (mostly) swept away. Manion (1996: 191) explains, ‘major changes in structures may
be ineffective in eliminating corruption or very significantly reducing its incidence’, but in contrast, ‘altering expectations may be effective’ provided that the changes in expectations are large
enough. Sunshine, in short, may not always be the best disinfectant.
The implications of our finding are several. Most importantly, understanding the role of citizens’
expectations and state capacity not only allows us to deepen our comprehension of the conditions
under which governments respond to the public pressure but also expands our understanding of
regime types. Our evidence suggests that political and societal features social scientists normally
consider as characteristics of democracies can in fact sometimes be observed in autocratic regimes.
We therefore draw attention to the need to refine state theory and to unpack the usual simple
regime type continuum – to consider a multitude of important variables in our discussions of
‘democracy’ and ‘dictatorship’. As such, this work fits broadly into the efforts by Collier and
Levitski (1997), Sartori (1970), and others to encourage scholars to carefully define and parse such
broad terms. But there is a crucial difference: we are not arguing about how to characterize countries like Kenya and China, but rather are suggesting that government responsiveness to mass pressure should not be associated exclusively with democracy. Under some conditions, autocracies can
be more responsive to their citizens than democracies. A democratic state, in other words, is not
necessarily responsive to popular pressure day-to-day. Nor is an authoritarian regime necessarily
deaf to mass demands. In short, we aim to decouple broad terms like ‘democracy’ from the assumptions that many scholars have implicitly held about regime performance.
Finally, our findings have implications for policymakers, particularly those aiming their efforts
at less-developed countries. In the short run, efforts to reduce scandal rates – particularly corruption scandal – might best be targeted at enforcement mechanisms and incentives, rather than at
wholesale change of the electoral structure. While democracy-promotion should be lauded, programs cannot stop at the level of partial consolidation. Indeed, poorly consolidated democracies
tend to be more corrupt on average than even the most hardened authoritarian regimes. In the end,
programs to manage citizens’ expectations and to encourage them to demand government accountability might prove more effective than simply promoting democracy in a one-size-fits-all approach.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to anonymous reviewers, Bart Watson, and those who gave comments at the 2011 annual meetings of
the Association for Asian Studies and the American Political Science Association.
Funding
The order of names was determined by coin toss. Support for the research reported in this article came from
a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award Grant, a National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship, the University of Technology, Sydney and Indiana University.
Notes
1. Emphasis in original.
2. While Kenyan elections have been associated with violence, particularly following the 2007 election, the
country also holds parliamentary, county and municipal elections at regular intervals without problems.
Additionally, the country has had two recent democratic changes in the party in power (2002 and 2013),
suggesting democratic consolidation.
3. Brass conducted this survey in Machakos and Mbeere districts in working-class neighborhoods of the
capital, Nairobi. While the responses are biased toward ethnicities living in Eastern Province, responses
did not vary significantly by ethnicity. For example, only 4% of Luo in the sample did not think Kenya
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was a democracy in 2008, and 39% thought it was a democracy with ‘major problems’ – a smaller percentage than the sample as a whole.
4. China has extensive media censorship, of course, but the official pronouncement is that it does not exist.
See http://hk.aboluowang.com/2013/0105/276760.html.
5. When Attorney General Wako dismissed the first charges, in 2005, the media excoriated the decision.
When Cholmondeley was accused a year later of a second murder, media reports kept the scandal in the
spotlight.
6. Author interview with senior Chinese journalist, Beijing, 2011.
7. The Kenyan government claimed that it ordered the tanks for its own use, but others – including an
official in South Sudan – say that Kenya planned to re-export them to that country. Kenya has featured
prominently in the peace accords between the Sudanese governments in Khartoum and in Juba.
8. The software, Yoshikoder, is available for free online, and has been used in similar ways by other
scholars.
9. The prison category counted the following words and stems: ‘hard labor,’ ‘imprison*,’ ‘incarcerate*,’ ‘jail*,’ ‘prison*,’ ‘re-educat*,’ ‘reeducat*,’ and ‘sentenced’. Punishment measured: ‘demoted,’
‘execute,’ ‘executed,’ ‘fined,’ ‘fired,’ ‘punish*,’ and ‘stripped’. Judiciary measured: ‘appeal,’ ‘appellate,’ ‘attorney(s),’ ‘barrister(s),’ ‘charged,’ ‘court(s),’ ‘defendant(s),’ ‘indict*,’ ‘judge(s),’ ‘lawyer(s),’
‘magistrate(s),’ ‘plaintiff(s),’ ‘procurator*,’ ‘prosecut*,’ ‘solicitor(s),’ ‘trial(s),’ and ‘tribunal(s)’.
10. Expanding on these results, we replicated this method across all countries that have a 2010 Freedom
House ranking (n = 162), using an original data set of 17,160 articles compiled in the same way described
above. Confirming the results we present for China and Kenya, no combination of Freedom House’s
Civil Liberties or Political Rights measures (or similar measures from the World Bank and Reporters
Without Borders) was statistically significant in combinations controlling for GDP per capita, population and other variables in OLS regression using the same dependent variables. In other words, we find
that variation in international state response to scandals cannot be adequately explained by traditional
measures.
11. Some of this anger and frustration is documented in a leaked diplomatic communication (US Embassy
Nairobi, 2009).
12. Other survey researchers have found similar, surprisingly optimistic results (Wolf et al., 2004), crediting
them to post-electoral ‘euphoria’ after the democratic transition in 2002.
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Author biographies
Jonathan Hassid is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney’s China Research
Centre. He has published on Chinese politics and the Chinese news media in Comparative Political Studies,
The China Quarterly, the Journal of Communication, Asian Studies and elsewhere. He received his PhD in
political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jennifer N Brass is Assistant Professor at the School of Public & Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.
Her research focuses on service provision, governance and state development in sub-Saharan Africa. She
holds a PhD and MA from the University of California, Berkeley and BS from Georgetown University. Her
articles appear in World Development, Governance, Development and Change, and elsewhere.
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