defiition which we cannot afford to dismiss. In a discussion paper
entitled ‘Existential Responsibility’ – The Civic Virtue’, Helmut
Danner makes a distinction between ‘juridical’ ‘and ‘existential’
responsibility. Though he is discussing this in the realm of education,
he concludes : ‘Depending on which kind of society we are referring
to, responsibility will serve society best as “juridical responsibility”
when it is a “closed society” and as “existential responsibility” when
it is an “open, democratic society”.’^5 In juridical responsibility, he
argues, there is somebody who is judged by somebody else as having
done right or wrong. Such a person is expected to act in a certain way.
In this case Danner observes : ‘A rule, a law, is the measure for judge-
ment. Accordingly, the judgement will be : He/she fulfilled his/her
responsibility or he/she failed.’ He also calls this kind of responsibil-
ity ‘accountability.’ In what he calls ‘existential responsibility’ Danner
explains that ‘imputation does not function in the same way as in
juridical responsibility’ because it does not follow a certain pattern
and one has to dig deeper to place the blame (or praise).
- What Responsible Political Leadership Entails
Having dealt with the definitions we may now proceed to explain
what responsible political leadership entails. Since norms and values
may differ from place to place we will limit ourselves to what is com-
monly agreed and current in Kenya today.
a) Legitimacy : Any politically responsible leadership must be
drawing its legitimacy from the people. Leadership that has come in
power through violence for example, through a coup d’etat, will not
bother to be responsible to anyone except itself while serving its own
interests. An elected leadership is expected to be accountable and
responsible to the electorate. Such leadership will always look at the
promises it made to the voters during its election campaign and strive
to fulfil those promises. This is because such leadership knows that
after the set period, in our case after every five years, there will be
another election and the leaders may be re-elected or rejected. It suf-
fices to say that responsible political leadership can only succeed in a
democratic environment. Since politics is about distribution of power
and resources, responsible leadership will strive to ensure that this
distribution is done equitably. The leadership which derives its legit-
imacy from the people, is organised through political parties. Unfor-
tunately, as Professor Jesse Mugambi suggests, political parties have
stolen leadership from the people. In many countries, he observes,
democracy has evolved as government of political parties, for political
parties and by political parties.^6 Thus political party leaders have
A Kenyan Perspective 267