If anyone asked East Africans, especially Kenyans and Ugandans, what the most frequently used word in their politics is, they would probably get this answer: reform.

The continuing election saga in Kenya has kept the word on everyone’s lips.

The clamour for reform is not a new thing. It has a long history going back to the days of independence. Since then, there has been a constant search for what works best for the different countries, or more often what suits the interests of various political groups or individuals.

In more recent times, the most determined driving force for reform has been opposition political formations (parties and coalitions) and civil society organisations.

Thus, for instance in Kenya, the National Super Alliance (NASA’s) irreducible minimum demands to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) before they could take part in the repeat presidential election in October were about reform of the electoral body and elections in general.

Some think the demands are only the publicly stated aim. The real purpose is to force the current government out of power as subsequent events have shown.

NASA’s formation of a resistance movement is meant to put pressure on the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta to force reforms of the political system, and apparently they will not rest until their version of reforms have been made.

In Uganda, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) started as a reform pressure group before transforming into a political party. However, it has been less successful than its Kenyan counterparts and has been constrained to operate within the existing set up, waiting perhaps to change it once in power.

Going back a little over half a century ago, in East Africa, there was an immediate rejection of inherited colonial systems. The Westminster Parliamentary model was quickly abandoned and replaced with a presidential system that gave enormous powers to the chief executives.

Those early independence leaders appear to have been more attracted to the powers chiefs and kings used to wield than to democracy.

In time, democratic pretensions were thrown away altogether and we entered the era of one-party and military dictatorships.

This necessitated a new liberation struggle which took two forms. One was a political or constitutional path that involved pressure for reform as happened in Kenya.

The other was an armed struggle that overthrew the old order and established a new one, as in Uganda and Rwanda.

Eventually all this led to the return of multi-party politics, with the hope that it would solve all the earlier political problems. But clearly that has not happened.

New ones have come up and there is always some dissatisfied individual or group, and so the search and pressure for more reforms goes on.

The reforms that seem to excite most emotions and produce the loudest noise are the political ones, which have sought to wrest power from the centre and distribute it to local authorities.

Depending on its reach and intention, this process has been called devolution in Kenya or decentralisation in Rwanda and Uganda.

In Kenya, a long debate has been going on since independence about the most suitable political arrangement for the country. The smaller nationalities have always been wary of domination by the larger ones.

And so at independence, they pressed for a sort of federal arrangement (majimbo) to ensure they were not submerged or sidelined.

It did not happen, but the struggle for a fairer distribution of power and resources continued. A system of devolution of power was eventually arrived at with the 2010 constitution.

Devolution seems to be working, at least from the point of view of the once marginalised communities. Still, talk of historical injustices that must be put right goes on.

Ugandans, too, have had to grapple with contending visions of governance, between a unitary and federal state. Since 1986, they saw the answer in decentralisation.

However, the Ugandan model of decentralisation is a strange one. You might call it decentralisation by fragmentation as it involves breaking up districts into ever smaller, largely unviable, units.

Their creation seems to serve a political purpose for those in power.

By appearing to decentralise power to even the smallest community, the government panders to their sentiments without giving them any real power.

And because they are small, many and unviable, they depend on the centre for survival. It is a way of the central government continuing to exercise control while appearing to decentralise power.

Furthermore, the break up into smaller units translates into parliamentary numbers for the party in power.

Some might even read into it a devious means of defeating the clamour for federalism while maintaining a disguised unitary state.

Rwanda has taken a different path to decentralisation, by consolidating smaller administrative units into larger ones, and devolving more power and responsibilities to them. The aim here has been rationalisation and efficiency, and increased citizen participation in governance, rather than continued control.

In all the three countries the process of taking power from the centre is still ongoing, but already there are some indications of where they are headed. In some places, reforms are a only a path to power.

In others, they are a means of staying in power. In other cases, they are a means of empowering citizens. These differences could also explain the way they look at regional cooperation and integration.