The effects of protracted conflict and displacement on citizen engagement in Northern Uganda

The Acholi region of Uganda was deeply affected by the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda from the late 1980s to 2006. This article presents qualitative case-study research of how citizen engagement evolved during the conflict and period of internal displacement, analysing the mechanisms through which violent conflict affected the sense and practice of citizenship. The findings show that the securitisation of local institutions and the militarisation of the public sphere limited the opportunity for learning the practice of citizenship. In the post-conflict situation, perceptions and behaviours that developed during the conflict period persist among the Acholi. Finally, the experience of protracted conflict has a negative impact on a sense of citizenship, which weakens the confidence of the Acholi people to engage with the state. With practices of citizenship limited by inexperience and a sense of citizenship that is characterised by alienation, the Acholi find it difficult to hold state actors to account. This demonstrates the need for a clear understanding of the continued fragility of citizenship after violent conflict.     

When Decentralization Leads to Recentralization: Subnational State Transformation in Uganda

Abstract

Among other shortcomings of decentralization reforms undertaken by developing countries since the 1980s, recent research finds that the reforms' primary aim—devolution of authority to localities—has often not been achieved in practice. This article builds on that insight, examining an understudied pathway through which states that have undertaken decentralization can ultimately recentralize power: administrative unit proliferation. Rapid creation of numerous new subnational administrative units is an increasingly common occurrence in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This phenomenon, I argue, allows for recentralization by reducing the intergovernmental bargaining power and administrative capacity of each subnational unit, as well as by substantially expanding both the reach of the national executive's patronage network and its ability to monitor emergent security threats on its periphery. The article illustrates these mechanisms with evidence from Uganda.     

Best practices for the management of knowledge for conflict resolution: Lessons learned from the Great Lakes region of Africa

Abstract

This article deals with the management of knowledge for conflict resolution and innovation in Africa. After a brief discussion of the research methodology followed, a feedback is provided on the field study conducted from 2006 to 2008 in northern Uganda and Rwanda and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, and in the DRC. As a result of the field study, certain principles and practices were identified whereby the challenges facing Africa could be examined. The author found five ‘realms’ in which knowledge management can take place and that traditional knowledge practices, if merged with more modern knowledge management practices, provide a valuable framework for using knowledge management for conflict resolution and innovation in Africa. Best practices that were identified include an intra-connected and collective knowledge production system and the production of tacit knowledge, especially among the new generation or youth. Furthermore, the importance of intellectual capital (in the form of value-driven leadership, competent managers and expert knowledge workers) and the activation of an intervention into the continuous spiral of violent conflict which will ultimately lead to the innovative transformation of African society are discussed. Finally, some recommendations are offered as possible solutions for conflict resolution and innovation in Africa.     

Africa’s Pasts and Africa’s Historians

Creation of local government districts has become an enterprise in Uganda, with many stakeholders having diverse opinions about the government's motives. This article examines the questions: What are the proclaimed and hidden or implicit intentions of the government? What evidence is available to provide reasonable interpretation of government action according to a particular rationale? By triangulating primary and secondary data and using a deductive approach, the study concludes that the initial intention of the government to create new districts to bring services and government closer to the people was consistent with the country's constitution and decentralisation policy. However, since 1997, and especially since 2006, other rationales have come to the fore, though not communicated as such in public policy statements. While we do not exclude ethnic rationale, the article finds more evidence that points to political patronage and a variant of gerrymandering (namely, that of splitting up districts while not redrawing boundaries).     

Capture the flag: local factionalism as electoral mobilization in dominant party Uganda

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a question relevant to many non-democratic regimes: how can a successful dominant party be an institutionally weak one? President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) have dominated Ugandan politics since coming to power in 1986. However, the NRM does not possess many of the institutional endowments that other dominant parties use to control mass and elite politics, such as central control of candidate selection, autonomous mobilizing structures, or dispensation of sufficient political finance to its candidates. Instead, the party secretariat has no real institutional power independent of the personalist Museveni regime, and its local branches house fierce internal competition each election in which most incumbents lose office. This article argues that the NRM mobilizes so well for Museveni despite its institutional deficits due to the precise nature of the competitive process its local elites go through to win its nomination (or “flag”) and the subsequent general election. This process sees self-organized and self-financed candidates and their factions rejuvenate the party and mobilize votes for the concurrent presidential election as a by-product of their competition with one another. The article makes this argument with qualitative data from three districts gathered during the 2016 elections.     

Digital dilemmas: the unintended consequences of election technology

Digital technologies are increasingly used in elections around the world. Where the resources and capacity of the state are limited, some have argued that such technologies make it possible to rapidly “leapfrog” to cleaner and more credible elections. This article argues that the growing use of these technologies has been driven by the fetishization of technology rather than by rigorous assessment of their effectiveness; that they may create significant opportunities for corruption that (among other things) vitiate their potential impact; and that they carry significant opportunity costs. Indeed, precisely because new technology tends to deflect attention away from more “traditional” strategies, the failure of digital checks and balances often renders an electoral process even more vulnerable to rigging than it was before. These observations are not intended as a manifesto against the digitization of elections; apart from anything else, we argue that the drivers of the adoption of these new methods are too powerful to resist. But the analysis draws attention to the importance of more careful assessments of the problems, as well as the benefits, of such technologies – and to the need for more careful planning in their deployment.     

East African Economic Development Over the Next Twenty Years: Some Forecasts About Qualitative Changes

Combining social movement approaches to resource mobilization and collective identity, this article investigates the role of external material resources in shaping the direction of collective action against HIV/AIDS within the Kamwokya Christian Caring Community (KCCC), a Catholic community-based initiative in Kampala. From its origins in the late 1980s as a community of Christians providing “holistic care” to people living with HIV/AIDS, the KCCC has in the wake of increasing external funding been transformed into a professional development non-governmental organization (NGO). In the process, the ideals of holistic care have gradually been overshadowed by neo-liberal development rationalities and bio-political concerns. The article therefore argues that successfully mobilizing donor funding can have unintended consequences for the nature of religious collective action against HIV/AIDS.     

Why Does Zimbabwe Export Manufactures and Uganda Not? Econometrics Meets History

Uganda and Zimbabwe are predicted on the basis of their human and natural resources, to have similar shares of manufactures in their exports However, Uganda falls a long way short of the predicted share, while Zimbabwe greatly exceeds it. Uganda's manufactured export share is unusually small mainly because of high transport costs, due to its distance from the sea and inadequate infrastructure. Zimbabwe's manufactured export share is unusually big mainly because its comparative advantage in manufacturing was enhanced by the know-how brought in by European settlers and a long-term policy of promoting the sector.