Institutionalized Arbitrariness in Uganda (1986–2016)

Abstract

This chapter reviews institutional and historical factors that have allowed Uganda’s National Resistance Movement regime to dominate society and cultivate a population that, in many aspects, polices itself. Focusing on the years between 1986 and 2016, the chapter traces three institutional trajectories of the Ugandan state, which contextualize institutionalized arbitrariness. The first is the bifurcated nature of the state at independence, when colonial-era state institutions split from the informal workings of post-colonial political power. The second trajectory concerns the double nature of the National Resistance Movement regime—a political movement on one hand, and a military on the other. The third is the role of external aid in propping up this complex system. The chapter highlights the tensions between institutionalization and personalization that lay the groundwork for institutionalized arbitrariness. It places Museveni’s Uganda in regional and global context to identify external factors that reinforced Museveni’s regime and checked its power.