Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda: Pax Musevenica (review)

As Professor Joshua Rubongoya masterfully articulates, few states illustrate the challenge of establishing a liberal democracy and a politically legitimate regime in post-independence Africa better than Uganda. Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda is a narrative of Uganda's post-independence political struggle, focusing on the present administration of Yoweri Museveni. Much more than a narrative, the book is also analysis of how Museveni and his ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), achieved and then squandered democratic legitimacy. In short, the book is about power, not only in Uganda, but in Africa as a whole. The author claims that Uganda

provides a laboratory of inordinate magnitude for a discourse on the intricacies concerning power, its use and misuse. It is a country with multiple ethnicities and traditional political systems. The Ugandan state has died, been buried and resurrected. This not only makes for a multifarious political narrative but is also a process with insightful lessons for the continent.

(p. xi)

In the seven chapters that follow, Rubongoya, Professor of Political Science at Roanoke College, offers students of African history and politics an illuminating prism through which to comprehend similar struggles for democratic legitimacy in post-independence African states.

In the introduction to the book, the author defines the relevant concepts and terminology used throughout the text. Identifying the establishment of political legitimacy in the postcolonial state as "Africa's most disturbing political deficit," Rubongoya begins with two propositions; one, "the colonial state destroyed the indigenous structures of power" and yet, two, "colonial rule did not uproot the patrimonial institutions of precolonial Uganda" (pp. 3–4). Rather, the colonial state "superimposed a set of formal/ legal institutions onto the precolonial political formations," giving rise to a structure of power referred to by the author as neopatrimonial legitimacy, which is "devoid of democratic content and relies instead on state coercion and the award of personal favors in the form of patronage and prebends such as state jobs for political support" (p. 4). The challenge for the postcolonial state has been to curtail the neopatrimonial system and achieve its contrast, democratic legitimacy, which "refers to values of popular support and consent emanating from citizens' positive association with and support for institutions and patterns of rule" (p. 5). Rubongoya's thesis is that Museveni and the NRM nearly achieved democratic legitimacy in the period following their accession to power in 1986 but in recent years have begun the transformation into a neopatrimonial state, with potentially ominous implications for the future.

Following the introduction, the author provides a detailed historical analysis of the period following independence from 1962 to 1986, during which Uganda suffered under the dictatorships of Milton Obote, Idi Amin, and Obote again. The author reveals that, in the earliest years of his regime, Obote failed on several counts to construct the political institutions necessary for establishing legitimacy. These failures culminated in the 1966 Buganda Crisis when Obote's troops stormed the palace of the Bugandan king, or the kabaka. Apart from alienating a significant power base, the 1966 crisis marks the beginning of the military's intervention into Uganda's political life. Such a process culminated in 1971 when the military, led by Idi Amin, ousted Obote and took control of the state.

Following Amin's seizure of power in 1971, the Ugandan state deteriorated into a fully militarized dictatorship. As a result, its citizens endured one of the worst despotisms in modern Africa and generations of Ugandans have been left ". . . without the normative structure vital for a normally functioning society. Values such as trust, patience, patriotism, unity, and, most importantly, democracy were effaced by institutionalized violence" (p. 50). The destruction of Ugandan society was so complete Obote had little chance of restoring democratic legitimacy when he regained power a second time in 1980. According to the author, Obote's failure stemmed not only from Amin's legacy but from his own inability to overcome Uganda's social divisions, promote democratic values...