Uganda suffered coups between 1966 and 1985, but has remained stable since 1986 despite predisposition to previous coups. Ethnic antagonism, weak state institutionalization, and past coups, had made Uganda coup-prone. Compared to previous governments, the post-1986 leadership effectively applied and undertook coupprevention strategies consistent with James Quinlivan's coup-proofing theory. These include establishing a parallel military structure to the mainstream military; formation of security services with parallel reporting channels, monitoring over society, and other security agencies; and co-optation of the military in politics through parliamentary representation. These measures have helped the regime to watch over security agencies and prevent possible military intervention. Uganda's post-1986 regime stability is interesting in its own right. But it provides evidence consistent with, and useful for testing the efficacy of, Quinlivan's coup-proofing theory: with relevant application and domestication the theory applies to Uganda.

I examine the East African common market, taken as a regional migration regime, and draw its implications for intra-regional migration and identity formation. Using desk research, I analyse the common market Protocol’s provisions and envisage the implications of its implementation for intraregional migration and identity formation. The findings indicate that the Protocol grants the right of establishment, settlement, and residence; freedom of persons’ movement, provision of labour and services; non-discrimination and equal rights between Partner States’ citizens and intraregional migrants. From these guarantees, I foresee that “open-border” implementation of these provisions may increase intra-EAC migrations. A rise in intraregional migration may increase cross-border social engagements, mingling, and establishment. This phenomenon may alter East Africans’ views and perceptions about their identity, and engender a regional sense of belonging and identity–an East African Citizenry. I recommend that EAC Partner States fully implement the common market, institute measures for handling negative consequences of increased intra-EAC migration, and deliberately encourage East African identity formations consistent with the objective of people-centred regional integration.

In November 2016, Uganda’s armed forces raided the Rwenzururu kingdom palace in Kasese Municipality, arresting and detaining the king and other kingdom officials on treason and other charges. This was the climax to a puzzling wave of violence that was then unfolding in the Rwenzori Region. We consider this violence an unintended consequence of the deepening politics of fragmentation, which takes two forms: “kingdomization” and “districtization.” Through fragmentation, Uganda’s ruling elites seek to weaken subnational concentrations of power, resources, and legitimacy wielded by otherwise coalesced, potentially strong, subnational authority structures and sociopolitical groups. Fragmentation fractures preexisting intra-regional unity, generates new conflicts, and reopens old wounds, leading to violent encounters at the sub-national level, between regional sub-groups, and with the central state. This unfolding of violent encounters involving both state and non-state actors has important ramifications for managing national security within socially fragile contexts and a politically fragmented polity.

This paper provides an assessment of why hegemony is difficult to roll back, employing a Marxist approach built upon the work of Robert W. Cox on Gramscian hegemony. It traces the evolution of international hegemony and demonstrates how it sustains itself. Hegemony is a result of social development, and a form of power that relies on non-coercive control. Known as it may be to intellectuals that hegemony is real in international relations, less able have we been in articulating its materiality, explaining its resilience over the years, and uncovering the mechanisms by which this is sustained. Cox ably applies the concept of hegemony to international relations. He shows that hegemony is a product of a lengthy process of social development that begins from the domestic and then internationalises. In this process the domestic capitalist class metamorphoses into a dominant class that controls the socio-political and ideological superstructure of the state. Then it transcends national boundaries, internationalises and perpetuates itself at the international level, forming what Hardt and Negri call a global Empire. Hegemony, therefore, ably resists counter-hegemonic developments because of its empire-like entrenchment with both visible and invisible technologies, and articulated and unarticulated knowledge by which it is sustained.

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