Where the wild things are not: crime preventers and the 2016 Ugandan elections

Abstract

In Uganda's 2016 elections, international and national commentators questioned the role that the government's crime preventersor community policewould play. Many claimed that they would be used "as tools" to rig the elections, intimidate voters, and vote en masse for the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime. In contrast, this paper shows that the government never intended the crime preventers to play an explicitly coercive role. Instead, the NRM leadership intentionally structured the crime preventer program as indefinite and fluid, allowing political authorities and citizens to understand the purpose of crime preventers alternately as dangerous tools of the regime, family men in search of work, or patriotic citizens of Uganda. Used interchangeably, these logicswhich are described in this paper as ideal-typical categories of political, economic, and socialprevented Ugandans from accurately assessing the program. The resultant uncertainty fragmented organization of crime preventers, civil society, and members of the opposition; limited the government's responsibility for crime preventers; and helped ensure that crime preventers would bolster the strength of the NRM regime in the 2016 elections.

Policing men: militarised masculinity, youth livelihoods, and security in conflict‐affected northern Uganda

“…The findings support the view that, in northern Uganda, informal security operations and civilian militias should be analysed as an economic and socio‐cultural strategy to control young male populations, rather than primarily as an instrument of violence to marginalise political rivals (Tapscott, ). Indeed, young Acholi males working in the informal security sector are striving to provide for their families in a context of a militarised state and society that is closely connected to the ruling regime's power.…”

Political credit cycles

“…In a financially open economy, this implies that investors can credibly threaten to withdraw funds or charge higher lending premia when uncertainty around election increases and conditions for a stable macroeconomic environment are not met (Ahlquist, 2006; Clark & Hallerberg, 2000; Pepinsky, 2014). For example, ahead of the 2016 election in Uganda, amid rising inflation, investors were demanding a higher yield to price in growing perceived risk (Tapscott, 2016). Thus, the fear of losing an important source of external funding may suppress temptations to generate electoral credit cycles.…”

Carrot, Stick and Statute: Elite Strategies and Contested Dominance in Kampala

“…While the Uganda police reportedly set a target of 1.6 million crime preventers, or around 30 in each of Uganda's 56,000 villages, specific details on their numbers and training are difficult to come by. The government itself reported recruiting over one million by the end of 2015 (Tapscott 2017). The methods of absorption and (re)deployment and rejection are also unclear, but they are civilian volunteers trained by the Ugandan police (sometimes referred to as a band of civilian vigilantes recruited by the government) for low-level community security.…”

“…Tapscott (2017: 694) argues that at different moments, political authorities described crime preventers in different ways: as agents of state violence, as benevolent citizens, and even as entrepreneurial youth. This ambiguity about their role created uncertainty and a lack of accountability, and also benefited the NRM during elections, because it seemed to embody a promise to generate livelihood opportunities for large numbers of youth (Tapscott 2017).…”