| dc.description.abstract | The process of democratization in Uganda has been very slow despite a return of relative
order in the country since 1986. There is need for an assessment to be carried on the
Ugandan society to determine the internal and foreign factors that predispose the country
to a slow democratic transition. This study seeks to determine the nature and state of
democracy in Uganda, to investigate the societal factors that render democratic transition
in Uganda slow and to examine the contribution of international actors towards the slow
democratic transition of Uganda. The study is based on the democratic peace theory.
According to Emanuel Kant, democratization would render the world safer as
democracies are less likely to engage in war. This is because democracies require the
consent of their citizens before they engage in wars. The citizens would naturally want to
avoid war because it is they that would bear its costs. On the other hand, autocracies are
prone to wars because the rulers suffer minimally from the effect of the wars. The study
takes the research design of a case study. This design was chosen because it enables the
researcher to trace out the natural history of a social unit and the relationship with the
social factors and the forces involved in its surrounding environment. This design is
supplemented by data obtained through interviews and use of questionnaires. This aspect
of the research studied four elements of democracy as they are provided for in the
Ugandan democracy. The four elements include the independence of the judiciary, the
participation of women in governance, the credibility of elections conducted in Uganda,
and the freedom of press in Uganda. In a study that involves 305 Ugandans, it was found
that the participation of women in governance as a contribution towards democracy is
rated rather highly scoring 3.06 in a scale where the maximum score was 5.0. This was
followed by the independence of the judiciary scoring 3.0 in the same scale. Credibility of
elections conducted in Uganda was found wanting scoring 2.67 in the same scale while
the freedom of press was rated at 2.68. The overall average score for Uganda was 2.85, a
rating that was interpreted to indicate ‘a partial democracy with minimal progression
towards consolidation’. Local factors that contribute to slow democratization were
identified as ethnicity, the influence of the colonial divisive legacy and the participation
of the military in governance. Foreign factors that were found to have contributed to slow
democratization include the events in the Congo in the 1960s and international politics
during the cold war era. The study recommends that the representation of the army in
parliament is incompatible with the growth of democracy and should be abolished. | en |
