Nakayi, R. and Wiegratz, J. (2024) Populism-in-state-practice under neoliberalism: Museveni’s ad-hoc squads to ‘halt all evictions’ from land in Uganda. Journal of Eastern African Studies. ISSN 1753-1055
Abstract
Populism in Africa has been studied as political rhetoric, strategy and performance, with focus on ethnicity, nationalism, mobilisation and elections. Less attention has been given to populism-in-practice, specifically populism-in-state-practice (PISP): how a populist rhetoric by an actor in power gets translated into an administrative/executive intervention, and how this fares on the ground. This paper uses the case of populist interventions of President Museveni in neoliberal Uganda to address rampant land conflicts in the 2010s – specifically his ad-hoc initiatives aimed at ‘helping the poor’ by ‘stopping’ evictions – to explore characteristics of PISP. We thus contribute to the literature through an analysis of the implementation of a populist measure under neoliberalism. Using land laws, decided court cases, government statements, and media reports, our analysis shows that although somewhat helpful in the interim, the initiatives unleashed new turmoil, extended land (tenure) insecurity, advanced a Presidentialisation of justice delivery, deepened institutional impasse and suspended institutional efforts that could advance pro-poor change. PISP did not address the root causes of the problems that it set out to tackle, and failed to alter the legal insecurities, and perilous power position of the declared beneficiaries. Yet, it enhanced political legitimacy of the President and state.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Neoliberalism, populism, land, evictions, state, East Africa, Uganda |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 18 Oct 2024 09:39 |
Last Modified: | 18 Oct 2024 09:39 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/17531055.2024.2412883 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:218527 |