11:30 - 13:00
Oral session
Room: Aston Webb – C-Block Lecture Theatre
Stream: The Political Economy of Development in Africa: The Politics of Economic and Social Transformation
Chair/s:
Sam Hickey
The shifting fortunes of economic technocracy in Uganda: caught between
Badru Bukenya1, Sam Hickey2
1Makerere University, Kampala
2University of Manchester, Manchester

Pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness (PoEs) have long been a defining feature of Uganda’s transnationalised political settlement since the early 1990s. A deal made then between the President and leading bureaucrats enabled certain bureaucratic enclaves to be formed and protected, with strong financial and technical backing from donors. This embedded autonomy was limited to certain organisations, most notably the finance ministry and central bank, and proved critical to ensuring macroeconomic stability and helped to secure impressive levels of (largely pro-poor) growth. However, the fortunes of these (and other) PoEs have been closely shaped by the country’s shifting political settlement dynamics, particularly since the return of multi-party politics in 2005, which along with other changes has rendered the ruling coalition increasingly vulnerable to processes of elite exit and demands from lower-level factions. PoEs that control the resources required to fuel an increasingly personalised patronage network have been subject to growing levels of infiltration and capture. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, this paper traces how this struggle between bureaucratic autonomy and regime survival has played out within the economic technocracy, and the implications of this for both development and longer-term processes of state formation.


Reference:
Tu-A49 Politics of Transformation 1-P-004
Presenter/s:
Badru Bukenya
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Aston Webb – C-Block Lecture Theatre
Chair/s:
Sam Hickey
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
12:15 - 12:30
Session times:
11:30 - 13:00