Masculinity and militarisation under an illiberal democratic regime

Rebecca Tapscott explores how Uganda's ruling regime leverages tensions between masculine ideal-types to govern young men in the informal security sector

The government has long hands

Rebecca Tapscott highlights some of the findings from her recently published paper ‘The Government Has Long Hands: Community Security Groups and Arbitrary Governance in Uganda’s Acholiland‘ (JSRP Paper 24

(In)security groups and governance in Gulu, Uganda

Last November, at three in the morning, a man was murdered on the street not far outside Gulu Town. There were tens of witnesses, yet there was no investigation, no prosecution, and no compensation provided to the victim’s family. A common reflection on the event was that the victim “did good to die”

Today’s authoritarians project power through militarised masculinity

How do today’s authoritarian rulers project national-level power into the lives of ordinary citizens? CPAID Fellow Rebecca Tapscott highlights the importance of ‘militarised masculinities’ and explains how their performance enacts a foundational tension between discipline and impunity that generates political power

Arbitrary States

In recent years, scholars of authoritarianism have noted a trend in which institutions designed to check arbitrary power have been hollowed out to facilitate its exercise. As they grapple with how to understand the disjunct between state institutions and enforcement power, scholars of sub-Saharan African states have been doing so for decades. Based on in-depth field research on local security in Museveni’s Uganda, Tapscott offers an innovative and provocative contribution to studies of authoritarianism and state consolidation: rulers maintain control by creating unpredictability in the everyday lives of local authorities and ordinary citizens. In this type of modern authoritarian regime, rulers institutionalize arbitrariness to limit the space for political action, while they keep citizens marginally engaged in the democratic process. By showing not just that unpredictability matters for governance, but also how it is manufactured and sustained, this book challenges and extends cutting-edge scholarship on authoritarianism, the state, and governance

What does vigilantism tell us about the state and public authority?: in cartoon

As part of a series of six comics on public authority in different countries across Africa, Kenyan cartoonist and comic artist Victor Ndula has illustrated CPAID’s cutting-edge research on issues of public authority, vigilantism, policing and public justice in Uganda. Based on real events, the comic asks: what happens when a town tries to fight crime using vigilantes

“Beneficence” and its discontents: a call to revisit the role of the IRB in social and political science research

Social and political scientists have long criticized institutional ethics review; however, scholars continue to suggest that the system can be reformed to achieve more ethical outcomes. This article argues that such aspirations are misguided. This is because, unlike in biomedical and clinical studies, the social sciences refuse a shared account of ultimate benefits and harms. Instead, these disciplines are defined in part by critical inquiry into what constitutes social harm and benefit, such that risks and benefits are indeterminate. Situated in relation to scholarship on inconsistency in institutional ethics review, this article analyzes arguments defending and condemning the ethical merit of four real-world ethical controversies in the social and political sciences to demonstrate the nonresolvable nature of this indeterminacy. Decisions of ethics review committees therefore cannot be said to unequivocally raise the ethical bar of research practice; instead, they reflect socially bound and contingent views of reviewers and institutions. This may still be desirable, but suggests a need to limit the authority of ethics review to legitimize social and political sciences on ethical grounds, and to critically assess the trade-offs of continued investment in this system

What is Institutional Ethics Review, and Why is it (Still) so Unsatisfactory for the Social Sciences?

On September 19-20, a group of 20 scholars and practitioners engaged in the regulation of social science research ethics, met at the University of Glasgow to discuss the state of the field. The discussions centered on the challenges of applying a primarily biomedical, compliance-driven, and risk-averse regulatory model to address ethical issues in social science research. Participants explored why these challenges have persisted over time, why critiques have yet to lead to meaningful institutional reform—and, more concerningly, why countries and institutions around the world continue to implement new requirements that reproduce the same pathologies that are already well-known and documented. The workshop highlighted that meaningful reforms are hindered by knowledge gaps, lack of infrastructure, limited investment in social sciences, and broader challenges in Higher Education. However, more moderate reforms, with some political will, are feasible and could reduce administrative burdens while fostering a more open approach to ethics beyond compliance

Naked bodies and collective action: repertoires of protest in Uganda’s militarised, authoritarian regime

How can citizens living under increasingly militarized and authoritarian regimes exercise political voice? Using an in-depth case study of naked protest in modern day Uganda, this article finds that naked bodies allow citizens to employ three types of overlapping power to confront a militarized authoritarian state: biopower, symbolic power, and cosmological power. The study illustrates one way in which citizens seek to engage militarized regimes—and in doing so, how political voice takes particular forms with limited capacity to instigate broader political claim-making that might be associated with country- or region-wide political action

The power of naked protest in a shrinking democratic space

Even while new technologies transform political protest, citizens continue to use their bodies in acts of civil resistance. In northern Uganda, citizens are using public nakedness to protest land dispossession by an increasingly authoritarian state, which grants the protester forms of power and highlights constraints on political speech