Read the articles, “Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival: Why are Semi-Democracies Less Durable than Autocracies and Democracies?”by Knutson and Nygard (2015), and “Legal Manoeuvres and Violence: Law Making, Protest and Semi-Authoritarianism

20180311003527knutsen_et_al_2015_american_journal_of_political_science 20180311003526legal_manoeuvres_and_violence__law_making__protest_and_semi_authoritarianism_in_uganda
 

Read the articles, “

Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival: Why are Semi-Democracies Less Durable than Autocracies and Democracies?

“by Knutson and Nygard (2015), and “

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence: Law Making, Protest and Semi-Authoritarianism in Uganda

,” by Goodfellow (2014), which are required reading for this week. Based on these articles, respond to the following:

• What do the authors mean by semi-authoritarian regimes?
• Identify one country that is currently in the news that fits the definition of a semi-authoritarian regime.
• Why do you identify this country as such?

Requirements:

Minimum 250 Words

Minimum of 2 sources

Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival:
Why Are Semi-Democracies Less Durable Than
Autocracies and Democracies?

Carl Henrik Knutsen University of Oslo
Håvard Mokleiv Nygård Peace Research Institute Oslo

Previous studies report that semi-democratic regimes are less durable than both democracies and autocracies. Still, mixing
democratic and autocratic characteristics need not destabilize regimes, as three highly plausible alternative explanations
of this correlation remain unaccounted for: (a) semi-democracies emerge under conditions of political instability and
social turmoil; (b) other regime characteristics explain duration; and (c) extant democracy measures do not register al

l

regime changes. We elaborate on and test for these explanations, but find strikingly robust evidence that semi-democracies
are inherently less durable than both democracies and autocracies. “Semi-democracies are particularly unstable political
regimes” should thus be considered a rare stylized fact of comparative politics. The analysis yields several other interesting
results. For instance, autocracies and semi-democracies are equally likely to experience “liberalizing” regime changes more
specifically, and once accounting for differences in degree of democracy, there is no robust evidence of differences in duration
between military and single-party regimes.

G
urr (1974) reported evidence that political
regimes combining democratic and autocratic
institutional characteristics are relatively short-

lived. More recent studies have confirmed that such
regimes are clearly less durable than both democracies
and autocracies (e.g., Epstein et al. 2006; Gates et al.
2006; Goldstone et al. 2010). Hence, there exists an
indisputable correlation between having “inconsistent,”
“mixed,” “partial democratic,” or “semi-democratic”
characteristics and short regime durability, even when
controlling for factors such as income level and time-
specific effects.1 Yet, do semi-democratic institutional
characteristics actually have a causal impact on regime
survival? By extension, did autocrats such as Mobutu

Carl Henrik Knutsen is Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, PO Box 1097 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway
(c.h.knutsen@stv.uio.no). Håvard Mokleiv Nygård is Senior Researcher, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Conditions of Violence and Peace,
PO Box 9229 Gronland, 0134 Oslo, Norway (havnyg@prio.org).

We thank Scott Gates, Håvard Hegre, Bjørn Høyland, Bethany Lacina, Håvard Strand, Tore Wig, anonymous reviewers, the current and
former editors of AJPS, as well as participants at the 2013 ISA Annual Convention in San Francisco, the 2013 Annual MPSA Conference
in Chicago, and the 2013 APSA Annual Meeting in Chicago for valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank Jason Brownlee for
making his data available. This research was partially funded by Norwegian Research Council grant 204454-V10. Replication data and code
are available from the AJPS Data Archive on Dataverse (http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/27371).

1Although we recognize the conceptual nuances and measurement differences between different studies, we mainly refer to regimes with a
fairly balanced mix of democratic and autocratic characteristics as “semi-democracies” below. In contrast with, for instance, Przeworski et al.
(2000), we consider democracy a graded phenomenon. Yet, to simplify discussion and analysis, we often subdivide the dimension according
to thresholds. Hence, “democratic regimes” is shorthand for “regimes that score above a certain threshold on degree of democracy.” We
denote regime changes toward more democratic forms as “liberalizing,” and toward less democratic as “deliberalizing.”

in 1990s Zaire or Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1848 Prussia
grossly miscalculate when they—arguably in order to stay
in power—liberalized? If introducing democratic institu-
tions in otherwise authoritarian regimes harms regime
survival, “why would any incumbent create or tolerate
them” (Gandhi 2008, xvii)? In fact, we do not know
whether the relationship between semi-democracy and
short durability is causal; previous studies have failed to
account for three very plausible alternative explanations
of the observed correlation. Below, we elaborate on and
empirically account for these three explanations.

First, semi-democratic regimes may result from pro-
cesses of social unrest and political conflicts, such as op-
position groups forcing dictators to partially liberalize.

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 59, No. 3, July 2015, Pp.

656

–670

C⃝2015, Midwest Political Science Association DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12168

656

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 657

Young semi-democracies may last briefly not because
of any inherent regime-institutional characteristics, but
rather because the turbulent, latent political and social
environments they are born in are hostile to the sur-
vival of any regime. Second, a large literature indicates
that other regime characteristics (e.g., military involve-
ment in politics, dynastic succession, or regime parties)
are highly consequential for regime-survival prospects.
These characteristics may, for some reason, be correlated
with degree of democracy, generating a spurious rela-
tionship between semi-democracy and regime durability.
Third, extant democracy indices often fail to pick up fur-
ther liberalization in relatively democratic regimes and
deliberalization in already autocratic regimes, whereas
liberalizing and deliberalizing regime changes are mea-
surable for all semi-democracies. Consequently, previous
studies may have overestimated the durability of autoc-
racies and democracies.

Given these plausible alternative explanations, the
shorter durability of semi-democracies reported in pre-
vious studies may merely reflect a correlation, and semi-
democratic institutional characteristics need not cause
regimes to break down faster. However, the main result
from our analysis below—accounting for the alternative
explanations—is that semi-democratic regimes are in-
herently less durable than autocracies and (particularly)
democracies. Despite our strenuous efforts, we are sim-
ply unable to “break” the result that regimes combin-
ing democratic and autocratic characteristics have shorter
life expectancies; the evidence strongly suggests the rela-
tionship between regime-institutional characteristics and
regime durability is causal after all. Given the general lack
of robust relationships between macro-variables in polit-
ical science, this is a notable result.

Below, we first review literature on regime-
institutional characteristics and regime durability
before discussing and empirically accounting for the
three alternative explanations. To ensure consistency—
between our different specifications and with the
literature—our models expand, adjust, and elaborate
on the duration model setup in Gates et al. (2006). Our
findings do not, however, rely on this, but hold when
employing alternative specifications. We find robust
evidence that semi-democracies are short-lived, even
when accounting for the abovementioned sources of
bias. Also, when distinguishing different semi-democratic
types—according to executive recruitment, participa-
tion, and executive constraints—our results suggest that
previously established correlations between particular
regime types and durability reflect causal relationships.
Nevertheless, we identify one important (general)
nuance; semi-democracies are as resilient to liberalizing

regime changes as autocracies are. Our analysis yields
additional results of interest to comparative politics
scholars: Competitive authoritarian regimes are neither
more nor less durable than other nondemocracies (see
also Brownlee 2009). Furthermore, when accounting for
differences in degree of democracy, we do not find robust
evidence that single-party regimes are more durable than
personalist or military regimes (cf. Geddes 1999).

Institutional Characteristics and
Regime Stability

Gurr (1974) found that consistently democratic and
autocratic polities were more durable than polities with
mixed authority characteristics. He interpreted this
as supporting the congruence–consonance theory in
Eckstein (1973); political institutions perform better
if their authority patterns are congruent with those of
social institutions and, importantly, if they are internally
consonant. More recently, Gates et al. (2006) reported
evidence that inconsistent regimes are less durable than
both full democracies and full autocracies—despite also
identifying differences in durability between different
kinds of semi-democracies—arguing that democracy and
autocracy constitute self-enforcing equilibria whereas
semi-democracy does not. Semi-democracies lack the
concentration of power and authority providing stability
in autocracies, but they do not provide the incentives for
governments to voluntarily cede power, or for people to
support the regime, that democracies do either. More-
over, Epstein et al. (2006) find that partial democracies
are more volatile than both democracies and autocracies;
changes either to or from the former category constitute
80% of regime changes in their global (1960–2000)
sample. They underscore the importance of appreciating
the dynamics of semi-democratic regimes (e.g., for de-
mocratization processes) and the distinctiveness of such
regimes from both autocracies and democracies. Indeed,
they highlight how poorly understood such regimes—in
particular their short durability—actually are.

Several contributions discuss the impact of introduc-
ing particular (nominally) democratic institutions, such
as multiparty elections or legislatures, in otherwise auto-
cratic regimes. Schedler (2002b) notes that introducing
(even manipulated) multiparty elections may constitute
a subversive force; elections could provide coordination
signals for the opposition and windows of opportunity
for organizing collective action. Elections could also pro-
vide discontented parts of the winning coalition with op-
portunities to split from the regime, potentially inducing

658 CARL HENRIK KNUTSEN AND HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD

regime change (e.g., Magaloni 2006). Repeated elections,
although starting out manipulated, may spread demo-
cratic norms, leading to substantive democratization over
time (Lindberg 2006).

Yet manipulated elections may sometimes rather in-
duce further deliberalization: “The institutional ambiva-
lence of flawed elections creates pressures for institutional
change in both directions…. If semidemocratic elections
get out of hand and start producing ‘unacceptable’ results,
incumbents will strive to rescind democratic concessions
made in the past” (Schedler 2002b, 109). Likewise, the
mixing of autocratic with other democratic characteris-
tics may reduce regime durability. Autocracies opening up
the media sphere or allowing freedom of association may
experience increased anti-regime collective action, since
this reveals informative signals about the regime’s (un-)
popularity and alleviates coordination problems (see Ku-
ran 1989; Lohmann 1994). This may, in turn, lead to
either successful democratization or regime crackdowns.
Partial expansion of participation rights may also cre-
ate viable coalitions for further such expansions, possibly
extending to universal suffrage (Acemoglu and Robinson
2006; Boix 2003). Thus, regimes mixing authoritarian and
democratic characteristics could be inherently unstable.

Despite the arguments and evidence discussed
above, several contributions highlight the stabilizing role
of mixing particular autocratic and democratic charac-
teristics. The introduction of elections and legislatures,
for instance, may stabilize nondemocracies because they
enable co-optation of critical opposition groups (e.g.,
Gandhi 2008). Partial democratization (e.g., through
introducing multiparty elections or institutionalized
constraints on the ruler) may also credibly signal the
ruler will refrain from monopolizing and abusing
power, thereby reducing incentives to overthrow the
regime (Boix and Svolik 2013; Magaloni 2006; Myerson
2008; Svolik 2009, 2012). In general, introducing new
institutions and organizations constitutes a core survival
strategy of rulers (Haber 2006), and, as discussed below,
nondemocratic rulers might more often employ such
costly strategies when perceiving grave threats. For
example, multiparty legislatures more likely appear in
nondemocracies when regimes badly need cooperation
with nonregime actors and when opposition forces are
strong (Gandhi 2008; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007).
Accounting for this, Gandhi and Przeworski (2007) report
that multiparty legislatures stabilize nondemocracies.

The potentially stabilizing effects of (authoritarian)
multiparty elections have received particular attention
(see Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009). As noted, some stud-
ies indicate that such elections destabilize nondemocra-
cies. However, other studies indicate the effect is highly

context dependent (Bunce and Wolchik 2010; Howard
and Roessler 2006), whereas yet others highlight their
regime-stabilizing impact. Multiparty elections could
stabilize nondemocracies through enabling co-optation
(Gandhi 2008; Magaloni 2006), increasing domestic and
international legitimacy (Schedler 2002a, 2006), or re-
vealing important information about the opposition
(Brownlee 2007; Malesky 2011). Nevertheless, Brownlee
(2007) does not identify any net effect of elections on
regime survival in nondemocracies, and Brownlee (2009)
finds no impact of being categorized either as “electoral
authoritarian” (Schedler 2006) or “competitive authori-
tarian” (Levitsky and Way 2002).

The discussion indicates a complex relationship be-
tween regime-institutional characteristics and durability.
Whereas some arguments suggest that particular com-
binations of democratic and autocratic characteristics
have stabilizing properties, others indicate that semi-
democracies are “not a stable equilibrium; the halfway
house does not stand” (Huntington 1991, 137). Gold-
stone et al. (2010) report convincing evidence that being
partially democratic is among the most important predic-
tors of regime breakdown and other types of instability,
such as civil war (see also Hegre et al. 2001; Muller and
Weede 1990). However, semi-democracies may generally
be less durable because of several reasons, whereof a causal
effect is only one. Below, we discuss and subsequently test
three alternative explanations related to (a) omitted vari-
able bias due to contexts of social and political instability
generating regimes with semi-democratic features; (b)
different types of nondemocracies (e.g., monarchies or
military regimes) having different scores on democracy
measures; and (c) extant democracy indices not capturing
certain regime changes.

Investigating Three Alternative
Explanations

Before discussing and testing the three explanations, we
present how regime type is operationalized, descriptive
statistics, and model specifications.

Operationalization of Regime Type and
Model Specification

We employ the Scalar Index of Polities (SIP) regime mea-
sure developed by Gates et al. (2006). The SIP index
uses Polity’s (Marshall and Jaggers 2002) executive re-
cruitment and executive constraints sub-indicators, but a

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 659

FIGURE 1 Regime Durability by Regime Type
0

1
0

2
0

3
0

4
0

5
0

A
ve

ra
g

e
Y

e
a

rs
o

f
S

u
rv

iv
a

l

1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
Year

Semi-Democracies Autocracies
Democracies

Note: Average life span (y-axis) by regime type, 1800–2000. Data
source: Gates et al. (2006).

participation measure from Vanhanen (2000) to ensure
that SIP is not endogenous to political instability like the
Polity Index (Vreeland 2008). SIP ranges from 0 to 1 (most
democratic). In their analysis, however, Gates et al. (2006)
employ a tripartite categorization, classifying regimes as
democratic, autocratic, or inconsistent based on the three
dimensions entering SIP. A polity changes results from
“one or more of the following: (1) a movement from
one category to another in the Executive dimension (i.e.,
between ascription/designation, dual ascriptive/elective,
and elective), (2) a change of at least two units in the Ex-
ecutive Constraints dimension, or (3) a 100% increase or
50% decrease in the Participation dimension…. Doubling
the number of citizens with voting rights qualifies as a
minimum change” (Gates et al. 2006, 898).

Using the Gates et al. (2006) data, inconsistent
regimes (or, as we label them, semi-democracies) lasted
only 9 years on average over the period 1800–2000. In
contrast, the average autocracy and democracy endured
21 and 23 years, respectively.2 Figure 1 shows that whereas
the average semi-democracy endured more than 15 years
around 1900, the corresponding number was consider-
ably below 10 from 1950 onward (see online Appendix
Section A.1). This could reflect that semi-democracies
in 1900 were of a different kind—encompassing
European regimes with competitive elections but limited
participation—than in, say, 1995, encompassing regimes
with universal franchise but limited competition. Thus,
accounting for more specific regime-type characteris-
tics, as done below, might be important. The relative

2This pattern is robust; when using Polity and the regime-change
operationalization entailed in Polity’s “regime duration” coding,
regimes scoring (−6 ≤ P ol i t y ≤ 6) last 7 years on average, autoc-
racies 15, and democracies 19.

durability of democracies versus autocracies has also
changed, with democracies overtaking autocracies as the
more durable form. Durability is high for both regime
types from the 1870s to World War I. WWI brought to an
end different long-lasting autocracies and introduced sev-
eral relatively democratic regimes, whereof many quickly
descended into autocracies. The average durability of
autocracies dropped further with decolonization and the
creation of new states, whereas democratic durability
rose from 1950 until the late 1970s. These observations
indicate that considering descriptive statistics—for any
given year—is insufficient for drawing conclusions about
different regimes’ duration. We run survival models to
account for different problems related to estimating the
impact of regime characteristics on durability.

Although our findings below generally hold for dif-
ferent regime measures, duration model specifications,
and controls (Appendix Tables A.2 and A.3), we present
models building on the setup in Gates et al. (2006) using
a duration model with a log-logistic specification of the
hazard. We adjust on their core model (Model 2, 901),
which controls for linear and squared gross domestic
product (GDP) per capita, GDP per capita growth, regime
score in neighboring countries, a first-polity-in-country
dummy, and time-period dummies.

The review above indicated that mixing different
particular democratic characteristics (e.g., multiparty
elections or widespread participation rights) with non-
democratic characteristics might have distinct effects on
regime survival. Thus, Gates et al. (2006) separate semi-
democracies according to placement on the three distinct
dimensions of authority. For instance, they show that
regimes combining open and competitive executive re-
cruitment with strong constraints but limited participa-
tion are particularly short-lived. Where executives are not
recruited through elections, having broad-based partici-
pation and unconstrained executives makes for especially
short regime spells. In our analysis below, we take this in-
novation one step further and simultaneously distinguish
nondemocracies by additional authority characteristics—
notably Geddes’s categorization of how the power of the
leader is constituted.

Since the aggregated analysis (i.e., combining all
semi-democracies in one category) may mask relevant
dynamics, and since some of our alternative explanations
actually pertain more clearly to certain types of semi-
democracies than others, we also adjust Gates and col-
leagues’ “disaggregated models” (2006, Models 6 and 7,
904). All results are reported in time ratios, interpretable
as relative change in duration for a one-unit change on
the independent variable. Hence, our democracy esti-
mate in Model A1, Table 1 (3.6) implies that democracies

660 CARL HENRIK KNUTSEN AND HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD

TABLE 1 Instability and Omitted Variable Bias: Regime Survival, 1919–2000

(A1) (A2) (A3) (A4) (A5) (A6) (A7)
Gates et al. Gates et al. Instability Coups Ruling Coalition Transitions Shared Frailty
1900–2000 1919–2000

Autocracy 1.850∗∗∗ 1.880∗∗∗ 1.897∗∗∗ 1.986∗∗∗ 1.458∗∗∗ 2.054∗∗∗ 1.875∗∗∗

(6.05) (5.87) (6.06) (6.18) (5.05) (6.40) (5.62)
Democracy 3.613∗∗∗ 3.781∗∗∗ 3.875∗∗∗ 4.101∗∗∗ 2.251∗∗∗ 3.621∗∗∗ 3.769∗∗∗

(8.74) (8.72) (9.11) (9.04) (6.59) (8.27) (9.34)
Past Instability 0.672∗∗

(−3.27)
Pressure to Democratize 0.606

(−1.35)
SIP Change 1.561

(1.83)
Coups Last 10 Years 0.894∗∗∗

(−3.73)
Ruling Coalition Duration 1.453∗∗∗

(5.39)
Polity Transitions (−88) 0.0452∗∗∗

(−6.56)
GDP per Capita 1.273∗∗∗ 1.313∗∗∗ 1.331∗∗∗ 1.275∗∗∗ 1.165∗∗∗ 1.340∗∗∗ 1.313∗∗∗

(5.46) (5.72) (6.05) (5.38) (4.67) (5.79) (5.66)
GDP per Capita Squared 1.160∗∗∗ 1.197∗∗∗ 1.192∗∗∗ 1.166∗∗∗ 1.086∗∗∗ 1.187∗∗∗ 1.197∗∗∗

(5.19) (5.73) (5.63) (5.31) (4.06) (5.33) (5.68)
GDP per Capita Growth 1.018∗ 1.014 1.013 1.019∗ 1.015∗∗ 1.017 1.014∗

(2.25) (1.68) (1.55) (2.11) (2.62) (1.94) (2.04)
Neighboring Regimes 0.354∗∗∗ 0.340∗∗∗ 0.361∗∗∗ 0.301∗∗∗ 0.484∗∗∗ 0.296∗∗∗ 0.340∗∗∗

(−4.13) (−4.05) (−3.91) (−4.58) (−4.44) (−4.28) (−4.01)
First Polity 1.624∗ 1.609∗ 1.728∗∗ 1.451 1.394∗∗ 1.599∗ 1.601∗

(2.47) (2.34) (2.79) (1.94) (2.96) (2.31) (2.36)
AIC 1812.6 1630.8 1620.3 1546.4 1549.9 1538.2 1632.7
ll −895.3 −804.4 −796.1 −762.2 −763.0 −757.1 −804.4
Gamma 0.645 0.645 0.633 0.646 0.448 0.628 0.644
N 7018 6341 6341 5881 6481 6341 6341
Polities 716 666 666 618 671 666 666
Failures 555 496 496 464 528 496 496

Notes: Time ratios and t-statistics (in parentheses) are reported. Time dummies are omitted from the table. ∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗∗p < 0.001.

expectedly live 3.6 times the duration of the reference
category, inconsistent regimes.

Endogeneity of Semi-Democracy: Past
Instability as Omitted Variable and

Elite-Led Transitions

Our first alternative explanation relates to semi-
democratic institutional features being consequences of
political instability, rather than causes. The codification

of certain civil liberties or introduction of multiparty leg-
islatures in otherwise authoritarian regimes may actually
be pursued exactly because they are expected to stabilize
regimes in already precarious situations, for instance,
through enabling the co-optation of elite groups (Gandhi
2008). Institutional changes may also result from calcu-
lated efforts to avoid popular revolutions when perceived
imminent (Acemoglu and Robinson 2000, 2006). Thus,
conditions generating political and social turmoil may
induce autocrats to adopt formal-democratic institu-
tions to, if only temporarily, “appease” different regime

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 661

opponents (see also Przeworski 1991). An environment of
social turmoil and political instability may therefore move
autocracies toward semi-democracies and simultaneously
reduce survival prospects for any regime controlling
power. Hence, the shorter life expectancy of semi-
democracies could stem from such regimes being the
result of conditions generating latent regime instability.
Two brief case histories illustrate the argument.

In the early 1990s, several long-established autoc-
racies, from Eastern Europe to sub-Saharan Africa,
saw their authority challenged. The combination of
pent-up grievances and exogenous shocks contributed
to government changes in numerous countries (e.g.,
Diamond 2008). In others, long-ruling autocrats at-
tempted to defuse threats through liberalizing their
regimes and sharing power. Hence, the upheavals resulted
in several regimes with mixed characteristics (Carothers
2002), but some soon changed features again. Mobutu
Sese Seko, for example, had been in power in Zaire since
1965, but now faced popular unrest, army mutinies, and
shrinking resources for patronage (Reno 1997). In re-
sponse, Mobutu ended the decades-long ban on political
parties other than his Popular Movement of the Revolu-
tion, promised free and fair elections, and entered into
a coalition government. Yet, a couple of years later—
after conditions had changed and having shored up army
support—Mobutu reversed the liberalization measures:
“By March 1993, Mobutu had essentially restored the an-
cien régime by naming a rival government, reviving the
old constitution, and reconvening the previous parlia-
ment. By mid-1994, ‘Mobutu’s opponents in Kinshasa
[were] too afraid of the military to march in protest down
the main boulevard”’ (Bratton and van de Walle 1997,
214).

Almost 150 years earlier, in 1848, established
European monarchs also experienced popular pres-
sure for liberalization following France’s “February
Revolution” (e.g., Rapport 2008). However, different
monarchs and their conservative supporters employed
tactics similar to Mobutu’s: liberalize when faced with
overwhelming opposition and popular unrest, then
retract the concessions when control is regained. As a
result, the “semi-democratic” arrangements resulting
from Europe’s springtime uprisings were often reverted
by the year’s end, and old authoritarian arrangements
reinstated. This may have had less to do with charac-
teristics of the new constitutions and institutions than
the withering of the exogenous shock that spurred the
revolutionary uprisings, and the lag time for ruling elites
to shore up their winning coalitions and respond. In
Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV faced massive protests and
riots in Berlin in March 1848 and caved under pressure

to allow the popular election of the first all-Prussian leg-
islative assembly. Yet, within 8 months, the king regained
control with army support, dissolving the national
assembly. A similar pattern played out in, for instance,
Habsburg-dominated Central Europe and Northern Italy
(see Palmer, Colton, and Kramer 2002, 485).

There may be something inherently unstable with the
institutional arrangements of 1990s Zaire or 1848 Prussia,
but the short-lived nature of these arrangements could
also be functions of the underlying social and political
unrest. More generally, institutional characteristics may
be endogenous to past instability and political elites’ ex-
pectations about future instability. To investigate this, we
first establish a baseline by replicating Gates et al. (2006)
in Models A1 (identical sample as their Model 2, 901) and
A2 (1919–2000 time series; 1900–1919 dummy dropped)
in Table 1. Model A2 is estimated to enable direct compar-
isons with our adjusted models for identical samples, but
A1 and A2 produce very similar results; they identify the
expected time ratios (> 1) for both democracy and au-
tocracy, indicating that semi-democracies (the reference
category) are less durable.3

Model A3 extends A2 by adding proxies for past insta-
bility and liberalization. As indicated above, autocracies
forced to liberalize by popular pressures could move into
the semi-democracy category, and the resulting regime
may be unstable simply because of the context-specific
factors that brought it about in the first place. To capture
this, we include an interaction term (Pressure to Democ-
ratize) multiplying Past Instability—a dummy measuring
whether, in the past 5 years (up to t − 1), a country expe-
rienced riots, antigovernment demonstrations, or strikes
(as recorded by Banks 2011)—with SIP Change, captur-
ing regime liberalization by registering increases in SIP
score over the same 5 year period.4

Past Instability, SIP Change, and Pressure to Democra-
tize are highly collinear—individually, only Past Instabil-
ity is clearly different from 1 (0.67; t = −3.27) in Model
A3—but they are clearly jointly different from 1. Interest-
ingly, the point estimate for Pressure to Democratize (0.61;
t = −1.35) suggests that liberalization leads to relatively
lower life expectancy of the resulting regime when follow-
ing a popular uprising. Although associated with uncer-
tainty, the estimated effect is substantial, indicating that
liberalized regimes whose emergence is associated with
popular protests endure almost 40% shorter than other
liberalized regimes. This could reflect that the former

3We always compare for identical samples when discussing results
below.

4We also tested measures capturing SIP changes in both directions;
this does not alter results much.

662 CARL HENRIK KNUTSEN AND HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD

emerge in contexts generally hostile to regime survival,
with sharp political conflicts within a mobilized popula-
tion (Huntington 1968), or that regimes emerging from
“elite-pacted” transitions without popular involvement
are more resilient to breakdown (see Higley and Burton
1989). Nonetheless, including these additional variables
does not change estimated survival rates for autocracies
and democracies; past instability and liberalization do not
explain why semi-democracies are less durable.

However, models treating distinct semi-democracies
as one regime type may mask interesting nuances in the
relationship with durability. Potentially, this is why we
fail to find that our first alternative explanation drives
the relationship. Indeed, the “liberalization-in-crisis–
deliberalization-thereafter” dynamic suggested in Zaire
and Prussia could, possibly, only exist in systems where
constraints on the executive remain weak. Only there are
rulers capable of taking back the “concessions” given,
once the dust settles, without being checked by alterna-
tive institutions and actors. To check this, we reran Gates
and colleagues’ Models 6 (open and competitive execu-
tive recruitment) and 7 (closed recruitment), substituting
the regime dummies with the above-described Polity and
Vanhanen measures of the different dimensions, and in-
teractions between them. We then ran these models again,
but controlling for Pressure to Democratize, SIP Change,
and Past Instability (see Appendix Tables A.5 and A.6), and
Table A.11 in our online appendix reports estimated me-
dian survival time for differently composed regimes be-
fore and after accounting for the alternative explanation.
Except for the clearly democratic regimes (open recruit-
ment, high participation, weak constraints), which in-
crease in estimated durability, there are very small changes
(mostly between 0.1 and 1.0 year) across the board. This
goes also for (the highly unstable) closed regimes with
weak constraints and high participation, where we antic-
ipated our alternative explanation to have the most bite:
For regimes with the weakest possible constraints, and
where 50% partakes in elections, the estimated median
survival is 2.6 years for the baseline and 2.7 when adding
the instability variables. Thus, past popular mobilization
and instability do not explain the regime type–regime
durability relationship, independent of whether we group
all semi-democracies together or disaggregate them.

Popular mobilization is not the main threat to
regime survival; most regimes break down because of
coups conducted by political or military elites (e.g.,
Svolik 2012). Conceivably, certain regimes are more
adept at guarding against coups, and controlling for
whether regimes exist in coup-prone environments may
be important to mitigate omitted variable bias. Again
treating semi-democracies as one regime type, Model

A4 in Table 1 includes a variable measuring the number
of successful or failed coups d’état over the last 10 years
using data from Powell and Thyne (2011). Unsurpris-
ingly, the variable negatively affects regime longevity, but
including it only has minor impacts on the autocracy and
democracy time ratios. This holds also when controlling
for whether at least one attempted coup occurred the
preceding year. Hence, semi-democracies are not less
durable because they exist in coup-prone environments.
It may be important to account for differences in
composition between semi-democracies—one could,
for example, speculate that mainly “oligarchic” semi-
democracies with low participation are overrepresented
in coup-prone environments. Still, controlling for coups
has little impact. To exemplify, the median survival time
of closed regimes with only 5% participating in elections,
but fairly strong constraints (4–5 score), only changes
from 3.0 years to 3.3 when adding the coup variable.5

Svolik (2012) argues that the time an autocratic ruling
coalition (i.e., the set of individuals supporting the dicta-
tor and securing his position) has been in power proxies
well for how consolidated the regime is. When studying
regime duration, therefore, one should account for the
time a given coalition has existed. Model A5 includes rul-
ing coalition longevity (years, up to t − 1, the current
coalition has existed) adopted from Svolik (2012). We
do find indications that longer-serving coalitions grow
increasingly immune to regime change. However, includ-
ing coalition longevity does not alter the estimated life
expectancies of democracies and autocracies relative to
semi-democracies by much. Model A5 indicates that au-
tocracies endure about twice, and democracies almost
three times, as long as semi-democracies.

Another variant of the alternative explanation relates
to the overlap between being scored semi-democratic and
being in a “transition period.” Transitions from autocratic
to democratic rule are often stepwise processes, more or
less intentionally guided by political elites (O’Donnell
and Schmitter 1986). The Spanish transition, for exam-
ple, started with Franco’s death in 1975, multiparty elec-
tions were held in 1977, and the new constitution was
approved in December 1978. The transition was grad-
ual and time-consuming by purpose; dismantling the
Francoite institutions and instantaneously replacing them
with democratic ones was considered too risky by lead-
ing actors. The reformers acted “cautiously, and their

5Using the combined semi-democracy categorization or disaggre-
gated measures makes little difference also below, with some excep-
tions for “empirically empty” categories (e.g., closed regimes, very
high participation, very strong constraints). We therefore mainly
continue discussing aggregated analysis, but all corresponding dis-
aggregated models are in the online appendix.

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 663

instrument was legal reform, making possible a democrat-
ically elected body that could deal with the many problems
on the horizon” (Linz and Stepan 1996, 94). According
to Polity2 (which ranges from –10 to 10 and interpolates
values for transition-years) Spain is scored –7 from 1939
to 1974.6 During the transition, however, the country is
scored as if experiencing a string of mixed regimes with
increasingly democratic character: –3 in 1975, 1 in 1976,
and 5 in 1977, before reaching 9 in 1978.

Transition phases are seldom as enduring as the
regimes preceding or following them. The correlation
between semi-democracy and low durability may
therefore partly stem from semi-democracy being a
preliminary stepping stone in (intentionally) prolonged
democratization processes. The replication models in
Table 1 partially account for transition periods, as
they exclude most Polity-coded “Transitions” (–88).
Yet not all such cases are accounted for when using
updated Polity data, and Model A6 includes a dummy for
country-years experiencing transition.7 Unsurprisingly,
the transition dummy correlates strongly and negatively
with regime survival prospects. Still, transition phases are
not why semi-democracies are relatively short-lived; the
time ratios barely change, indicating that democracies
survive 3.6 times the duration of semi-democracies, and
autocracies 2.1 times.

Finally, we test whether any unobserved country-
specific factors bias results through impacting on both
regime type and durability. Ideally, we would report a
fixed effects model, but the maximum likelihood esti-
mates did not converge. Therefore, we reran Model A2
with shared frailty on countries (A7).8 Yet Model A7 in-
dicates that unobserved country-specific factors do not

6Polity2 has been criticized for how it interpolates transition cases
(Plümper and Neumayer 2010).

7Polity’s transition category may not capture all transition pro-
cesses: “The transition code should be applied sparingly and only
in those cases where authority patterns are changing and those
changes are not being seriously challenged. These are truly tran-
sitional polities where the implementation of generally accepted
and substantially altered principles of governance is incomplete
and fluid” (Marshall and Jaggers 2002, 18). The explicitly cau-
tious scoring may lead Polity to miss several actual transitions.
Therefore, we added a measure recording the number of Polity
score changes over the last 5 years to Model A6. This variable’s
time ratio is far below 1. Simulations, following King, Tomz, and
Wittenberg (2000), indicate that semi-democracies with five such
polity changes—and which are “average” in terms of socioeco-
nomic development—live between 12 and 21 years shorter than
comparable semi-democracies without prior changes. Still, even
when accounting for this, semi-democracies remain shorter-lived
than both autocracies and democracies.

8The shared frailty is estimated as a multiplicative effect on the
hazard function, with mean and variance drawn from a normal
distribution.

drive results; the democracy and autocracy time ratios
remain stable. In sum, we do not find much support for
our first alternative explanation; the relative brevity of
semi-democracies is not due to these regimes being born
in more unstable political environments.

Degrees of Democracy or Regime
Categories?

Our second alternative explanation relates to the
multiple, potentially relevant characteristics of political
regimes. More specifically, the short durability of semi-
democracies relative to autocracies might stem from
semi-democracies, for some reason, being empirically
associated with other institutional structures that reduce
durability. A large literature conceptualizes different types
of nondemocracies according to principles and character-
istics other than those related to distribution of authority
between elites and populations (i.e., the democracy–
dictatorship distinction). Geddes (1999, 2003) argues
that to understand why some nondemocracies are less
durable (and have different democratization prospects)
than others, one must differentiate according to who con-
trols access to political office and who determines policy.
Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014) thus differentiate
between single-party, personalist, and military regimes,
as well as monarchies. Hadenius and Teorell (2007) offer
a slightly different categorization, drawing on three core
distinctions according to the existence of elections (and
related party structure), hereditary succession, and mili-
tary control over government.9 Hadenius and Teorell cut
the personalist regime category—arguing personalism
is a continuous characteristic that to varying degrees is
associated with all regimes—but further distinguish be-
tween limited multiparty (Mexico pre-2000), one-party
(USSR), and no-party regimes (Uganda 1990s).

These categorizations of nondemocracies are po-
tentially relevant for the relationship between semi-
democracy and regime durability since (a) previous
studies indicate the different regime categories vary con-
siderably in terms of durability, and (b) the categories
differ in measured degree of democracy (see Table 2).
Regarding (a), military regimes—due to officers’ pref-
erences for giving up power and returning to the bar-
racks when facing splits within the military (Geddes
1999, 2003)—and multiparty autocracies—due, for ex-
ample, to party organizations allowing regime opponents
to solve collective action problems (Knutsen and Fjelde

9Extra criteria separate, for instance, theocratic and transitional
regimes; the scheme counts 19 types.

664 CARL HENRIK KNUTSEN AND HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD

TABLE 2 Descriptive Statistics for Regime Measures

Percent Percent Percent Average Average Average
Semi-Dem. Autocracies Democracies SIP Score Polity Score Duration

Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014) Regime Categories (1946–2010)
Single-Party 19 75 6 .21 −4.37 10
Personalist 25 74 1 .14 −4.52 7
Military 24 71 5 .19 −3.57 5
Monarchy 33 67 0 .16 −7.94 33
Hadenius and Teorell (2007) Regime Categories (1972–2010)
Monarchy 28 72 0 .17 −8.47 35
Military 13 86 1 .10 −5.65 7
Multiparty 59 26 15 .45 −0.20 6
One-Party 2 98 0 .07 −7.50 17
No-Party 15 83 2 .19 −7.71 8

2013)—are expectedly short-lived. In contrast, one-party
regimes—partly because of increased incentives for elites
to make personal long-term investments in the regime
(Magaloni 2006)—and monarchies—partly because of
dynastic succession easing regime-threatening succes-
sion crises (Olson 1993)—are expectedly very durable.
These expectations are supported by data presented in
Hadenius and Teorell (2007), whereas Geddes (1999) re-
ports that single-party regimes live longer than military
regimes in particular.10 Regarding (b), the average Ged-
des, Wright, and Frantz (2014) coded military regime,
for instance, scores –3.6 on Polity, whereas the aver-
age monarchy scores –7.9. Table 2 further shows that
the Hadenius and Teorell one-party regimes almost ex-
clusively (98%) are autocracies (Gates et al. categoriza-
tion), whereas 13% of military regime observations and
59% of limited-multiparty regime observations are semi-
democracies. Hence, the observed relationship between
semi-democracy and durability may be due to unstable
multiparty autocracies or military regimes being coded
as semi-democratic, and stable one-party regimes as au-
tocratic.

Again, we run the replication model (B1) and com-
pare to models including the above-described regime
categories using the same sample.11 More specifically,
Models B2 and B3 in Table 3 add, respectively, the Geddes,

10Many other studies argue for or find differences in duration be-
tween nondemocratic regime types (e.g., Levitsky and Way 2010;
Menaldo 2012; Svolik 2012; Teorell 2010).

11The regime categories by Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014) im-
ply a different regime-change definition than Gates and colleagues’
(2006), counting also, e.g., transitions from one regime category
to another. However, among the 357 regime changes reported by
the former, 96% occur within ±1 year of a regime change as oper-
ationalized by the latter.

Wright, and Frantz (2014) and Hadenius and Teorell
(2007)dummies.12 Adding the Geddes regime dummies
hardly affects the original results, although the democ-
racy time ratio increases slightly in size. The proposed
alternative explanation, then, does not find support;
semi-democracies are not less durable than autocracies
because they tend to lack dynastic succession or dominant
regime parties. Furthermore, the Geddes regime cate-
gories are indistinguishable from each other in terms of
regime longevity once degree of democracy is accounted
for. The military-regime time ratio is close to 1, as are the
monarchy and single-party ratios. Surprisingly, adding
the Geddes dummies does not improve explanatory
power by much; log likelihood changes from –506.5
to –506.0. Akaike information criterion (AIC), which
accounts for increased model complexity, actually
indicates Model B2 performs worse than Model B1 in
explaining duration (see also Appendix Section A.2).

Model B2 is estimated on time series starting in
1972 to facilitate comparison with Model B3 using
Hadenius and Teorell (2007) dummies. When running
Model B2 on time series from 1946 (Model B4), the autoc-
racy and democracy dummies are further strengthened,
whereas all Geddes dummies retain p-values above .05.
The single-party dummy has t = 2.9 when using contin-
uous SIP variables (Appendix Table A.4), but the sensi-
tivity to specification choice and modest magnitude of
estimated effects contrast with previous conclusions on
how regime parties strongly bolster survival (e.g., Geddes
1999; Greene 2010; Magaloni 2006).

12For these, democracy is the reference category. Hence, there are
two reference categories in Table 3, making interpretation involved.
We therefore also estimated the models using continuous SIP (lin-
ear and squared terms; Appendix Table A.4).

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 665

TABLE 3 Regime Type Categories: Regime Survival, 1946(B4)/1972–2000

(B1) (B2) (B3) (B4) (B5)
Gates Geddes Hadenius- Geddes Competitive
et al. Regimes Teorell Regimes Full Sample Author.

Autocracy 1.606∗∗∗ 1.593∗∗ 1.642∗∗ 1.890∗∗∗ 1.432∗

(3.42) (3.16) (3.16) (5.43) (2.30)
Democracy 4.096∗∗∗ 4.362∗∗∗ 3.771∗∗∗ 4.529∗∗∗ 4.072∗∗∗

(6.87) (6.26) (5.45) (8.48) (6.19)
G Monarchy 1.470 1.304

(0.73) (0.72)
G Single-Party 1.118 1.301

(0.55) (1.69)
G Personalist 1.034 1.160

(0.15) (0.85)
G Military 1.085 0.941

(0.37) (−0.34)
HT Monarchy 2.134

(1.86)
HT Military 0.592

(−1.87)
HT One-Party 1.618

(1.22)
HT Multiparty 0.688

(−1.52)
HT No-Party/Other 0.548

(−1.28)
Hegemonic 1.125

(0.54)
Competitive 0.983

(−0.09)
GDP per Capita 1.272∗∗∗ 1.255∗∗∗ 1.169∗∗ 1.313∗∗∗ 1.271∗∗∗

(4.41) (3.79) (2.58) (5.57) (4.11)
GDP per Capita Squared 1.166∗∗∗ 1.158∗∗∗ 1.145∗∗∗ 1.165∗∗∗ 1.176∗∗∗

(4.54) (4.27) (3.95) (5.17) (4.43)
GDP per Capita Growth 1.033∗∗ 1.034∗∗ 1.034∗∗ 1.019∗ 1.032∗∗

(3.16) (3.05) (3.20) (2.04) (2.80)
Neighboring Regimes 0.243∗∗∗ 0.243∗∗∗ 0.246∗∗∗ 0.298∗∗∗ 0.251∗∗∗

(−4.08) (−4.10) (−4.17) (−4.40) (−3.81)
First Polity 2.180∗∗∗ 2.134∗∗∗ 1.797∗∗ 1.556∗ 2.014∗∗

(3.94) (3.71) (3.08) (2.31) (3.14)
AIC 1031.0 1037.9 1016.9 1601.6 968.4
ll −506.5 −506.0 −494.4 −787.8 −473.2
Gamma 0.648 0.647 0.627 0.657 0.668
N 4070 4070 4070 6065 3708
Polities 470 470 470 629 445
Failures 317 317 317 475 292

Notes: Time ratios and t-statistics (in parentheses) are reported. ∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗∗p < 0.001.

666 CARL HENRIK KNUTSEN AND HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD

TABLE 4 Estimated Median Survival Times for
Different Polities in Models
with/without Geddes Dummies

Designated or Ascribed Executive

Share of Population Executive Constraints
Participating in Elections 1 (weak) 2–3 4–5 6–7

≤ 1% 10.9/11.9 7.5/8.5 3.3/3.4 1.8/1.7
5% 7.4/8.8 5.6/6.7 3.4/3.5 2.7/2.8
10% 3.8/3.4 4.0/4.0 4.1/4.3 5.2/4.9
50% 2.7/2.5 4.6/4.6 4.5/3.8 7.8/7.0

Notes: All covariates at means. Estimates are for baseline
model/model controlling for Geddes dummies; see Appendix Table
A.9.

Above, we followed Gates et al. (2006) in further
disaggregating regimes according to how their political
institutions affect distribution of authority, that is, how
executives are selected and constrained, and extent of
popular participation. These authors do not separate
regimes after other authority characteristics, like Geddes’
distinctions according to who controls appointments
and policy selection. Our analysis indicates this is not
as important for durability as degree of democracy,
but the results could be blurred by combining all
semi-democracies. Different types of semi-democracies
differ in expected duration, and closer investigation (see
Appendix Table A.7), for instance, shows that while per-
sonalist regimes have weaker executive constraints than
single-party regimes, they have broader participation.
Hence, we reran Model 7 from Gates et al. (2006), both
including and excluding the Geddes dummies (Appendix
Table A.9). Table 4 shows the resulting estimated median
survival times. The differences are fairly small for all
the different categories of semi-democracies; the largest
point estimate changes are actually for the regimes that
are very autocratic along all three dimensions, increasing
durability with (only) about 1 year when adding the
Geddes dummies. This reinforces the above conclusion;
(the various kinds of) semi-democracies and autocracies
do not mainly have different durabilities because they
differ in terms of who controls power.13

13Precisely predicting the survival of regimes when disaggregating
both according to the three authority distribution dimensions and
the Geddes categorization is, however, not always viable, due to few
observations for most combinations. We ran simulations to ob-
tain 95% confidence intervals on the survival times for all Geddes
regime categories for different participation–constraints combina-
tions for closed regimes. Many intervals could not be estimated,
and the remaining show overlap between the Geddes types. For the
pure autocracies (lowest scores for participation and constraints)
the 95% intervals are military [3.1, 7.2], monarchy [1.5, 12], per-
sonalist [7.0, 11.8], and Single-party [3.5, 23.9].

Returning to models combining all semi-
democracies in one category, Model B3 adds the
Hadenius and Teorell (2007) dummies. It reports time
ratios > 1 for one-party regimes and < 1 for multiparty regimes, suggesting one relevant distinction is between regimes allowing for competing parties and those where ruling parties reign supreme.14 Still, the respective t-values are not sizable. The Hadenius and Teorell monarchy time ratio is quite substantial in size, however, and increases further when substituting the Gates et al. (2006) dummies with continuous SIP-variables in Appendix Table A.4 (3.17; t = 2.58). Although this contrasts with the result from Model B2, there are thus some indications that monarchies are relatively stable nondemocracies.15 Far more notable, however, is the robustness of the result that semi-democracies are shorter-lived than both autocracies and democracies, which is replicated also in Model B3.

The Geddes categorization assumes the fundamen-
tal regime aspect is who holds executive power. In con-
trast, the competitive authoritarianism literature focuses
on how exposed regimes are to competition (Levitsky
and Way 2002, 2010): In electoral authoritarian regimes,
some multiparty (or fractional) competition takes place,
but it is manipulated. Competitive authoritarian regimes
“may routinely manipulate formal democratic rules, [but]
they are unable to eliminate them or reduce them to a
mere facade” (Levitsky and Way 2002, 53); all competi-
tive regimes are electoral, but not the other way around.
Hegemonic regimes, in contrast, see no such competi-
tion. The combination of autocratic regime characteris-
tics with elections involving some competitive element
may, of course, be considered a typical semi-democratic
trait, and problems of conceptual overlap are arguably
larger here than for the Geddes or Hadenius and Teo-
rell categorizations. Still, several authors explicitly argue
that “competitive authoritarian” is a distinct category not
neatly placing itself on a democracy–dictatorship dimen-
sion (e.g., Brownlee 2009; Levitsky and Way 2010). One
may agree or disagree with this conceptual distinction,
but empirically there is only modest overlap between ob-
servations scored as semi-democracies and as competitive
authoritarian by Brownlee (2009); the latter’s scores range
from 0 (Burkina Faso 1980) to .96 (Spain 1979) on SIP,
and from –9 (Uzbekistan 2009) to 10 (Mauritius 1993)
on Polity.

14Moreover, the change in AIC from Model B1 to B3 indicates that
adding the Hadenius and Teorell dummies—in contrast with the
Geddes dummies—improves model performance.

15There are four sets of regime-years that Geddes, Wright, and
Frantz in contrast with Hadenius and Teorell, do not code as monar-
chies (Bahrain, Qatar, Bhutan, Brunei). However, removing these
and re-estimating B3 does not change the original result.

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 667

TABLE 5 Floor and Ceiling Biases: Regime Survival, 1900–2000

(C1) (C2) (C3) (C4)
Gates et al. Liberalization Deliberalization Ceiling and Floor

Autocracy 1.850∗∗∗ 1.114 6.167∗∗∗ 1.866∗∗∗

(6.05) (0.85) (8.89) (5.49)
Democracy 3.613∗∗∗ 6.004∗∗∗ 2.467∗∗∗ 3.298∗∗∗

(8.74) (8.41) (4.59) (7.80)
Ceiling Dummy 5.245∗

(2.19)
Floor Dummy 0.971

(−0.19)
GDP per Capita 1.273∗∗∗ 1.043 1.735∗∗∗ 1.227∗∗∗

(5.46) (0.80) (5.56) (4.19)
GDP per Capita Squared 1.160∗∗∗ 1.089∗∗ 1.253∗∗∗ 1.140∗∗∗

(5.19) (2.66) (4.25) (4.12)
GDP per Capita Growth 1.018∗ 1.024∗∗ 1.014 1.019∗

(2.25) (2.75) (1.01) (2.27)
Neighboring Regimes 0.354∗∗∗ 0.455∗∗ 0.272∗∗∗ 0.376∗∗∗

(−4.13) (−2.59) (−3.48) (−3.83)
First Polity 1.624∗ 2.563∗∗∗ 0.944 1.621∗

(2.47) (4.62) (−0.20) (2.38)
AIC 1812.6 1370.5 1033.3 1805.9
ll −895.3 −674.3 −505.6 −889.9
Gamma 0.645 0.690 0.788 0.647
N 7018 7018 7018 7018
Polities 716 716 716 716
Failures 555 347 202 555

Notes: Time ratios and t-statistics (in parentheses) are reported. Time dummies are omitted from the table. ∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗∗∗p < 0.001

Thus, Model B5 includes hegemonic and competitive
authoritarian dummies from Brownlee (2009). In line
with Brownlee, we do not find that hegemonic or
competitive regime characteristics impact on durability.
Furthermore, semi-democracies remain clearly less
durable than both democracies and autocracies also in
B5. When compared to a replication model for the same
sample, the time ratio for autocracies (and democracies)
barely moves. The generally higher competition in
semi-democracies than in autocracies does seemingly
not contribute to the former’s relative instability.

Capturing Regime Change in Autocracies
and Democracies

The above analysis suggests that semi-democratic
regimes are inherently less durable than democracies and
autocracies. Yet there exists one additional alternative
explanation: As Dahl (1971) points out, democracy is
an ideal concept that empirical regimes only approach.
Likewise, no observed regime has been an ideal autocracy

with one person controlling every political decision-
making process. Still, extant democracy indices such as
Polity, Freedom House, and SIP are restricted; several
regimes have (close to) minimum and maximum scores
(Coppedge et al. 2011), implying they have little room to
either “deteriorate” or “improve.” Out of 7,018 regime-
year observations in Model C1, Table 5, 621 are autocra-
cies that logically could not further deliberalize according
to the regime-change definition by Gates et al. (2006,
898), whereas 456 are democracies that could not further
liberalize (see Appendix Table A.12). The latter includes
regimes where most country experts arguably would
agree there de facto was substantial room for further im-
provements in democratic quality (e.g., Argentina 2000,
Bulgaria 1990, Indonesia 1999, Italy 1948), and the
former includes Chile (1989), Ghana (1991), and
Pakistan (2000).16

16This is, if anything, exacerbated when using the Polity-based
regime-change definition, requiring ≥ 3 change on Polity; most
regimes score close to or at the index’s boundaries. Norway, for

668 CARL HENRIK KNUTSEN AND HÅVARD MOKLEIV NYGÅRD

Consequentially, standard model specications could
yield biased estimates when counting regime changes
in both directions; semi-democracy is the only category
where all regimes may register both liberalization and de-
liberalization episodes as regime changes. The observed
correlation between semi-democracy and short durabil-
ity might therefore be an artifact of the floors and ceil-
ings imposed by extant democracy indices. Below, we
first try to circumvent this by separately estimating ef-
fects on liberalizing and deliberalizing regime changes.
One additional benefit of this is that mechanisms driv-
ing liberalization processes may be quite different from
those driving deliberalization. For instance, Przeworski
and Limongi (1997) and Houle (2009), respectively, find
that higher income levels and lower income inequality
guard against changes from democracy to autocracy but
do not affect democratization. Analogous nuances may
exist for the impact of regime-institutional characteristics
(see also Teorell 2010).

Model C1 is the aggregated replication model consid-
ering time to regime breakdown regardless of whether the
subsequent regime is more or less liberal. Models C2 and
C3 keep the original setup except for employing depen-
dent variables measuring only breakdowns leading to, re-
spectively, more and less liberal regimes. In Model C2, in-
vestigating only liberalizing changes—thereby alleviating
the floor bias—the autocracy time ratio is indistinguish-
able from 1; autocratic and semi-democratic regimes are
equally likely to experience liberalizing regime changes.17

Moreover, the democracy time ratio changes quite dras-
tically from C1 (3.61) to C3 (2.47), but it remains sizable
and has t = 4.59; democracies are more resilient to de-
liberalizing changes than semi-democracies. C2 and C3
clearly outperform C1 in terms of log likelihood and AIC;
including information on the direction of regime change
greatly improves model fit.

Still, regarding our main question—whether semi-
democracies are inherently less durable—C2 and C3
do not give definitive answers. The differences in esti-
mates from C1 may be due to floor-ceiling biases and
to regime-institutional structures actually having differ-
ent substantive effects on liberalizing and deliberalizing
regime changes. It could, for instance, be that autoc-
racies are no more robust to liberalizing changes than
semi-democracies, but they actually are very robust to

instance, achieves a perfect 10 score in 1898, when women could
not vote, election manipulation was commonplace, and the elected
Parliament did not control foreign policy (Aardal 2002). Likewise,
the United States scores ≥ 8 from 1809 onward, leaving no room
for liberalizing regime changes.

17Due to ceiling and floor biases, respectively, C2’s democracy esti-
mate and C3’s autocracy estimate are not that interesting.

deliberalizing changes. To further evaluate whether the
insignificant autocracy result in C2 stems from removing
the floor bias, we reestimate C1 including a dummy for
regimes that logically cannot experience further deliber-
alizing regime changes (C4). We also include a dummy
scoring impossibility of liberalizing changes. This should
remove the floor-ceiling biases while allowing the estima-
tion of (overall) durability of democracies, autocracies,
and semi-democracies. Indeed, C4 retains the main result
from C1; semi-democracies are less durable than autoc-
racies (1.87; t = 5.49) and democracies (3.30; t = 7.80).
Thus, the reported lower durability of semi-democracies
is not an artifact of floor-ceiling biases.18

Conclusion

Although some semi-democracies endure longer than
others, they are generally far less durable than both
democracies and autocracies. We document that this re-
sult holds even when accounting for three plausible al-
ternative explanations of the observed correlation, such
as semi-democratic regime institutions emerging under
conditions of political instability and social turmoil that
would reduce the survival prospects of any regime. In-
deed, “semi-democracies are particularly unstable politi-
cal regimes” should be regarded as one of the few stylized
facts of comparative politics, and this correlation is seem-
ingly due to the institutional composition of such regimes
causing reduced durability. However, our analysis pro-
vides one important nuance; semi-democracies are no
more likely to experience liberalizing regime changes than
autocracies.

Political scientists have become increasingly skep-
tical of employing (only) the democracy–dictatorship
dimension when trying to understand the dynamics and
consequences of political regimes (e.g., Brownlee 2009;
Carothers 2002; Geddes 1999; Hadenius and Teorell 2007;
Levitsky and Way 2002; Schedler 2006). This goes in
particular for the question of why some political regimes
break down fairly quickly, whereas others endure for
decades. We fully agree that there are often good reasons
for analyzing political regimes according to characteristics

18We also tested different requirements for registering regime
change, but our conclusions are generally retained. Further,
Appendix Table A.10 presents analysis disaggregating regimes af-
ter executive recruitment, participation, and executive constraints.
The effect of the regime dimensions clearly depends on whether
we are investigating liberalizing or deliberalizing regime changes.
Yet models investigating all changes and including floor/ceiling
dummies show this comes from actual differences in effects on
liberalizing and deliberalizing changes and not from measurement
biases.

INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND REGIME SURVIVAL 669

other than degree of democracy, and above we highlight
how different combinations of executive recruitment,
executive constraints, and political participation induce
differences in durability for regimes considered about
equally democratic. Nevertheless, our results suggest the
characteristics embedded in the refined regime categories
from Geddes (1999) or Hadenius and Teorell (2007)
do not matter that much for regime durability once
accounting for differences in degree of democracy. After
all, we therefore propose that differences in degree of
democracy—rather than existence of dynastic succession,
military government, or a dominant regime party—are
the key regime characteristic for understanding why
some regimes collapse while others endure.

Finally, and importantly, our results imply that liber-
alizing regime changes may occur with a non-negligible
probability in any nondemocratic regime—be it in
harshly authoritarian or semi-democratic regimes, or in
party-based or military dictatorships—as recent experi-
ences in regimes as dissimilar as Myanmar and Tunisia
indicate. This should be fairly good news to those fight-
ing for political liberalization under nondemocratic, but
still quite different, political-institutional arrangements
in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Russia, North Korea, Singapore,
and China.

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Supporting Information

Additional Supporting Information may be found in the
online version of this article at the publisher’s website:

Online Appendix A

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence: Law Making, Protest
and Semi-Authoritarianism in Uganda

Tom Goodfellow

ABSTRACT

This article explores the interplay between violent protest and the making
of laws in Uganda. It advances two main arguments. First, since multiparty-
ism was restored in 2005, the Ugandan government has repeatedly drafted
intentionally contentious new laws in part to provoke, divide and politically
manipulate opposition. Implementing these laws has often not appeared to
be a priority; rather, drafting, debating and (sometimes) passing them rep-
resent tactical ‘legal manoeuvres’ geared towards political gain. Second, I
argue that these manoeuvres can be linked to another trend since 2005: the
rise in urban-based protests and riots, which have often become violent and
resulted in aggressive crackdowns by the state. In bringing these trends to-
gether, this article argues that the use of legislative processes as part of a
strategic repertoire to destabilize political opposition has exacerbated unrest,
especially among urban dwellers. Moreover, in response to rising protest the
government has engaged in further legal manoeuvring. The analysis suggests
that the semi-authoritarian nature of the regime in power, where the symbolic
importance of the legislature and relatively free media contend with funda-
mentally authoritarian tendencies at the centre, is propagating this cycle of
legal manoeuvres and violence.

INTRODUCTION

A notable feature of contemporary Ugandan politics is the way significant
numbers of laws are proposed by the government, debated in the media,
brought to parliament, and then — after further heated debates — shelved
and seemingly forgotten for long periods of time. In some respects this should
not be surprising in the context of a state that is, in many formal institutional
respects, a democracy. The obvious explanation is that processes of legisla-
tive, judicial and media pushback have occurred, with democratic institu-
tions resisting the executive. This article argues, however, that this does not

I would like to thank Michaela Collord, Sean Fox, Elliott Green and Stefan Lindemann for their
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also indebted to three anonymous referees for
their very useful input. Any errors are, of course, my own.

Development and Change 45(4): 753–776. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12097
C⃝ 2014 International Institute of Social Studies.

754 Tom Goodfellow

adequately explain certain legislative trends since 2005, which reflect some-
thing rather different from the ‘rising legislative assertiveness’ previously
observed in Uganda (Nakamura and Johnson, 2003). It proposes instead that
the passing and full implementation of proposed laws is sometimes not very
prominent among the goals of the executive seemingly pushing for them.

In this article I suggest that the generation of new provocative draft leg-
islation is one of the tools through which the government has repeatedly
sought to manage social and political threats in the post-2005 era, a period
characterized by the return to multiparty politics after decades of one-party
(or, strictly speaking, no-party) rule. The government has arguably been less
concerned with enacting the law than with using the legislative process to
make symbolic gestures that antagonize or placate various opposition groups
at critical moments. The processes of producing, debating and passing laws
— and, crucially, the timing of these processes — have therefore taken
on certain perverse functions as part of President Museveni’s strategy for
maintaining control. Such ‘legal manoeuvres’ can be thought of as part of a
repertoire of instruments employed by a leader whose immense skills as a
political tactician are now widely recognized (Carbone, 2008; Tripp, 2010a,
2010b).

Given the above, I argue in parallel that the proliferation of contentious le-
gal debates and sometimes incoherent laws resulting from these manoeuvres
fuelled discontent and violent protest in the period 2005–13. Moreover, the
government sought to capitalize on successive waves of protest, repeatedly
attempting to tarnish the opposition as instigators of violence while taking
the opportunity to propose further legal measures that did little to ease under-
lying tensions. Violent protest and law making have thus become part of a
dialectical exchange between state and society that has dubious implications
both for future stability and the quality of Uganda’s nascent democracy.
The analysis has implications with potential relevance far beyond Uganda,
given both rising civic violence and similar political trends elsewhere on the
continent.

The article is rooted in the case study approach, constituting a ‘detailed
examination of an aspect of an historical episode to develop . . . explana-
tions that may be generalizable to other events’ (George and Bennett, 2005:
5). It draws on primary research including interviews with politicians (both
government and opposition, local and national), lawyers, civil society repre-
sentatives and protestors, as well as observation of parliamentary debate and
media analysis.1 The article employs a process-tracing approach, used in-
ductively to generate new hypotheses based on the sequencing of events and

1. The fieldwork on which much of the analysis is based was undertaken in September 2009–
January 2010 and December 2011. Please note that newspaper articles referred to in the text
are referenced in footnotes rather than listed in the bibliography, and only the name of the
newspaper and the date are given. This is because large numbers of newspaper articles were
consulted, some in archives in Uganda, and in certain cases article titles were not recorded

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 755

interaction of variables suggested through the case material. The aim is thus
to identify ‘recurring conjunctions of mechanisms’ and propose pathways
through which they produce particular outcomes (ibid.: 7). An exploratory
case study of this nature is particularly appropriate here because the aim
is to challenge some conventional interpretations of particular phenomena,
rather than test a causal relationship that is already well-established in the
literature.

The article is structured as follows. First, some basic theoretical proposi-
tions are presented about the relationship between legal change and processes
of democratization in post-colonial Africa, and how this relates to patterns
of political protest. The next section provides some contextual background
on Uganda, highlighting key political developments since 2005 and relating
these to the relationship between legal manoeuvres and violence, partic-
ularly in the capital city Kampala. Following this, I discuss certain laws
pertaining to the government’s relationship with the Buganda Kingdom in
recent years, exploring how legislative processes interacted with politics, so-
cial mobilization and violence. Then I explore the potential for broadening
the argument beyond this particular dispute, considering the politics behind
certain other key pieces of legislation and their relationship to outbreaks of
violent protest. The final section concludes, offering some thoughts on the
relationship between legal manoeuvres, protest and democratization.

LEGAL CHANGE AND PROTEST IN DEMOCRATIZING AFRICA

Law and Development

In the early post-independence decades when ‘modernization’ dominated
development discourses, the maintenance or transplantation of ‘good’ (that
is, Western-modelled) legal systems was considered by legal scholars to be
a central driver of development (Friedman, 1969). Today a more common
view is that legal enforcement in developing countries is often so weak that
‘the importance of the legacy of the formal legal system is moot’ (Bardhan,
2005: 6). The naı̈ve belief that law itself held potential ‘to engineer the so-
cial and economic change necessary to achieve the goals of development’
(Sedler, 1968) has thus largely ceded to the cynical view that in many devel-
oping countries law is virtually irrelevant because it is rarely implemented.
Moreover, the widespread inheritance of colonial legal systems means that
law is often treated as exogenous to the question of development (Acemoglu
et al., 2001; La Porta et al., 1999). Notwithstanding an important body of
literature in the field of legal anthropology (see Moore, 2001 for a review),
within development studies relatively little attention has been paid to how the

or specific authors not listed. All news sources are therefore referred to by newspaper and
date in footnotes to ensure consistency of referencing,

756 Tom Goodfellow

making, debating and passing of laws itself impacts on social and political
development.

Law matters not only because of what happens when it is implemented,
but because the very existence of particular laws — and the discussion of
proposed legislation yet to be passed — influences the behaviour of social
actors, no matter how weak the enforcement. Moreover, laws are drawn up in
anticipation of and in response to particular behaviour. Writing in the 1970s
with Africa in mind, the legal sociologist Robert B. Seidman attempted to
model the relationship between law and development (Seidman, 1972, 1978).
How a ‘role occupant’ (social actor at whom the law is aimed) behaves in
response to norms of law, Seidman argued, is a function not only of the
rules embodied in a law, but also of the nature of enforcement institutions
and other social and political forces constraining behaviour. Meanwhile,
law makers will act partially on the basis of feedback they receive from
role occupants (Seidman, 1972: 321) and make estimates of ‘the probable
consequences of the proposed legislative program in all its ramifications’,
including enforcement costs, the nature of citizen reaction and likely extent of
noncompliance (ibid.: 338). While scholars including Weingast (1997) have
more recently echoed this point about the iterative nature of law making
and public reaction, the idea that it might result in perverse incentives to
create laws to achieve outcomes other than effective implementation of those
laws has been little explored in development literature. In fact, the reaction
of certain social groups to the law-making process itself may be part of
the intended outcome. As Barkan (2008: 124–5) has observed, there has
also been surprisingly little research on the relationship between legislative
development and democratization, especially in Africa. There is therefore a
need to further explore the law-making process as a political instrument in
a development context.

Legal Reform, Semi-Authoritarianism and Political Protest

In thinking about the socio-political impact of the law-making process, the
relationship between the passage of laws and political protest is a particularly
salient issue. Saiegh (2011) finds that among democracies, states featuring
high levels of social unrest (in the form of riots and protests) positively
correlate with those where either an especially high or especially low pro-
portion of laws proposed by the executive are successfully passed. Among
autocracies, this ‘U’ shaped correlation is turned on its head: unrest is most
common where an intermediate (rather than very high or low) number of
laws are passed. These findings, based on a simple democracy/autocracy
dichotomy, raise questions about the passage of laws and protest in ano-
cratic or semi-authoritarian regimes, which characterize a large proportion
of contemporary developing states. Moreover, if there is indeed a correlation
between regime type, legal passage and protest, then the causal dynamics

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 757

underpinning that relationship remain uncertain. It is unclear whether rates of
legal passage drive protest or protest drives rates of passage. The relationship
may work both ways.

In many contemporary sub-Saharan African states, the relationship be-
tween protest and legal reform has changed in recent decades, in tandem
with democratization. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, popular protest in
Africa was widely perceived as representing calls for legal and constitutional
reform. Drawing on Hirschman’s classic essay (Hirschman, 1970), Herbst
argued in 1990 that urban-based protest was an effort by African populations
to exercise ‘voice’ when the ‘exit’ option historically open to them through
migration was no longer available, due to solidifying national borders and
land scarcity (Herbst, 1990). Instead, many dissatisfied Africans were mov-
ing to the heart of the state — the capital city — and engaging in protest in an
effort to engender reform (ibid.: 192). Moreover, in all countries where major
political protest took place from 1989–91 it led to reform of laws, procedures
or even constitutions in the direction of political liberalization (Bratton and
van de Walle, 1992).

These observations were made at a time when authoritarian governments
dominated the continent and protest was directly geared towards consti-
tutional reform and democratization. The contemporary situation, how-
ever, has been shaped by that very wave of democratization (Lynch and
Crawford, 2011). Subsequently, increasing numbers of states have become
characterized by what has variously been termed ‘illiberal democracy’ (Za-
karia, 1997), ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky and Way, 2002) and
‘semi-authoritarianism’ (Tripp, 2010a) rather than undiluted autocracy. Un-
der such ‘hybrid’ regimes, it is still the case that protest and legal change
occur in a ‘dynamic, reiterative process of action and counteraction’ (Brat-
ton and van de Walle, 1992: 420). However, the coexistence of authoritarian
and democratic tendencies alters the strategic calculus for both governments
and protestors (Tripp, 2010a: 5). Some implications of this will briefly be
considered.

Political leaders in semi-authoritarian regimes have to operate in a situ-
ation where democratic institutions are often a real force to contend with
(Barkan, 2008), notwithstanding the ‘authoritarian core’ at the heart of the
political system (Tripp, 2010a). In such contexts, bringing laws before par-
liament and allowing the discussion of their content in the national media, as
well as the possibility of judicial challenge, are difficult processes to avoid.
With these formally democratic institutions constituting a central part of
the life of the polity, leaders determined to ensure regime survival have to
conceive novel ways of manipulating them towards this end without bla-
tantly suppressing them — a problem that purely authoritarian rulers need
not contend with. Introducing draft legislation to stimulate particular kinds
of political response, causing disarray among key opposition groups, is one
way in which such leaders might hope to strategically turn the democratic
elements of the system to their advantage. It is reasonable to suppose that

758 Tom Goodfellow

such a strategy could be socially and politically destabilizing, and that under
these conditions protest might sometimes be a response to proposed legal
reform rather than a call for it.

The nature of protest itself has also changed in important ways. Many of
the protest events unfolding in Africa in recent years have been neither very
organized nor dominated by middle class groups such as students, unions
and civil servants, as they were — according to Herbst (1990) and Bratton
and van de Walle (1992) — at the end of the Cold War. In a context of
rapid urban growth, protests have often been dominated by relatively poor
people working in the informal economy and expressing general discontent,
or ‘noise’, rather than concerted efforts to articulate ‘voice’ (Goodfellow,
2013). Protest is likely to be spurred by frustration at the empty promises of
democratization and limited channels for voice, but also by the presence of a
political opposition (no matter how ineffectual) and the growing awareness
of the functioning of government that accompanies even partial democratiza-
tion. Under these semi-authoritarian conditions, rather than demonstrating in
vain for specific reforms, discontented urban social groups may opt to engage
in violent rioting to remind the government of their capacity to destabilize
and defect to the opposition.

In short, the changing role of law-making processes under semi-
authoritarianism may be related to changing forms and the increasing fre-
quency and violence of protest. This accords with the emerging consensus
that semi-authoritarian or ‘hybrid’ regimes correlate positively with most
forms of violence, whether considered ‘political’ or ‘social’ in nature (Fox
and Hoelscher, 2012; Goldstone et al., 2010). Hostile state actions are found
to be more common in these regimes than any other type (Carey, 2006: 9),
and in such regimes state actions are also less predictable, further height-
ening the risk of political violence (Hassanpour, 2012). This article seeks
to build on this consensus by exploring some of the mechanisms behind
the relationship between semi-authoritarianism and civic violence. It argues
that contemporary violent protest in such regimes can be provoked by the
erratic government actions that emerge from the coexistence of democratic
and authoritarian elements, and specifically through efforts to subvert newly
empowered democratic institutions by using the law-making process as a po-
litical instrument to disorganize opposition. The following section explains
why Uganda is a particularly apposite context to explore these ideas.

UGANDA, SEMI-AUTHORITARIANISM AND THE RISE OF VIOLENT
PROTEST

Many authors have identified Uganda’s National Resistance Movement
(NRM) regime as featuring both democratic and authoritarian elements,
with Diamond (1999) classifying it as a ‘pseudo-democracy’, Tripp (2010a)
labelling it ‘semi-authoritarian’, and Ochieng’ Opalo (2012) classifying it as

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 759

‘ambiguous’ rather than either an ‘emerging democracy’ or ‘consolidating
autocracy’. The regime of Yoweri Museveni is a clear case of a government
that has adopted widespread democratic reforms only to claw back control
through various informal mechanisms of authoritarianism (Carbone, 2008;
Kjaer, 1999; Lambright, 2011; Rubongoya, 2007; Tripp, 2010a). Museveni
is acknowledged as a master strategist and political tactician who has not
only maintained power through four successive (albeit flawed) elections, but
also increased his vote share by 10 per cent in the most recent election in
2011 (Conroy-Krutz and Logan, 2012; Izama and Wilkerson, 2011).

By way of background, Museveni and his NRM fought their way to power
in 1986 after two decades of turmoil, dictatorship and civil war. Under the
NRM, local democracy was instituted in the context of a ‘no-party’ system,
on the grounds that parties would split along ethnic lines and foment further
conflict (Carbone, 2008). For the first ten years of his rule, Museveni was
generally popular both at home and abroad. His decision to reinstate most of
Uganda’s traditional kingdoms in 1993 also bolstered his support in certain
parts of the country, including Buganda, the kingdom home to Uganda’s
largest ethnic group.

In 1995 a new constitution was introduced, and it is now acknowledged
that in the decade following this, during the Sixth (1996–2001) and Seventh
(2001–2006) Parliaments, there was an increase in the strength of Uganda’s
legislature. Keating (2011) argues that in the decade after 1996, as the
system of ‘no party democracy’ evolved, the Ugandan parliament came
to function as a voice of opposition with the potential to challenge key
reforms proposed by the executive. Similarly, Barkan (2008) argues that in
this period a ‘coalition for change’ emerged in parliament and there was
an expansion of legislative power. Kasfir and Twebaze (2009) have made
similar observations, as have Nakamura and Johnson (2003), who write
of a period of ‘rising legislative assertiveness’, accompanied by increased
coverage of parliamentary activity in the media.

Despite this, democratic accountability more generally was perceived
to be waning from the mid-1990s, with NRM hegemony increasingly en-
trenched alongside growing corruption and ethnic exclusion (Lindemann,
2011; Mwenda and Tangri, 2005). Evidence of the manipulation of elec-
tions in 2001 precipitated further disillusionment. In the years between the
2001 and 2006 elections, Museveni decided that the no-party system was no
longer useful and began to promote the move to multipartyism, despite years
of his own rhetoric against it. He skilfully used the transition to a multiparty
system, which was secured in a 2005 referendum, as a bargaining chip to
remove presidential term limits, ostensibly in the interests of minimizing
restrictions on democratic choice (ICG, 2012; Keating, 2011; Tripp, 2010b).

Along with the shift to multipartyism and removal of term limits came
other changes that were particularly significant with regard to the role of the
legislature. Parliamentary powers to vet ministerial appointments and cen-
sure ministers were reduced, while the president acquired additional powers

760 Tom Goodfellow

to dissolve parliament (Kasfir and Twebaze, 2009; Keating, 2011; Mwenda,
2007). Moreover, the massive NRM victory that Museveni secured in the
first multiparty election in 2006 resulted in opposition parties winning only
56 of 333 seats. While parliamentary discipline had been weak up to this
point, voting along party lines became commonplace with the establishment
of the NRM as a de jure party. Indeed, the introduction of multipartyism
paradoxically enhanced the executive’s dominance of parliament and its
determination to tame legislative powers (Barkan, 2008). Thus from 2005
onwards, and especially in the Eighth Parliament from 2006 to 2011, the
period of legislative assertiveness observed after 1996 was decisively re-
versed. The passage of bills through parliament was therefore less likely
to be prevented by legislative pushback during this period. Uganda’s semi-
authoritarianism entered a new phase, and it was one in which an apparent
step forward in terms of formal democratization actually undermined certain
democratic institutions (Keating, 2011).

It was also in this period that protest in Kampala became a regular fea-
ture of political life, and in increasingly violent forms. In November 2005,
opposition politician Kizza Besigye was arrested on charges of treason and
rape, leading his supporters to take to the streets for two days in the first
major demonstrations of the NRM era. The police responded aggressively,
and one person was killed (Human Rights Watch, 2005). Museveni swiftly
issued a temporary ban on demonstrations and discussion of the trial on
radio shows, but did not interfere when the courts ordered Besigye’s release
in January and eventually cleared him in March.2 These events set the tone
for multiparty democracy under Museveni, marking something of a criti-
cal juncture in public life. The threat of sustained urban public protest was
thereafter constantly close to the surface, as was the counter-threat that the
government might decree permanent legal constraints on public freedoms.
Wider urban discontent was also brewing, and often boiling over, around this
time. Indeed, according to cross-national data collected on ‘social conflict
events’ (primarily strikes, protests and riots) in Africa, on an average annual
basis the number of such events in Kampala from 2005–10 was more than
double that in 1991–2004. Moreover, the number of social conflict events
involving government repression per averaged year was around six times
higher in 2005–10.3

An alternative and more detailed dataset4 shows even more striking ev-
idence of the increase in violent protest in the multiparty period. While
in the seven-year period from 1998 to 2004 there were fifty-eight violent
conflict events in Kampala, in the seven-year period from 2005 to 2011
there were 141 (see Figure 1). Furthermore, most of the events in the first

2. IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis (website), 1 February 2006.
3. Social Conflict in Africa Database, University of Texas at Austin: http://ccaps.strausscenter.

org/scad/conflicts
4. Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset: http://www.acleddata.com/

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 761

Figure 1. Violent Conflict Events in Kampala, 1998–2011

Source: based on data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset

period constituted violence perpetrated by unidentified armed groups or the
Allied Defence Forces, a relatively short-lived rebel movement. In the sec-
ond period the proportion of violent conflict events that were classified as
protests or riots shot up, and protests and riots involving violence by the
police increased more than tenfold from five in the first period to fifty-seven
in the second. The number of events involving ‘rioters’ (defined in relation
to when protest is violent and unorganized), and involving police violence
against protestors, increased by significantly more than events simply in-
volving ‘protestors’, highlighting the increasingly violent nature of protest
as well as overall increase. The following sections explore some of the ways
in which legal manoeuvres fed into this, after examining some of the laws
in question and the politics surrounding them.

THE BUGANDA RIOTS AND THE FIVE ‘CONTENTIOUS BILLS’

Legal Manoeuvres and Political Provocation

The clearest example of the use of legal manoeuvres as a provocative politi-
cal instrument — and of violent protest following this — relates to the NRM
government’s engagement with the Buganda Kingdom in the late 2000s.
Managing the state’s relationship with this ancient Kingdom has been a ma-
jor political challenge for all of Uganda’s post-independence leaders. This

762 Tom Goodfellow

stems primarily from the privileged status Buganda enjoyed in the colonial
and immediate post-colonial period, the abolition of the Kingdom by Milton
Obote in 1966 and its supporters’ ongoing quest for federal status since.5

Having restored the Kingdom in 1993, Museveni’s relationship with its
Kabaka (King) has been the subject of considerable media attention and
scholarship (Englebert, 2002; Goodfellow and Lindemann, 2013; Mutibwa,
2008; Oloka-Onyango, 1997). The decision to reinstate the Kingdom was
a shrewd move that won the support of many Baganda,6 who comprise 17
per cent of Uganda’s population. This support, however, was partly based
on the perceived promise that the Kingdom would be granted greater po-
litical autonomy further down the line.7 This was never realized, and the
sense of betrayal among the Kingdom’s leaders grew over time. Musev-
eni, meanwhile, grew ever more jealous of the Kabaka’s popularity after
the restoration. The relationship became increasingly sour after the govern-
ment passed its 1998 Land Act, which was a largely unsuccessful attempt to
balance the interests of elite Baganda landlords with those of peasants occu-
pying the land. The Act angered Baganda elites, who felt it was detrimental
to their interests (Green, 2006; Okuku, 2006).

Against this backdrop, in the multiparty period the government appears to
have decided that isolating and aggravating the Kingdom’s leaders was more
favourable to its overall long-term interests than granting their demands. Cer-
tain pieces of proposed legislation played a substantial role in this strategy.
In 2007, the government drafted the Land (Amendment) Bill, which clearly
emphasized the rights of ‘bona-fide occupants’ utilizing land in Buganda
over the rights of Baganda landowners. The latter, with the backing of the
Kabaka, mobilized vociferously against the bill.8 Amid a fierce propaganda
battle, in July 2008 the government arrested several leading figures from the
Kingdom on allegations of promoting sectarianism and inciting violence.9

Observers speculated that the amendment was less about changing the law
than playing a political game, provoking opposition from the Kingdom’s
leaders to make them look ‘arrogant’ and ‘intolerant’10 and thereby tapping
into long-standing resentment towards Baganda dating from colonial times
(Mutibwa, 2008). One land expert termed the amendment ‘a legal nonsense’,
arguing that ‘the political storms on both sides are not legal arguments about
whether the bill is good or bad, but political arguments about whether you’re
pro-Museveni or pro-Kabaka’.11 Amid all the controversy, the bill remained
largely on a back burner for two years.

5. See Mutibwa (2008) for an overview of this long and troubled relationship.
6. Baganda is the plural term for people who identify ethnically with the Buganda region.
7. On Buganda’s quest for a federal order, see Kayunga (2000).
8. The Independent (Uganda), 8–21 February 2008.
9. Buganda Post, 21 July 2008.

10. The New Vision, 14 February 2008.
11. Interview with Land Specialist, 5 February 2009.

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 763

The Land (Amendment) Bill was not the only proposed legislation fo-
menting discontent in Buganda at this time. Since 2005 the government had
been contemplating a law that would undercut Buganda’s increasingly vocal
demands for federalism. The proposed law involved the creation of a ‘re-
gional tier’ of government between the centre and the districts, but with
less autonomy than the Kingdom’s federal ideal. It was fiercely rejected by
Baganda elites, who saw it as primarily aimed at undermining their tradi-
tional institutions and federal agenda.12 Again the government sought politi-
cal capital from this, given that Buganda’s quest for federal autonomy was a
sore point with other ethnic groups, associated historically with demands for
special treatment (Kayunga, 2000). Meanwhile, although the constitutional
amendment providing for the bill allegedly ‘had overwhelming support from
the House’ when it was first debated in Parliament in 2005,13 and traditional
leaders in some regions were persuaded of its virtues from the outset,14 the
bill itself did not appear before parliament until 2009.

Yet more controversy was stirred in mid-2009 when the government tabled
the ‘Kampala Capital City Bill’, causing further outrage by proposing that
Kampala’s boundaries be radically expanded and that all the land within
the new boundaries, despite being geographically in Buganda — would
officially not be part of Buganda. In fact, as some observers noted at the
time, the latter proposition meant little in practice and could easily have been
left out of the bill, which was otherwise widely considered to be a much-
needed measure for engineering improvements in urban governance.15 This
deeply inflammatory proposition about taking Kampala theoretically out of
Buganda seemed to some to be a deliberate effort to antagonize the Baganda
elite and draw them into a damaging row that would ‘dissolve the Kingdom
from within’.16 These bills, according to a leading opposition MP in late
2009, were the ‘three contentious bills affecting Buganda’, tabled ‘in bad
faith’ and all forming part of a strategy to shore up Museveni’s support
among the majority of the public and constrain the Kingdom’s room for
manoeuvre.17

While it is obviously difficult to know the intentionality that lay behind
these laws, they share certain important features. First, they were all highly
contentious as far as the Buganda Kingdom was concerned, though not
necessarily unpopular more broadly. Second, and related, it would not have
been very difficult to frame them in a way that would have made them
decidedly less controversial in Buganda. One Buganda Kingdom official
even conceded that with a few changes the Regional Governments Bill would

12. Interview with Buganda Kingdom Minister A, Kampala, 13 October 2009; interview with
Buganda Kingdom Minister B, 14 December 2011.

13. The New Vision, 20 May 2005.
14. The New Vision, 28 May 2005.
15. Interview with government officials, 22 September 2009; 8 October 2009.
16. Daily Monitor, 21 September 2009.
17. Interview with opposition politician, 12 October 2009.

764 Tom Goodfellow

be perfectly acceptable, though the government would have to significantly
rebrand the law because its very name had become toxic in Buganda.18

Given this, and the way in which the government seemed to capitalize on
perceptions of the Buganda Kingdom’s selfishness and isolation, it is difficult
not to conclude that there was a deliberately provocative agenda at play in
the way these laws were proposed.

At the same time, however, a third feature of these bills is that (with the
exception of the Kampala Capital City Bill, which came later) there was
relatively little effort to actually push them through parliament for several
years, with a drive to pass them becoming significant only in late 2009 (see
below) — two years after the drafting of the Land (Amendment) Bill and
four years after the proposition of the regional tier. They had been shelved
for long periods of time despite their purported urgency, despite majority
support for a regional tier since 2005 and despite the fact that a parliamentary
committee was urging the government to expedite the passing of the Land
(Amendment) Bill in 2008.19 Even in the earlier period of rising legislative
strength, Museveni ‘steamrolled’ a number of controversial bills through
parliament, often without quorum (Tripp, 2010b). As such, it is hard to
believe that these bills could not have been pushed through sooner if the
government had been as concerned with implementing them as it was with
their instrumental political value as bills at a particular time.

Seeking to isolate the opposition in Buganda through these provocative
bills was, however, a dangerous game. The Kingdom began mobilizing its
political allies in the Democratic Party and stepping up anti-government
propaganda on its media mouthpiece, CBS Radio. Through such means the
Kingdom elite disseminated its anger among the Baganda public, forming
the backdrop for the violence that subsequently exploded (Goodfellow and
Lindemann, 2013). In September 2009, the government decided to prohibit
the Kabaka from visiting a corner of his Kingdom that had proclaimed
itself independent of Buganda, on the grounds that it ‘could not guarantee
his security’.20 When, on 10 September 2009, it was announced on the
radio that the Kabaka’s Prime Minster was being physically prevented from
entering the district in question, supporters immediately took to the streets
in protest. Seen as a blatant insult to the Kingdom, this was the spark that
gave sudden expression to the heightened tension that had built up over the
‘contentious bills’. The explicit reference made to some of these bills by
opposition figures in the run-up to the riots, and in some cases by rioters
themselves, underscores the role of the proposed laws in promoting the
violence.21 The anger of the protestors rapidly escalated into violence, and

18. Interview with Buganda Kingdom Minister B, 14 December 2011.
19. The New Vision, 18 November 2008.
20. Daily Monitor, 11 September 2009.
21. See Goodfellow and Lindemann (2013) for a discussion.

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 765

the response of state forces over three days of unrest was crushing: up to
forty people died in the riots, and hundreds were injured.22

There are reasons to believe that the government was aware of the po-
tentially explosive effects of restricting the movement of Kingdom repre-
sentatives; a group of investigative journalists claimed that the government
security forces were ‘abundantly aware of the consequences of this decision’
and were forewarned that riots would result.23 The argument being made
here, however, is not that the government deliberately stimulated the riots,
but that protracted efforts to antagonize and isolate the opposition through
a number of provocative proposed legal changes was deliberate, and that
this fed directly, even if not intentionally, into the violence. Had the laws
been less provocatively framed and their procedure through the legislative
process less painstakingly slow, with less column inches and airtime devoted
to debating them and whipping up ferment in Buganda, these events might
never have happened.

Whether or not the government anticipated violence, it lost no time in
capitalizing on it. Officials declared that the riots had been planned by
the Kingdom’s leaders, and began a clampdown on public space, arresting
journalists accused of inciting the violence and closing CBS radio, which
was taken off air for a full year.24 The prospect of actually passing the three
contentious bills in parliament arose again only after the riots. Indeed, the
way in which legislative procedures proceeded thereafter further illuminates
the interrelation of legal manoeuvres and violence.

Legal Manoeuvres in the Wake of Violent Protest

The government began immediately to talk about the need to ‘fast-track’
its controversial bills in order to resolve the Buganda issue,25 and also
introduced new bills into the mix, using the riots as justification. One of these
was the 2009 Public Order Management Bill, which provoked international
concern and was promptly shelved. Another was the ‘Cultural Leaders Bill’,
tabled on 17 December 2009. This bill fleshed out Article 246 of Uganda’s
1995 Constitution, which states that ‘A traditional or cultural leader shall
not join or take part in politics or exercise any administrative, legislative or
executive powers of government’. This struck at the heart of the ongoing
project by Kingdom elites to gain more political leverage. However, despite
the purported urgency of this bill, it too was then set aside for about a year.
During this time a heightened state of tension between the government and
Baganda ethnic group persisted, flaring again into violence in March 2010

22. Daily Monitor, 3 December 2011.
23. The Independent (Uganda), 21 December 2010.
24. Daily Monitor, 30 October 2010.
25. Interview with NRM MP, 24 September 2009.

766 Tom Goodfellow

when the Kasubi tombs — the historic burial ground of many past Kabakas
— was burned down in a suspected arson attack, leading to clashes between
citizens and state security forces and the killing of at least two protestors.26

In the period between the 2009 Buganda riots and the February 2011
elections, the contentious bills were never far from the centre of political
discourse. The shelved Land (Amendment) Bill was brought back to the top
of the agenda and passed in November 2009, with minor amendments.27

The Regional Governments Bill was finally ‘released’ in December 2009
and quietly passed just before Christmas, though at the time of writing (in
2013) it remained entirely unimplemented.28 The Kampala Capital City Bill
passed in late 2010, with the controversial issue of extending the boundary
removed. The Cultural Leaders Bill, meanwhile, exploded back onto the
agenda at the close of 2010, less than two months before the elections. This
bill was widely interpreted as being a direct personal attack on the Kabaka.29

Opposition to it was predictably intense, and during the parliamentary debate
fifteen out of its twenty-one clauses were either amended or deleted. With all
its controversial elements stripped, it amounted to little, largely legislating
on the perks available to traditional leaders within their cultural roles.30

While each of the bills followed a slightly different trajectory, their treat-
ment suggests a series of highly tactical moves regarding when each bill
was brought to the agenda, how it was debated and whether it was amended
or even passed at all. On the one hand, in the context of a looming election
these bills were often used both to sanction Buganda and inflame ethnic
issues that impeded opposition unity. On the other hand, the government ap-
peared in some cases to employ the legislative process in the opposite way:
to placate opposition forces at critical moments, to avoid provocation going
so far that it jeopardized Museveni’s electoral prospects. Thus, while the
Land (Amendment) Bill was despatched well before the elections in a show
of government power after the riots, the softening of the Kampala Capital

26. The New Vision, 18 July 2010.
27. The New Vision, 26 November 2009.
28. The situation with the Regional Governments Bill is more complicated than the others.

Given everything else happening in late 2009, its passing went unnoticed by many and the
debate in the years since has continued sporadically as if it were still pending. Opinions
differ regarding how serious the government is about implementing it and why the bill has
to all intents and purposes failed to have any impact. There is nevertheless wide agreement
that it was originally intended as a move to undercut the Buganda Kingdom’s demands for
federalism but that it is unworkable, unpopular in many regions and would be expensive
to implement. Interest in the bill has grown among political leaders in the Bunyoro region,
where the discovery of oil generated hopes of claiming a greater proportion of oil revenues
through a regional government. Claims such as these create new conflicts of interest and
have likely dampened NRM enthusiasm for a regional tier. For various reasons, therefore,
implementation remains a distant prospect.

29. The Observer (Uganda), 29 December 2010.
30. The New Vision, 19 January 2011.

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 767

City Bill by finally removing the controversial clause was a concession to
Buganda shortly before the election.

The Cultural Leaders Bill, which began as a very bitter pill, was sub-
stantially sweetened by the time of its passing, just before polling. Again,
while this could be seen as evidence of legislative vigour, it is difficult to
believe the government could not have pushed through the more contentious
elements given its previous record. The almost total emasculation of this bill
at a crucial moment served the government well; it left Buganda’s leaders
quietly content while opposition politicians desperate for pre-election politi-
cal capital were left raging over constitutional objections that resonated little
with the public. Meanwhile the Public Order Management Bill and Regional
Governments Bill lingered in the background like swords of Damocles,
potential tools for further negotiation and political bargaining. Indeed, the
government announced that some of the controversial issues taken out of the
Cultural Leaders Bill were being transferred into the Regional Governments
Bill, representing a looming threat.31 The fact that this bill had officially al-
ready passed was of little consequence; somewhat confusingly, it was listed
among the twenty-three bills that the Eighth Parliament had ‘failed to pass’,
and spilled over into the Ninth.32

There was little reason to believe that even the laws that passed unequiv-
ocally would be implemented, given the failure to implement similar legal
provisions in the past (including much of the 1998 Land Act itself). In any
case the Land (Amendment) Bill failed to resolve the underlying land issues
in Buganda and thus simply prolonged the deadlock between the Kingdom
and government.33 As for the watered-down Cultural Leaders Bill, a year
after it was passed nothing had been done to bring it into force, prompt-
ing one observer to ask, ‘Why is the government, which hastily pushed the
law through parliament, now apparently indifferent towards its implemen-
tation?’.34 An opposition figure likewise noted at the end of 2011 that this
law had barely been mentioned since its passing, commenting that ‘it is as
if it is not there’.35 Based on the limited evidence available, there are strong
reasons for believing that this is because the political function and timing of
legislative processes — in other words, the legal manoeuvres — were more
important than the laws per se.

The use of legal manoeuvres in this politicized manner sometimes fanned
the flames of opposition and sometimes quelled them, but the net effect
was highly destabilizing. Some sources suggest there were deliberate ef-
forts by the government to promote violent conflict: one opposition figure
claimed that while the legal debates were raging, covert government agents

31. Daily Monitor, 20 January 2011.
32. The New Vision, 14 May 2011. See also footnote 30.
33. Interview with Land Specialist, 5 February 2009; interview with Buganda Kingdom Minister

B, 14 December 2011.
34. The Independent (Uganda), 10 September 2011.
35. Interview with Buganda Kingdom Minister B, 14 December 2011.

768 Tom Goodfellow

would ‘approach us, trying to trick us into going into those subversive
measures [and] violence’.36 Another source suggested that the government
has such a militarized mentality that it stimulates violence as an instrument
of domination.37 One does not, however, have to believe that there was an
intention to create violence to perceive that these legal manoeuvres helped
to spur it. Not only did they enrage many Baganda elites, but the ongoing
debates did little for ordinary people, which in itself probably compounded
popular frustration. Debates around new laws, according to one local politi-
cian, tend to involve ‘a combination of politicking, misinformation . . . and
attention-grabbing’, amid which ‘nobody cares about implementation’.38

Consequently, as another politician noted, in Uganda people have no faith in
law as they ‘know that the law is flouted’; so ‘when you see people running
round and sacking shops, burning down police stations it is not because they
have been commanded [but] because they think you are going to do nothing
more than talking’.39

A BROADER TREND? THE POLITICS OF LAW MAKING AND VIOLENCE

It now remains to consider whether provocative legislative manoeuvres of
this nature are evident beyond the tussle between the government and the
Buganda Kingdom during the Eighth Parliament, and secondly whether any
link between legal manoeuvres and violence holds beyond this case. Regard-
ing the first question, there is little doubt that the ‘Buganda question’, which
is rooted in colonial and post-colonial legal arrangements, provides unusu-
ally fertile ground for legislative provocation by the NRM. Nevertheless, the
trajectory of a number of other bills suggests that, at particular times, legal
posturing for political ends has some relevance beyond the Buganda issue.

The debate in 2011–12 around the Public Order Management Bill reflects
some interesting dynamics in this regard. Such a bill had been mooted as early
as 2007 and was tabled in 2009, but there had been little concerted effort to
pass it, even after the 2009 riots. The 2011–12 ‘Walk to Work’ riots, however
(discussed below), led to a new draft of this Bill being brought to Parliament
in late 2011. The propositions in the new draft were more controversial
than ever. Among the clauses was one specifying that seven days advance
warning must be given to the police before any public gathering of three or
more people. Under another clause, police officers were given ‘at least seven
reasons to shoot a demonstrator and escape punishment’.40 NRM politicians
justified the law in terms of protecting ‘losses’ among the public, on the

36. Interview with opposition politician, 12 October 2009.
37. Interview with opposition MP, 13 October 2009.
38. Interview with local politician, 12 December 2011.
39. Interview with opposition MP, 13 October 2009.
40. Daily Monitor, 3 December 2011.

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 769

grounds that urban traders had their goods looted or damaged during the
walk-to-work protests.41

It was at this stage difficult to determine the seriousness of intent be-
hind the bill, and how much of it was a symbolic gesture to cow and gain
leverage over the opposition. Significantly, both government and opposi-
tion sources acknowledged that adequate laws were already in place to deal
with protest.42 The Inspector General of Police even claimed that the law
was essentially nothing new, just a repackaging of existing laws pertaining
to public order (though, like most laws, these were rarely implemented).43

An NRM politician said casually of the law that ‘we may drop or improve
it . . . there are [sufficient] conditions within the existing law’, and conceded
that it was viewed by many ‘as a law targeting specific situations [in the city]
and specific persons’,44 rather than an attempt to bring about a genuinely
needed legislative change.45 An opposition MP labelled the Bill ‘artificial’,
claiming that ‘most clauses are politically motivated’.46

For its part, parliament was fairly vigorous in pushing back against this
draft; indeed, this airing of the bill in 2011 coincided with the first year
of the Ninth Parliament, which was a period of renewed legislative ac-
tivism.47 Rather than forcing the law through or removing the most con-
tentious clauses, however, the government once again shelved the bill. It
returned to the agenda in May 2012, apparently amid a renewed sense of
urgency to pass on the part of government,48 but dropped off again after a
month and seems to have spent much of 2012 being considered by various
committees; as late as January 2013, many close observers within Uganda
saw no prospect of it ever becoming law.49

An interesting development in the relations between parliament and the
executive unfolded in early 2013, however. After a particularly vigorous
period of renewed legislative pushback in relation both to the controversial
and tortuously-debated Petroleum Bill and to a scandal surrounding the
death of an opposition MP, Museveni declared that the military would not
allow ‘the confusion in parliament’ to continue. His top military commander
followed this up by issuing a warning to renegade MPs suggesting there could
be a military coup if parliamentarians continued to practise ‘bad politics’.50

41. Comments made by politicians during parliamentary committee debate, 15 December 2011.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. In this case, the opposition leader Kizza Besigye.
45. Interview, MP (NRM), 14 December 2011.
46. Ken Lukyamuzi, cited on Ugandaradionetwork.com, 13 December 2011.
47. In mid-2012 the Ninth Parliament was assessed by an independent monitoring group as

having thus far been characterized by greater vigilance and freedom of speech than the
previous two, taking more time to scrutinize bills (The New Vision, 27 August 2012).

48. Human Rights Watch, 11 May 2012: http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/11/uganda-draft-
public-order-law-would-violate-rights

49. Personal correspondence with a local development consultant, 28 January 2013.
50. Daily Monitor, 24 January 2013; The East African, 26 January 2013.

770 Tom Goodfellow

While few took this threat seriously, behind the scenes there was a significant
change over the ensuing months, whereby it is believed that intense pressure
was put on the Speaker of Parliament to expedite the passage of the bills and
stem the renewed assertiveness of the legislature.51

It was shortly after this, in August 2013, that the government re-tabled and
passed the Public Order Management Bill amid huge controversy. This was
far from an empty gesture and many of the bill’s clauses were alarming to
both international and domestic human rights observers. Nevertheless, the
timing of the decision to steamroll it through parliament after four years,
while up to that point it had served as a looming threat that the government
could push forward or pull back at strategic moments, reflects the regime’s
increasing belligerence towards opposition in parliament as much as on the
streets. As an expert on the Ugandan legislature noted, the timing of the
passage of bills ‘is certainly not arbitrary . . . it makes sense to assume that
there’s strong political pressure determining what gets expedited and what
just languishes for years’.52 Just as the time finally came to push through the
Buganda bills in late 2009, so the Public Order Management Bill’s political
moment had come in mid-2013. In years when it was hanging in the balance,
however, the bill helped feed violence, as argued below.

Events surrounding the notorious so-called ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’
have also not been free of political manoeuvres, on the part of both David
Bahati, the MP who introduced it, and the government itself. Bahati has
been accused of attempting to further his own political career by proposing
this bill, using the widespread popular support for it to hold the government
to ransom.53 Moreover, while the bill was rejected several times both by
Museveni and the cabinet in 2010–11, when Bahati brought it back in 2012
the government arguably welcomed the distraction from some much more
serious issues facing the country around this time — in particular, a number
of high-profile corruption scandals and the aforementioned Petroleum Bill.
For one observer, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill came to serve ‘an important
political function’ in the context of aid cuts triggered by massive corruption,
because ‘just at the point he was losing favor with donors, renewed threats
to pass the anti-gay bill have given him new leverage’.54 Meanwhile, many
have observed that the placing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill on the parlia-
mentary agenda immediately after the domestically divisive Petroleum Bill
was a deliberate effort to bury the conflict over oil in a new debate.55 Regret-
tably, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was something that Museveni could use

51. Interview with adviser to the Ugandan Parliament, 5 August 2013.
52. Ibid.
53. He certainly gained celebrity status, and it appeared that his political ambitions were coming

to fruition when he was reportedly considered for a cabinet position in May 2011 (Daily
Monitor, 15 May 2011).

54. Newsweek/The Daily Beast, 15 December 2012.
55. New Republic, 5 December 2012.

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 771

as a ‘unifying force’ within Uganda at such strategic moments; the timing
of its return was thus ‘no coincidence’.56

Even the ‘National Coalition Against Homosexuality and Sexual Abuses
in Uganda’ condemned the bill as ‘populist and opportunist’.57 The proposi-
tions in the bill regarding the punishment of Ugandan homosexuals abroad
are both unworkable and would severely damage relations between Uganda
and the international community. Regardless of whether it is implemented,
however, the prolonged debate on it — which the international commu-
nity’s outrage helped Museveni to justify domestically — has served certain
political purposes.58 It has been aptly noted that ‘the flames of virulent ho-
mophobia are fanned at times when other issues more crucial to the interests
of Ugandan citizens risk dominating public discourse’ (Wood, 2012) and
that ‘the longer it takes, the better for Museveni’.59

The Petroleum Bill itself was pushed through parliament in 2012 af-
ter an epic and polarizing parliamentary battle of the kind not seen since
the lifting of term limits in 2005, ushering in a new period of legislative–
executive antagonism, as noted above. The severity of intent behind this
bill is underscored by the fact that, unlike the others discussed here, there
was never any protracted posturing: the bill was passed in the year of its
tabling and Museveni went to great lengths to ensure that all cabinet mem-
bers and ‘establishment’ MPs attended to ensure its passage.60 Neverthe-
less, as this section has shown, the trajectory of certain other pieces of
draft legislation in the Eighth and early Ninth Parliaments has (beyond the
particular issue of the ‘Buganda question’) been characterized by strategic
legal manoeuvring. Can this be linked to further outbreaks of violence?
Such linkages are more tentative than in the Buganda case, but observable
nevertheless.

The most significant episodes of violent protest after the 2009 riots were
the 2011–12 ‘Walk-to-Work’ demonstrations. It would be difficult to argue
that these were rooted in legal manoeuvres in the manner discussed above,
but there are reasons to believe that legal manoeuvring exacerbated the
violence surrounding these events as they unfolded over time. While there
is not sufficient space to go into the events in detail,61 the ‘walk-to-work’
episode was triggered when opposition leader Kizza Besigye, angered at
losing what he perceived as a third ‘stolen’ election and capitalizing on

56. Angelo Izama, Ugandan political analyst, cited in Newsweek/The Daily Beast, 15 December
2012.

57. The Africa Report, 26 November 2012.
58. This was certainly the view of a close observer of the bill’s progress consulted on 6 March

2012.
59. Kapya Kaoma of the Political Research Associates, cited in New Republic, 5 December

2012.
60. The Observer, 9 December 2012.
61. See Conroy-Krutz and Logan (2012), Goodfellow (2013), ICG (2012), and Mamdani (2011)

for discussions.

772 Tom Goodfellow

rising food and fuel prices, announced his campaign to take to Kampala’s
streets. Protests took place twice weekly for around a month from mid-
April 2011, with increasing degrees of violence, reaching their zenith on
12 May 2011 in the largest demonstration in the NRM period and a violent
crackdown causing several deaths.62

Despite the origins of these protests in post-electoral discontent and in-
flation, there was little by way of a clear political agenda on the part of
the protestors, particularly when the demonstrations restarted in late 2011
and early 2012. Besigye even fell silent for fifteen seconds on the radio
when asked to outline his political objectives.63 However, by late 2011 the
political controversy over the Public Order Management Bill was raging,
and the only coherence to Besigye’s political agenda came to centre on
legal discourses around the right to protest and the conduct of the police.
Indeed, Besigye’s multiple arrests on dubious grounds during the protests
crystallized a minimal programme based on his right to demonstrate. He
proclaimed that ‘I believe that what they are doing is illegal, I’m going to
get advice from my lawyers, and if it is necessary we will seek an injunc-
tion from the high court of Uganda to order these rampaging policemen
out of my way’.64 This was fed by the government’s increasingly ludicrous
suggestions that walking to work was an illegal attempt to overthrow the
government, culminating in treason charges against Besigye and his sup-
porters using Uganda’s colonial-era Penal Code Act (1950).65 The fact that
the government was crying treason while ‘not bothering to implement any
other laws’ added fuel to the protestors’ fire.66 By late 2011 the protests
and the debate around public order legislation were cyclically feeding one
another.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill also fomented violence: at least five violent
protests and other incidents directly related to the controversy stirred up by
the bill can be identified, several of which involved fatalities.67 Moreover,
many of the riots taking place in city marketplaces since 2007 were linked
to unfulfilled government policies on allowing vendors to take control of
their own marketplaces (Goodfellow, 2013). While not responding to legal
manoeuvres as such, these events were often spurred by populist but arguably
insincere pre-election policy announcements, often later reversed, and as
such there are echoes of the manoeuvring discussed above with respect
to how the manipulation of democratic processes fed into frustration and
violence.

62. The Independent (Uganda), 13 May 2011.
63. Andrew Mwenda, interview on Capital FM (Uganda), 20 January 2012.
64. Kizza Besigye interviewed by BBC News, 19 May 2011.
65. The Observer (Uganda), 23 November 2011.
66. Interview with local politician, 12 December 2011.
67. Armed Conflict Location & Events Dataset: http://www.acleddata.com/

Legal Manoeuvres and Violence in Uganda 773

CONCLUSIONS

This article has developed an argument about how law-making processes
have been instrumentalized in recent years in Uganda, with political man-
oeuvring around the prospect of particular laws, rather than their actual
implementation, often driving the agenda. It makes no claim that this is the
sole function of the legislative process; there are clearly laws in relation
to which implementation is of paramount concern. Nevertheless, there has
been an observable phenomenon at play whereby certain laws are discussed,
debated, shelved and reformulated without evidence of serious effort to
implement and with clear political gains to the government in the process. It
is difficult to believe, given the government’s constraints on the legislature
since 2006 and its ability to quite rapidly push through some of the most
contentious laws, that legislative pushback is the sole cause of stalled law
making in the period under consideration. This has certainly played a key role
at times, and the need to negotiate with opposition in a semi-authoritarian
rather than purely dictatorial regime should not be overlooked. Nevertheless,
one local politician’s observation that ‘in Uganda, anything can pass’ if the
executive is sufficiently committed does not seem to be far from the truth;
the passing of the highly contested Petroleum and Public Order Management
Bills would seem to support this.68

The fact that the executive does not always seem committed to its bills
does not mean that intent to pass or implement is absent at all points in
the life of the bill. On the contrary, what this examination of the trajectory
of particular cases has shown is how the use of draft bills changes over
time, dependent on political cycles and contingent events. The desirability
of passing or implementing a bill can dramatically increase or decrease
depending on the scope of opposition and the political utility of keeping the
debate on a particular issue alive. In some cases (such as the Cultural Leaders
Bill) the symbolism of passing the bill may be the law’s zenith, surpassing
in importance any function it fulfils once it has become legislation. As
one observer noted, the government ‘passes these laws not so much to put
them in place but as a sort of punitive action . . . . They don’t believe in the
effectiveness of these laws themselves’.69

This article has also advanced a parallel argument that the instrumental-
ization of law making in this way can be linked to some of the most violent
events in Uganda in recent years, particularly in the capital city. It does not
claim to provide a holistic explanation for any specific outbreaks of protest
and rioting. With regard to the Buganda issue, for example, the legal man-
oeuvring discussed here was just part of a repertoire of political strategies
to antagonize and isolate the Kingdom’s elite, and likewise was just one
of the factors stimulating the violence. The intention is to highlight one

68. Interview with local politician, 29 September 2009.
69. Interview with lawyer, 14 December 2011.

774 Tom Goodfellow

important but understudied mechanism through which semi-authoritarian
rule has fed into civic violence. While each outbreak of protest, rioting or
violent government response might have diverse proximate causes, there is
reason to believe that some more general underlying factors are at play given
the dramatic overall increase in such events. This article has drawn attention
to one of these factors.

Moreover, the increase in riots and protest in Uganda parallels an in-
crease across Africa as a whole, where violent protest has dramatically
increased relative to civil war.70 The prevalence of semi-authoritarian rule
and democratic reversal in Africa has been a feature over the same pe-
riod (Lynch and Crawford, 2011), and as noted previously, the correlation
between such regimes and civic violence has been established but little ex-
plored. Drawing on the case of Uganda, this article highlights the importance
of attending to the way legislative processes are handled in understanding
semi-authoritarian rule and civic violence in contemporary Africa. In a semi-
authoritarian setting, the manner in which laws are brought onto and taken
off the agenda is likely to be highly erratic due to authoritarian efforts to
manipulate sometimes vigorous democratic institutions. Laws may therefore
be drafted with unreasonable speed, but equally their progress through the
legislative system can be tortuously slow. The Uganda case suggests both
that this can be part of a political strategy and that the effect can be socially
and politically destabilizing, resulting in a greater tendency for both violent
protest and state crackdown.

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Tom Goodfellow (e-mail: t.goodfellow@sheffield.ac.uk) is a Lecturer in Ur-
ban Studies and International Development at the Department of Town and
Regional Planning, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10
2TN, UK. He works on urban politics, informality, conflict and develop-
ment in sub-Saharan Africa, and has published in journals including Oxford
Development Studies, Comparative Politics, Urban Studies and Geoforum.

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