The influence of citizen competence on district level political accountability in Uganda

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Date
2020-10Author
Kanyamurwa, John Mary
Obosi, Joseph Okeyo
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Citizen competence in a democratic society is perceived as an essential mechanism for
promoting political accountability in local governance. This paper, thus, qualitatively
investigates the relationship between citizen competence and political accountability in
Uganda’s local governance system across two discrete political regimes, during the
post-independence period. Using an in-depth explorative design, it was established that
citizens in both regimes were largely inarticulate, disengaged and uninvolved in determining
local preferences, suggesting minimal link between citizen competence and the propensity to
promote political accountability at district level. The data suggested that citizen competence
was less influential in district politics for the greater part of the post-colonial period.
Nonetheless, there were also episodes where citizens actively participated in enforcing
political accountability at the grassroots under multiparty politics in both the Obote II and
NRM regimes, with slight variations in the intensity and pattern between the two periods.
Thus, the level of citizen competence and nature of local governance in Uganda mirror the
political accountability practices at the local level, mainly shaped by civic challenges and the
character of politics in Uganda during the periods studied regardless of differences and longevity. The paper recommended deliberate state intervention for mobilization of citizens
and the establishment of state-engineered dynamic social networks to generate capacity for
holding local leaders accountable and more empowered civil society to construct robust
citizen competence programmes to foster political accountabilit