in contemporary Uganda, and others may not.
The story of the ebimeeza and the controversies around them allow us to understand in detail the parameters of criticism and of the complex ways in which limits are imposed on the ways in which people may imagine themselves as members of a polity. What kind of political order was imagined and practiced in the ebimeeza? What kinds of speech did people value and why? What does the existence of the ebimeeza and their disappearance reveal about the Ugandan political society? In short, the ambition of this book could be summarized as understanding the imaginaries of political personhood at play in contemporary Uganda while not separating those imaginaries from the concrete and complex mechanisms of political domination in force under Museveni’s regime, beyond large and reductive dichotomies. By doing so, this book ties together the study of the polemical imagination of citizenship and the study of what is often called “authoritarianism,” or, in the case of Uganda, “semiauthoritarianism.”
Complicating the Picture of “Hybrid Regimes”
After the crushed hopes of the “third wave of democratization,” the concept of “hybrid regimes” was supposed to allow a closer understanding of political situations that include features presented as essential to democracy but also characteristics described as authoritarian.4 Interestingly, Museveni’s Uganda is often quoted as the paragon of the “hybrid regime” and characterized as “semiauthoritarian,” a regime that “remain[ed] basically authoritarian, but incorporated some democratic innovations.”5 According to this literature, semiauthoritarian regimes are characterized by the existence of competitive elections; the oscillation between a certain regard for human rights and civil liberties on the one hand, and their violation on the other; nepotism practices, corruption, and the abuse of power, but also the possibility to challenge such behavior through parliamentary politics, the judiciary, and the media.
The new typology that stemmed from this idea of “hybridity” (with categories such as “illiberal democracies,” “liberal semidemocracies,” “quasidemocracies,” “pseudodemocracies,” “semidemocracies” or “semiauthoritarianisms,” “competitive authoritarianisms” or “electoral authoritarianisms”) was indeed more precise.6 However, its heuristic value is not satisfactory when it comes to understanding the actual extent and parameters of the state’s power as well as the repertoires within which people living under a particular regime act and think in their daily lives.7
Within a particular regime, the ways in which control is carried out varies enormously according to the different localized and complex ways in which the state is socially embodied. The hybrid typology is often based on very broad indexes amalgamating complex realities into measurable variables that do not take into account the sociology and history of the state, its agents, or those of the populations involved. Typically, political actors are identified using large formal categories (the judiciary, the media, the military). The social histories of these groups or institutions, the ways they were formed through the amalgamation, the integration, and the exclusion of particular social actors, as well as their inner conflicts and debates, are largely erased. The daily negotiated dimension of power and repression, which are deeply intertwined in the social fabric, is overlooked. It is often forgotten that even in a context labeled as “authoritarian,” where the state can appear as homogeneously submitted to a powerful executive, it is in fact a competitive space. The state is crossed by social, political, and ideological differences and antagonisms, and it is entrenched within society as well as within the struggles that structure it.8
Typically, in the “hybrid” literature, changes identified as “democratic” are seen as strategic and reluctant concessions to external donors to legitimize the autocrat’s rule. Obviously, this dimension of instrumentalizing donors’ “good governance” agendas by top leaders should not be overlooked. But there is more to this than mere strategy. A sociological approach takes into account the complex working and sociology of the state in all its heterogeneity, including in its extroverted dimension, and provides a more comprehensive picture. What can be said, for instance, of the corporative interests of sections of the state? Of the interests of particular segments of the political and bureaucratic elite in pushing reforms or agendas that might be favorable to their own social advancement?9 The literature on these issues has demonstrated the heuristic value of analyzing political change as the result of a confrontation or accommodation of sociohistorical segments of society and their struggle for power, recognition, and access to the state, beyond the surface of “democratization.”10
This book relies on the principle that the exercise of power is intertwined with social relations and should thus be studied from the analysis of society (i.e., from the study of the socially entrenched daily interactions between groups and individuals). This approach should not stop us from studying processes of institutionalization and autonomization of the state. However, this book recalls that the negotiations at play in terms of how to speak about politics (for instance) involve actors who are ingrained with multiple social belongings, and who largely transcend the simplified dichotomy of a “liberal” civil society resisting an oppressive state.
Another concern raised by the idea of “hybrid regimes” is that it gives the impression that some dynamics and political actors within a political regime are fundamentally “democratic,” whereas others are fundamentally “authoritarian.” It thus often encourages a deductive and univocal reading of social and political phenomena (Does this dynamic, or this institution, favor “democracy” or not?) instead of letting emic meanings and unexpected consequences emerge from the field. Political action is analyzed only against this dual, univocal grid and not according to alternative, autonomous logics or social dynamics that might explain behaviors or outcomes in a different way, rather than just as the result of a great confrontation between forces that are fundamentally repressive versus forces that would be fundamentally liberal.11
We know, however, that power relationships are more ambivalent: rulers are also ruled, and the ruled can be oppressors.12 If we follow Foucault, forms of agency can emerge within or even from situations of submission.13 Consent is not univocal and total: It can be given to one aspect of political rule and not to others. It can mix support, criticism, and fear. Languages of authority, the politics of control, and even state violence sometimes appear legitimate to some.14 There is a “vast range of relationships to authority” that needs to be described and understood and that cannot be encompassed in a dualist framework.15
As Béatrice Hibou has shown, in situations labeled as authoritarian, the mechanics of domination also involve forces and dynamics that cannot be reduced only to the state, and actions or phenomena that might contribute to reinforcing a certain political hierarchy, but not necessarily intentionally.16 Even in contexts of strong political pressure and violence, people also act according to rationalities, interests, and agendas that do not necessarily intend to oppress or resist. The routine politics of violence and its negotiation, in particular, need to be taken into account; for instance, the interaction between a local police officer and the radio reporter working on a story, whereby both act according to a variety of distinct and local interests and rationalities. As we will see in detail, people might consent, desire, or submit to a certain social order that reinforces patterns of political domination while not necessarily supporting the regime.
A dichotomist framework cannot encompass this social thickness: these intertwined yet distinct rationalities, belongings, and historicities. Such a framework impoverishes the social experience of domination, the ways in which people live and interpret politics. This is obviously not to say that some people—indeed, many people—in Uganda do not suffer and pay a great price for defending the right to act or to speak as they wish, nor to minimize their effort, pain, or sacrifice. On the contrary, this book seeks to highlight and analyze the complex and manifold social implications of their struggle.
Understanding the Production of Media Speech beyond Normative Yardsticks
These nuances are all the more important to mention, as the apparent contradiction between the existence in Uganda of a vibrant and sometimes very critical media scene and the regular recourse to the coercion of journalists is often pointed out as the perfect embodiment of the “paradoxical”