Grabbing an Election: Abuse of State Resources in the 2011 Elections in Uganda

Abstract

Elections are an integral part of representative democracies. Well functioning elections contribute to democratic accountability and democratic institutions, which in turn contributes to economic and human development too (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012; Gerring et al., 2012). But the integrity and quality of the electoral process is in many countries threatened by the growing importance of money in politics: vote buying and the use of state and other illegal resources for partisan purposes (Annan et al., 2012). Electoral fraud has both economic and political consequences, as illustrated by the 2011 parliamentary, presidential and local elections in Uganda. They ended, as many observers expected, with a landslide victory for incumbent President Yoweri K. Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM). The victory was Museveni’s fourth consecutive election victory, after winning in 1996 and 2001 under the ‘Movement-system’ when no opposition parties were allowed, and the first multiparty electoral competition in 2006.