Anne Mette Kjær

'Old brooms can sweep too!' An overview of rulers and public sector reforms in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya

New leaders are often assumed to be better able to push for policy and sector reform because they are less tied in by established patronage networks. The article discusses this assumption by examining public sector reform in three East African countries under different leaders. It finds that while neo-patrimonialism is an important reason why public sector reform is often blocked, this paradigm cannot explain why some public sector reforms are actually implemented. New leaders are not always new brooms, and whether they are so depends as much on formal conditions, such as the existence of a political coalition, as on informal neo-patrimonial factors. The article also finds that in some cases, old brooms can sweep too. When succession is institutionalised, as the Tanzanian case shows, even a relatively weak leader can carry out reform effectively in his second term because he does not have to consider re-election.

The Politics of Agricultural Policy Reform: The Case of Uganda

The debate on the politics of reform in Africa often focuses on neo‐patrimonialism as the main impediment to reform. While not denying the importance of patronage, this article focuses on how elections have affected agricultural policy in Uganda. It particularly focuses on the implementation of a reform of agricultural extension services (NAADS) which has been affected by a series of government interventions. The authors argue that the need to mobilise votes has become increasingly important to the Museveni regime in light of its ambitions to remain in power. As politics become more competitive, at least 2 political dynamics affect the implementation of agricultural policy: one is the need to implement policies that have tangible benefit to citizens country‐wide, and the second is the need to provide material resources in exchange for political loyalty. These dynamics have become increasingly urgent as support for the regime has declined.

Elections and landmark policies in Tanzania and Uganda

Much of the relevant literature on Africa downplays the salience of elections for policy-making and implementation. Instead, the importance of factors such as clientelism, ethnicity, organized interest groups, and donor influence, is emphasized. We argue that, in addition, elections now motivate political elites to focus on policies they perceive to be able to gain votes. This is based on analyses of six landmark decisions made during the last 15 years in the social, productive, and public finance sectors in Tanzania and Uganda. Such policies share a number of key characteristics: they are clearly identifiable with the party in power; citizens are targeted countrywide; and policy implementation aims at immediate, visible results.

The reversal of agricultural reform in Uganda: Ownership and values

Abstract This article explores the nature of ownership in a reform of the multi-donor-funded agricultural advisory service in Uganda. We argue that although there was a long process of programme formulation in which all stakeholders were heard, ownership was not as encompassing as it first appeared. In essence, the agricultural reform programme represented market-oriented values that were not echoed in large parts of the Ugandan polity. The eventual reversal of policy, back to government-provided extension, and to a large programme of heavily subsidised input supply, testifies to that. In addition, key stakeholders, notably local politicians and officials in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry, and Fisheries (MAAIF), were shut out from the original programme and this threatened its viability. If a genuine analysis of the economic and political context had been carried out, the donors might have anticipated this. Instead, they were revealed as ill-equipped to counteract the politicisation and re-claiming of ownership by the Ugandan government.

The Economics and Politics of Local Content in African Extractives: Lessons from Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique

Extractive foreign direct investment (FDI) is heralded as the new development opportunity in Africa. A key precondition for FDIs contribution, however, is that foreign investors create ‘local content’ by linking up to the local economy. Consequently, African host governments are contemplating ways in which they can promote local content. This paper examines local content policies and practices in three African countries – Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique – all countries with huge expectations for extractive based economic development. It is found that in spite of high ambitions and strong expectations, local content is limited, shallow and inefficient. The paper explores why local content apparently is so difficult to achieve in these African countries. It is argued that conventional economic explanations, focusing on market failures and weak institutions, are partial at best and therefore must be complemented with political explanations. Hence, it is proposed that local content practices in the three countries can be understood partly as the results of ruling elites’ efforts to build and maintain stable political coalitions.

“Land belongs to the people of Uganda”: politicians’ use of land issues in the 2016 election campaigns

ABSTRACT Politicians running for the 2016 elections in Uganda used land issues in various ways to mobilize votes. We explore the ways in which land was politicized during election campaigns, by examining the personal manifestos and rallies of candidates in the districts of Kaabong and Gulu, and in Kampala. Our main argument is that land was often constitutive of programmatic political debate, and was not only used in instrumental and patrimonial ways to mobilize votes. The most significant ways in which land was used in the election were to: raise questions of authorities’ and investors’ claims and “land-grabbing”; start discussions about land development, sale, and forms of tenure; buy votes with land (promises or access); encourage squatting on investors’ land to create conflicts over claims and gain popularity, and thus, votes; and raise issues about ethnicity, territorial rights, and autochthony.

Send for the Cavalry: Political Incentives in the Provision of Agricultural Advisory Services

This article examines how political incentives shape the implementation of agricultural advisory service reforms. Using the Uganda experience as a typical case we find that elections incentivised the government to add a subsidised input component to the existing service. Growing pressures from local politicians, the Ministry of Agriculture, and, increasingly, disgruntled army factions then constituted a strong, interlocking set of further incentives to revert to a recentralised, top-down model dominated by the new, subsidised input, component. Our findings point to how well designed implementation processes can be disrupted by the changing incentive structure, an insight which calls for more patient and much more pragmatic approaches to adopting ‘trial and error’ models rather than more ambitious but perhaps unrealistic ones. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Land governance as grey zone: the political incentives of land reform implementation in Africa

ABSTRACT Weak state capacity has often been in focus when explaining why land reform in sub-Saharan Africa is not implemented. However, an analysis of the deeper politics of land reform brings our attention to a set of incentives which allow rules governing land to be open to interpretation. This article demonstrates that in Uganda, the need to maintain the ruling coalition in a clientelist political settlement to build electoral support, and the desire to attract economic investors, constitute political incentives to maintain land governance as a grey zone, even if there is apparent political will to implement land reforms.

Debate on Governance in Africa: An Emerging Political Economy Paradigm

Governance has multiple meanings and uses in political science. In its broadest sense, governance refers to rule-making or steering. Questions are raised about how the state steers society and economy and what the outcomes of these processes are (Pierre 2000). Peters (2000) calls this perception the “old governance” view. But governance may also refer to a particular form of governing: relying less on state authority and more on negotiation through perceived networks (Kjaer 2004; Peters 2000; Rhodes 1996). Peters (2000) calls this the “new governance” view. Under this second usage of the term, questions are raised about, e.g., the role of networks; about self-governance; and about the formal and informal rules of public–private interactions.