Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the post-war transition in northern Uganda has been secured in part through a strategy of unpredictable and often harsh state interventions that renders the regime ever-present in citizens' imaginations while undermining societal political organization.

Paper long abstract:

This article presents a new theory of governance to account for political stability in seemingly weak or fragile states. The article is based on eight months of qualitative research in northern Uganda, which experienced civil war from 1986-2006. It argues that the enduring power of Uganda's ruling regime, as experienced in the conflict-affected north of the country, relies on "institutionalized arbitrariness"—a system in which the ruling regime unpredictably claims and denies its authority to intervene in matters of concern to civilians (from domestic disputes to theft to murder), and backs these unpredictable assertions and denials by meaningful threat of overwhelming force. In turn, this atomizes society and undermines societal political organization. Institutionalized arbitrariness is made possible by four factors: the perception of state control of sovereign violence, shifting and fluid state jurisdiction, the perception of potential state presence, and non-hierarchical and fragmented security and governance institutions. Together, these four factors produce an environment of seemingly arbitrary violence that makes the government ever-present in civilian imagination, while the regime avoids the costs associated with direct rule and the principal-agent problems associated with indirect rule. Thus, institutionalized arbitrariness reflects an efficient and effective mode of contemporary governance in Uganda's post-conflict borderlands.