Paper short abstract:

With Uganda as a case study, we argue that in competitive authoritarian regimes, not only are particular social groups mobilized through clientelistic practices and patronage but public servants and political elites also get coopted and mobilized by social groups and special interests “bottom up”.

Paper long abstract:

As the literature has widely illustrated, authoritarian regimes resort to a variety of means to stay in power and deter opponents. Typically, mobilization and de-mobilization are portrayed as top down strategies instrumentally applied by a political elite, which is largely conceptualized as separate from other groups.

In this paper we want to contend this view by providing evidence from our research on informal social networks in Uganda. Our research shows that it is not only elites that coopt, mobilize and capture clienteles in a top down fashion, but that elites and public sector officials can also get coopted bottom up by social groups and special interests.

Informal social networks are greatly valued in Uganda, they operate on the basis of reciprocity and a sense of obligation towards the group on the part of all the members. Our research shows how these obligations are perceived as binding and tied to social status and respect with the result that deference to group demands and expectations very often supersede considerations to the formal legal framework. Thus, while social contacts are often needed to land a job in the public sector, the beneficiary automatically becomes bound to the demands and obligations towards the network and in this way "coopted" into providing fro the interests of the group. We argue that this pattern goes up all the way to the highest levels of government and make the claim that co-optation and mobilization strategies in competitive authoritarian Uganda consist of both top-down and bottom-up components.