The Institutional and Legal Context of the Elections in Uganda

This research project will analyse the development of democratic processes in Uganda by focusing on institutions aimed at securing democratic accountability:

To what extent are the institutions in place to guard against executive dominance able to exercise their functions?

The empirical focus is the political developments in the period before, during and after the 2006 elections.

We examine four sets of institutions charged with ensuring an impartial and fair electoral process:

1. the electoral channel 2. the party system 3. the parliament 4. the judiciary

The study is designed to allow comparisons with findings from similar CMI research projects carried out in Zambia and Malawi.

This project is a co-operation project between CMI and Makerere University (Department of Political Science and Public Administration and Department of Public and Comparative Law).

Project goals: Strengthen the donor community's understanding of political processes and institutions that are central in the conduct of the 2006 elections in Uganda. Contribute to ongoing initiatives of democratic monitoring by civil society in Uganda. Strengthen policy oriented research at Makerere University. Be an important tool for Norwegian research institutions to build, update and maintain their analytical capacity on Uganda. These web pages aim to continue this discourse by providing information on the situation in Uganda and in the region, and by presenting academic work on a range of issues relating to Uganda and on elections in general, as well as links to other resources. We invite contributions, information and reports from experts and practitioners in any of the relevant fields. These can then be sent to uganda@cmi.no