Title: The Political Economy of Governance Reforms in Uganda
Abstract: Abstract This article analyses the implementation of governance reforms in Uganda in the 1990s, highlighting the political and institutional factors that explain different trajectories of reform. The three cases of governance reform – civil service reform, the creation of a semi-autonomous revenue authority and anti-corruption agencies – share a number of common features. First, they all followed a similar trajectory in their implementation, achieving a degree of initial success that was then gradually undermined. Second, the institutional features that appear to account for that initial success – strong political support to technocratic or bureaucratic elites with some degree of insulation from political and societal interests – also help explain why such reforms are susceptible to a process of unravelling. Third, the main explanation for the loss of reform momentum or reversals lies in the imperative of preserving the institutional foundations of neo-patrimonial politics.