Justice and Peace Commission
Archdiocese of Gulu
August 2008, Vol. 8, No. 5
Original survey data, gathered between September 2005 and March 2006, shows that the habitually overlooked northern Uganda might have the-last-say on who will be the next president of Uganda come 2011. In a fascinating study, Christopher Blattman, of the prestigious Yale University, shows why from now on it might be the biggest mistake ever done by any politician aspiring to lead Uganda, not to read into and profit from the dynamics of the 20+ year war in northern Uganda.
Blattman put it straight forward that the famous "paradox of voting" -- the unlikely chance that a single vote will change the outcome of an election making the expected private benefit to voting zero, and so even a small cost of voting should deter a rational individual from participating -- is no longer holding in the case of northern Uganda. After nearly 22 years of war, violence, economic destruction, and political injustice, the ethnic groups in northern Uganda, mainly the Acholi, have become the most politically active region in Uganda, research shows.
In his study titled, "From Violence to Voting: War and political participation in Uganda," Blattman finds that Kony's abduction of youth in northern Uganda has led to significantly greater political participation by these very young men. And what is more interesting in Blattman's findings is the fact that the principal determinant of this increased political participation appears to have been the war violence experienced. His findings are backed up by oceans of literature.
A series of researches have already confirmed that combat experiences and exposure to war violence lead to greater political participation and engagement among young men formerly in an armed group. Psychologists find that victims of violence are in general resilient, and that exposure has led to political activism among groups such as Jewish Holocaust survivors, Palestinian victims of bombardment, and Americans (Obama?) after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Research also argues that the civil war in Liberia saw the birth of a robust indigenous civil society and human rights organisations.
In his 2004 monograph, "The Paradox of Warlord Democracy," Leonard Wantchekon -- an American researcher -- argues that nearly 40% of all civil wars that took place from 1945 to 1993 worldwide resulted in an improvement in the level of democracy, generally when warlords saw democratisation in their interests.
But I did not pick pen and paper to recite political theories and research conclusions. Mr. President, I was provoked to stray off my traditional economic analysis and wander into political psychiatry by your latest political strategy (or lack of it?).
It is now undoubted that you are not ready to relinquish power. You have already kicked off the campaign to win a fourth term. And as usual you are making rounds visiting your historical political strongholds and future strategic regions around the country. This is business as usual for you. What I find surprising, though, is your failure to read the seemingly lucid Uganda's political barometer..
You know pretty well that in the last three elections, you and your party (NRM) were intensely unpopular in the Acholi region (in 2006 Presidential elections, fewer than 5% supported you [NRM].
You know very well that for two solid decades, since you came to power, there has been widespread antipathy for your government among the Acholi and other ethnic groups in the north, mainly due to instability and economic destruction in the region which makes it stand in stark contrast to the success and stability of the rest of Uganda.
You know very well that much as the war has ended, northern Uganda will not transform in a fortnight. It will take years, the ongoing rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts notwithstanding, to make the 20-year war theatre regain momentum for economic progress.
So for the unforeseeable future, the north will remain poorer and disproportionately incomparable to the south. And therefore, a rational forecaster would say that ceteris paribus the voting pattern in the north will stay put.
And if that was the case the same sophisticated forecaster would say that given the voting trend in the last three elections (1996, 2001 and 2006) where we see NRM's support shrinking by nearly 20%, a change in strategy is a must if the political status quo is to continue holding.
And this change should focus not on how to regain the lost support (political theorists tell us that unlike social love, political love is not rekindled!) but on how to steal into your enemies' strongholds. Researchers have already found that war and violence has pushed the youth in the north towards more participatory politics and collective action at the micro-level more than any other region.
Blattman has found that the largest and most consistent determinant of political participation in the north is the number of violent acts received by the youth. Among the abducted, each additional act of violence received is associated with a 2.9 percentage point increase in the probability of voting, and voting as a block. He found that formerly abducted youth "feel like they can take control of their lives," "they comfortably speak their views in a group of people or a crowd."
So the data imply a large and robust causal impact of abduction on political participation in northern Uganda, mediated it seems by violence received. And that there is no evidence of elite or government mobilisation of abducted youth (or other victims of violence). “Now tell whether it is not a grave mistake for this government to ignore such politically animated youth of the north,”
Research has also found out that the abduction in northern Uganda has been associated with lower wealth and employment, lower literacy and education, and higher levels of distress, each of which could make an abductee more susceptible to vote buying or pressure.
Riker and Ordeshook, in their 1968 fascinating article "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," posit that voters punish incumbent politicians for bad economic performance and reward them for good, even when those events are beyond political control.
Thirty eight years later, in 2004, Achen and Bartels extend the hypothesis by asserting that voters punish incumbents even for natural disasters, droughts, floods, and shark attacks!
With this in mind I can't wait to witness what is likely to befall NRM in a few years to come given the ongoing unveiling political realities,” Christopher Blattman wrote. And in this reconsideration, Christopher Blattman put northern Uganda at the top of the priority list because unlike ever before, the political winds might change direction and the most “ignored region” turn into the main determinant of who wins in 2011.
Justice and Peace Commission
Archdiocese of Gulu
Tel. 256 (0) 471-435.951