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African Affairs 101:231-241 (2002)
© 2002 The Royal African Society

Article

Uganda's referendum 2000: The silent boycott: A comment

Ole Therkildsen

Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen

In the June 2000 referendum, Ugandans were asked to choose between the existing ‘movement’ system and a multiparty system. Bratton and Lambright (BL) did a survey of people's attitudes to democracy and argued that there was an ‘extensive "silent" boycott’ of the referendum ‘among persons who sympathized with the idea of multiparty competition’. Such people did not like the referendum choice ‘which they interpreted as being between a hegemonic movement and an unacceptable set of old political parties’. This main finding is questioned. Apart from methodological problems, it is argued that more context-specific analyses of the referendum results are needed to understand public opinion in Uganda about democracy and the movement system. More importantly, BL ignore the fact that the movement system is a combination of no-party political arrangements and devolution, implicitly assuming that the latter has no impact on present attitudes to government systems and democracy. There is a need to conceptualize and assess the significance of devolution in democratization processes in Africa and how it may influence public opinion on democracy.


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