ABSTRACT

What explains youth political mobilization in Uganda – or lack thereof? This article challenges the simple dichotomy of youth as either a dangerous or disengaged political constituency. Instead, we analyze the conditions that determine whether youth can coalesce as a politically salient category. For many, the outcome of the 2021 Ugandan elections defied expectations. A large and underemployed youth population combined with the emergence of self-proclaimed ‘youth candidate’ Bobi Wine, led both international and domestic analysts to predict a strong youth challenge to National Resistance Movement (NRM) dominance. However, while Bobi Wine captured the opposition vote, he was unable to create a new youth constituency that could overcome existing political and regional cleavages. This article draws on interviews and fieldwork on youth political mobilization during the 2021 elections to identify and analyze a range of historically rooted methods that the NRM effectively deploys to mobilize and fragment youth. The findings confirm the need to look beyond rallies and rhetoric to analyze whether the conditions are right to allow youth to emerge as a politically salient category.

摘要

如何解释乌干达的青年政治动员——或缺乏青年政治动员？本文挑战了将青年视为危险或脱离政治选民的简单二分法。相反，我们分析了决定青年能否联合起来成为政治上突出类别的条件。对于许多人来说，2021 年乌干达选举的结果出乎意料。大量未充分就业的青年人口，加上自称为“青年候选人”的博比·瓦恩的出现，导致国际和国内分析人士预测，青年人将对国家抵抗运动（NRM）的统治地位构成强大挑战。然而，尽管博比·瓦恩赢得了反对派选票，但他无法创建一个能够克服现有政治和地区分歧的新青年选区。本文利用对 2021 年选举期间青年政治动员的采访和实地调查，来识别和分析 NRM 有效部署的一系列历史悠久的方法来动员和分裂青年。研究结果证实，需要超越集会和言论来分析是否有合适的条件让青年成为政治上的重要群体。