Uganda

For much of its postcolonial history, Uganda has provided a textbook example of so-called big man rule. The regimes of Milton Obote and Idi Amin were brutal and highly personalized. Yoweri Museveni promised something different. Yet, 25 years later, Museveni has failed to break the mold of Ugandan politics. There is a veneer of democracy, marked by regular elections, yet achieved on an unlevel playing field. Uganda's government is in essence an authoritarian patronage-based regime, albeit one that can still count on considerable yet tepid support from a population for whom the memory of war and civil conflict is still fairly recent. This style of governance has major implications for the future stability of Uganda. Although the long-term threats to Uganda are mostly internal, the short-term challenges come mainly from outside. The most immediate one is the potential spillover effect of instability in South Sudan.