ABSTRACT
Social values shaped Ugandan elections in a different manner. Widely held social beliefs prevent members from several demographic categories from exercising significant political influence. Gender is only one, although the most important, of these social categories in Uganda. From Legislative Council elections before independence through 2016, few women have been elected to parliamentary seats where men were also eligible to contest elections. Agency, the opposite pole to structure yet inextricably entwined with it, is essential to all explanations of competition for power and thus to any election. Yet, it presents its own daunting interpretative problems. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) did not control campaigning by NRM candidates in rural constituencies in 2016, because the NRM supplied little of the campaign finance spent by any of them. Rural NRM organizers exercised agency by causing rural defections from opposition parties with surprisingly little expenditure of patronage from central party organs.
