Unchanging public order policing in changing times in East Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Unchanging public order policing in changing times in East Africa
Author:	Baker, Bruce
Year:	2015
Periodical:	Journal of Modern African Studies (ISSN 0022-278X)
Volume:	53
Issue:	3
Pages:	365-389
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Ethiopia Uganda
Subjects:	political repression protest police information technology Internet
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X15000567
Abstract:	This article offers a political analysis of the practices and motives of public order policing in Ethiopia and Uganda. It offers an explanation of the continuation of forceful tactics against political protest in a context of changing methods of information gathering, organisation and mobilisation by urban activists resulting from their access to internet and communication technology. It finds the two regimes, as anocracies, are caught between legally allowing protest and yet, conscious of their fragility, determined to crush opposition. For the latter approach, their militarist leaderships rely heavily on continued police violence. The article concludes that failure of the police to adapt their public order policing to the new protest environment leaves them increasingly ineffective and unpopular. It is likely to provoke an escalation of violence and may both undermine the legitimacy of their regimes and reverse their attempts to open political space that justified their rebellions against former autocracies. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract]