Beyond the Barracks: Diffuse Militarisation and the Future of Democratic Governance in Uganda

Abstract

How does militarisation undermine democratic governance without replacing civilian government through a coup? Conventional civil-military relations scholarship has concentrated on coups, military rule and the institutional subordination of the armed forces. More recent research has examined police militarisation, securitised development and coercion under electoral authoritarianism, but these literatures often analyse the military, police, courts, elections and public administration as separate arenas. This article develops the concept of diffuse militarisation to explain how military personnel, coercive authority, command practices and security rationalities migrate across formally civilian institutions while constitutional government and periodic elections remain in place. Uganda is an analytically important case because the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has combined military professionalisation, electoral institutions and sustained civilian rule with an expanding military presence in electoral management, policing, justice, economic governance, public administration and political succession. Drawing on qualitative documentary analysis of legislation, court decisions, election-observation reports, official documents, peer-reviewed scholarship, policy reports and triangulated media reporting from 1986 to July 2026, the article identifies four mutually reinforcing mechanisms: institutional fusion, functional substitution, juridification of coercion and personalised command. The analysis shows that militarisation is not merely an episodic response to insecurity. It has become a mode of regime maintenance that redistributes authority away from accountable civilian institutions, raises the costs of opposition organisation and converts political contestation into a security problem. The Ugandan case extends comparative debates by showing that professionalisation and militarisation may proceed together, and that the democratic danger lies not only in direct military intervention but also in the gradual normalisation of military power within ostensibly civilian governance. Demilitarisation therefore requires institutional boundary restoration, civilian oversight, police reform, judicial autonomy and credible constitutional succession rather than the simple withdrawal of soldiers to barracks.