A clientelist facade: policymaking and clientelist interests in a pension programme in Uganda

This article explores the relationships between clientelism and policymaking in the case of an old age pension programme in Uganda. Instead of considering them as a zero-sum game, the article shows how those rationales combine in the actual making of the programme, based on a multi-level research project (from policy-design to implementation) combining interviews and observations, carried out between 2018 and 2019. The clientelist and electoral interests that structure the national bureaucratic field foster the adoption and expansion of the programme, but also influence its design through the development of a diagnosis of potential manipulations and thereby the strengthening of identification techniques, at the risk of excluding eligible but vulnerable applicants. However, the centrality of local politico-administrative structures in the implementation gives pensions a clientelist facade and reinforces dynamics of allegiance and loyalty to the NRM regime