The Politics of Accountability in Uganda's Education Sector

There has been a growing recognition that politics and political processes are key in determining the pathway of quality education reform process, emphasising that it is not a mere technical reform action but a process that is shaped by political decisions, incentives, and power relations across various social and political groups (Bruns et al., 2019; Hossain & Hickey, 2019; Bennell, 2020). While the 2018 World Development Report (WDR), Learning to Realize Education's Promise, highlighted the role of politics in education reform (World Bank, 2017), scholars have called for further exploration of the learning crisis from a political economy perspective. Especially, this political discussion has been nascent in the education sector’s research agenda (Gift & Wibbles, 2014; Mbiti, 2016). Furthermore, the 2004 WDR, Making Services Work for the Poor, proposed that weak and dysfunctional accountability relationships between service users (parents and students) and service providers (teachers and public officials) are directly linked to the “misalignment” problem in service delivery (World Bank, 2003). However, given that parents are often poorly equipped to demand better quality education from their policymakers or teachers, both the long and short term accountability routes might be undermined (Hossain & Hickey, 2019). Scholars have shown that the emphasis on “client power” or on improving service delivery has yielded mixed results (Joshi, 2013; Fox, 2015) and that short-term initiatives were often implemented as “widgets” without much attention to the broader political context (Joshi & Houtzager, 2012). Taking Uganda as a case study, following the implementation of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme by Museveni’s government in 1997, Uganda’s primary education sector initially saw a surge in enrolment rates. At that time, the regime’s commitment to universal education was driven by the donor’s agenda for free education. However, since then, the Ugandan government has undergone several neoliberal transformations that have affected its incentives to maintain public investment in public education at the expense of the growing privatisation of the sector (Nystrand & Tamm, 2018). Uganda is a typical case for other countries across the Global South, which, despite its successful surge in access to education through UPE programmes, clientelist and exclusive political dynamics prevented the transformative potential of this greater enrolment trend from translating into an improved quality of education system. This paper deploys a two-step, multi-method analytical approach to investigate accountability relations embedded in one of Uganda's major social policy programmes. The chapter addresses a key research question: Under what conditions can accountability efforts improve primary education performance in Uganda? I argue that in Uganda’s increasingly clientelist and securitised political settlement, accountability relationships in the education sector are complex and significantly affected by political dynamics across different layers of governance. Therefore, accountability efforts should not be viewed in a binary way, such as through the short- and long-term route or the supply-and-demand governance model, but rather be approached holistically. These complex accountability relationships are intertwined with a high level of political patronage, reduced or stagnant spending on social sectors, and administrative dysfunctions that impede effective service delivery.