Ssekajja, Godfreyb
(2016)
State Stretch: Intrastate identities and the promotion of interstate integration.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
In attempting to explicate why leaders of sovereign states promote inter-state integration (ISI), most literature emphasizes the economic benefits involved. But economic explanations are sometimes insufficient because regional unions not only involve economic losses; they are also eminently political constructs. Where political motivations are identified, the focus is on the distribution of power and the relative gains among states. Thus, these power theories cannot explicate why leaders of states that incur relative losses, and those that are less powerful, would promote ISI. In much of this literature, domestic conflict is largely ignored despite its usefulness in understanding the factors that shape policy preferences. Even in the analyses that point to domestic political processes, the focus is on economic and geopolitical interests. Therefore, certain crucial intrastate tensions that impact government decision-making are usually not identified. This thesis identifies one such tension – ethnic sub-nationalism – and attempts to establish its relationship to the promotion of ISI in Africa.
Realizing the threat posed to state sovereignty when ethnicity is expressed in the form of sub-nationalism, I demonstrate how a threatened state’s leadership is more likely to promote ISI. My argument is that the need to discourage and replace a threatening subnational identity with a supranational identity causes the leadership to promote ISI. This allusion to the construction of social identities implies that the causal process is best contextualized within the constructivist theory. For evidence, I focus on Uganda and link Buganda’s ethnic identity to Museveni’s promotion of ISI in East Africa through congruence & content analyses of his speeches. By presenting Uganda’s ISI policy as an externalization of the country’s internal weaknesses, my research underscores the importance of examining threats to a state’s sovereignty from within in order to comprehend why that sovereignty is diminished from without. More crucially, I attempt to establish a causal link between the intrastate ethnic identities that threaten many African states and ISI promotion by the leaders of those states. However, my findings are largely exploratory and thus should be approached cautiously: they only provide an entrée into a subject that, I hope, will be subsequently studied more profoundly.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
27 June 2016 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
12 April 2016 |
| Approval Date: |
27 June 2016 |
| Submission Date: |
14 April 2016 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
45 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs > Public and International Affairs |
| Degree: |
MID - Master of International Development |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Inter State Integration (ISI),
Pan-African identity,
Ethnic identity,
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| Date Deposited: |
27 Jun 2016 14:57 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 14:32 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/27675 |
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