Musevini's Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime
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340 Book Reviews
cases where such intentional action does not create more human rights
problem than it solves (p. 43 and chap. 2; see also pp. 110-111). (May
proposes prosecutions during war or mass atrocities under certain circum-
stances; see chap. 4.) Reconciliation requires that each person comes to
understand that each has equal status before the law as well as respecting
their human rights (p. 86). This seems like an overly demanding and unre-
alistic requirement. Drawing on the Responsibility to Protect principle,
May argues that a responsibility to rebuild should be distributed among
states. Perhaps his most interesting contribution is that rebuilding, among
other jus post bellum principles, may restrict jus ad bellum principles (chap.
9). He thinks that victims deserve restitution (compensation for wrongs [pp.
186-187]), even if perpetrators cannot pay, through a no-fault global insur-
ance scheme (pp. 194-195 and chap. 10). Reparation, the mending of some-
thing that has been damaged, is due to all who have suffered damages
whenever practically feasible (p. 205). His two jus post bellum propor-
tionality principles require that on balance all other jus post bellum policies
alleviate more harm than they cause to the parties to the conflict and the
global population (p. 227). But why should those who committed wrongs
not pay a price that might make a whole country's population materially
worse off in some cases? Because he claims that proportionality has a cen-
tral role to play in jus post bellum normative principles (p. 22) and that it
could be written into each of the [other] principles (p. 22), May's book
would have been stronger if he had responded in greater depth to such
potential objections. Nonetheless, his book is a valuable place to start for
discussions of jus post bellum. 0 Reviewed by Eamon Aloyo
Musevini's Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime. By Aili
Mari Tripp. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2010.
This book provides an excellent analysis of the governance of Uganda since
the 1980s, and in so doing provides insights into hybrid regimes-those
governments that are neither fully autocratic nor fully democratic. These
regimes respect some rights and provide the trappings of democracy, espe-
cially regular elections, but rig political systems to retain full control over
the major organs of government. Aili Mari Tripp argues that the central fail-
ures of a semiauthoritarian regime are not the products of individual deci-
sions in leadership, but a feature of the structural and institutional condi-
tions in which partial but incomplete political opening has occurred. This
serves as a valuable corrective to the still common view that, if a few bad
guys were just shipped off to an international court or captured by interna-
tional forces, political repression would end and prosperity would follow.
Tripp's excellent volume proves the value of longitudinal research into
a single country. She first conducted research in Uganda in 1968 and last
visited in 2009. This sustained engagement and in-depth understanding of](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/glogo21&div=36&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Musevini's Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime
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