The impact of political party identification, psychological inflexibility on political incivility during 2021 general elections in Kampala, Uganda

Abstract

This essay explored the relationship between political party identification, psychological inflexibility, and political incivility. It involved descriptive and correlational survey design to find out the relationship between the three variables and data was collected from 172 respondents. A relationship between the three variables was established using Pearson correlation and findings showed that political party identification and political incivility were not significantly related (r = 0.138, p ˃ 0.01). However, the findings showed that political party identification and psychological inflexibility were significantly related (r = 0.315, p < 0.01). More to this, findings also showed that psychological inflexibility and political incivility were significantly related (r = 0.369, p < 0.01). The study led to a conclusion that the uncivil acts espoused during the recently held elections can be labelled as acts individually chosen due to failure to recognize others’ freedom to support a candidate or party they wanted and it wouldn’t be fit to contend that such immoral and uncivil acts were made because of the political party one supported. Important to note, the study revealed that electorates of one political camp/party found it hard to change their views or ideologies to accommodate views and ideologies of those from other political camps/parties. Therefore, the research recommended both statutory bodies like the electoral commission and Non-Governmental Organizations like CCEDU to strengthen cooperation in executing activities to do with citizen rights and electoral democracy so as to ensure fair grounds for all Ugandans to exercise their voting rights without interference from any other person or even a governmental body.