The impact of political party identification, Psychological inflexibility on political Incivility among Youth in Kampala during 2021 General Elections in Uganda.

Abstract

The study was aimed at explaining the relationship between political party identification, psychological inflexibility and political incivility among youths in Kampala during the 2021 general elections in Uganda. It involved descriptive and correlational survey design to find out the relationship between the variables and data was collected from 245 respondents. A relationship between the three variables was established using Pearson correlation and findings show that political party identification and political incivility were not significantly related (r = 0.044, p ˃ 0.05). Furthermore, the findings show that political party identification and psychological inflexibility were not significantly related (r = 0.110, p ˃ 0.05). However, findings show that psychological inflexibility and political inflexibility were significantly related (r = 0.224, p < 0.01). The study concluded 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 want and it would be wrong to assume that such uncivil acts were made because of the political party one supported. Therefore, the research recommended bodies like the electoral commission to strengthen working hand in hand with other Non-Governmental Organizations in line with citizen rights and electoral democracy like CCEDU to ensure fair grounds for all Ugandans to exercise their voting rights without interference from any other person or even a governmental body