The impact of political party identification, Psychological inflexibility on political incivility among the youth during 2021 General Elections in Kampala, Uganda.

Abstract

This essay explored the relationship between political party identification, psychological inflexibility, and political incivility among the youths in Kampala during the 2021 general elections in Uganda. The research adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods that showed the descriptive and correlation survey on 238 individuals who strongly identified with a particular variables and the relationship was established using Pearson correlations and findings show that political party identification and political incivility were not significantly related (r =.003, p > 0.005) towards members of the opposing party. Furthermore, the survey show that political party identification and psychology inflexibility were significantly associated/ related (r =.290**, p < 0.01). Henceforth, findings show that psychological inflexibility and political incivility were significantly related (r = 0.276**, p < 0.01). The study concluded that conflict-induced threat perceptions play an important role in predicting uncivil acts during elections can be labelled as acts chosen due failure to recognize other’s freedom to support candidate or party and would assume that such uncivil acts were made because of the political party one supported. Therefore, the study recommended that Electoral Commission integrate violence extremism reduction agenda in working hand in hand with other Non- Governmental organizations in line with citizen rights and electoral democracy ,i.e. UNSC resolution 2250 and CCEDU to ensure fair grounds for all Ugandans exercise their voting rights without interference from any other person or even Government body.