THE INFLUENCE OF INTERNAL FACTORS ON UGANDA’S FOREIGN POLICY SINCE INDEPENDENCE

Abstract

This dissertation has concerned itself with describing, explaining, examining and predicting the influence of internal factors in the foreign policy of Uganda. It proceeds from the premise that studies in the past have emphasized external factors rather than internal factors in explaining Uganda’s foreign policy. There has also been a tendency by scholars studying internal factors that shape foreign policy to use examples of countries with high levels of economic growth. Besides, such studies that emphasized external factors in explaining the foreign policy of Uganda have inadequately addressed certain aspects of foreign policy. These aspects of foreign policy include leadership, personality of leaders, geography, attributes of a nation such as levels of economic growth and the military. This is partly because these studies have used theories such as realism, rational actor model, decision-making and dependency. This study therefore adopted the world systems theory to explain how domestic factors influence foreign policy of Uganda. It was hoped that this study would achieve two key objectives. Firstly, to establish that in countries with low levels of economic growth foreign policy is best explained using internal factors. And to generate data and indicators that could be used to predict the future foreign policy behavior of Uganda.