A strand of opinion is developing among the political commentariat in Uganda that is skeptical of the worth of democracy. The most recent examples of this growing dispensation are represented by Yusuf Serunkuma's coy plea to Ugandans to support what he calls 'liberal autocracies' and Andrew Mwenda's reflections on democratisation here and here.

In the view of these skeptics, Uganda's Westminster-style parliamentary system of democracy does not fit well with Uganda's social values. Uganda, they argue, is (for all the economic development of the past two and a half decades) a largely uneducated, peasant nation. A Ugandan's first loyalty, they observe, is to his clan and then to his tribe to which he is tied by patrimonial bonds. The personal loyalties engendered by such top-down social arrangements, they say, explain the personalised manner in which Ugandans negotiate their way through public life and do business with one another. Inevitably, this blurring of public and private life leaves its mark on governance by the often arbitrary way in which Ugandans administer their state.

Supporters of the implementation of formal Western-style democratic structures lament the seeming inability of Ugandans to come to terms with the idea of an impersonal and rules-based bureaucratic state - but only because such democrats fail to appreciate the way in which Ugandans live, allege the skeptics. The Parliament of Uganda - an anachronism befitting the high capitalist society of the former colonial master - no better reflects Ugandan society than the wheelbarrow represents the Space Age. To tinker with the practically useless machinery of democracy, whether by adding an anti-corruption function to government procurement here or establishing a register of declared interests for the elected leadership there, is ultimately an exercise in futility. Patrimonialism will always stand out and Uganda's informal institutional culture will always act to subvert even the most carefully crafted system of public administration and accountability.

So, if not democracy, what then is the skeptics' cure for maladministration? Their answer: a strong-willed, well-intentioned authoritarian for a leader. Only such a person, claim the skeptics, can cut hide-bound Ugandans away from their ancient social ties and drag them forcibly into a liberal political economy, which is democracy's fertile ground. Insisting that transplanted Western democratic structures will of themselves, as if by magic, transform the people of a simple agrarian society into convinced constitutionalists is embarrassingly naïve, say the skeptics. But are they right?

I think not. There is limited truth in the idea that Ugandan social values militate against the establishment of an impartial bureaucracy. After all, Uganda has had just such a bureaucracy before. Uganda's civil service immediately post-independence was widely acknowledged to be one of the most effective government bureaucracies in sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda's mandarins ensured that the country was for a time able to sustain a world class university and a world class teaching hospital. They presided over the Uganda Development Corporation - then considered the very model of state-led enterprise - which could counter some of the leading retailers in Western Europe among its clients. Indeed much of Uganda's now crumbling public infrastructure dates back to the first post-independence administration, whose civil servants were able to establish the country's public assets without any instance of the theft now routine in any administrative undertaking involving a department of state. If one existed before, what prevents an efficient bureaucracy from existing once more?

The idea that institutional capacity should be built up and maintained with a formal, rules-based procedure seems the only sensible way of attempting to bed down a bureaucratic culture. Skeptics mock all legislative attempts at achieving and policing a genuine bureaucracy yet propose no practical alternative as to how the state should be administered along democratic lines, save encouraging Ugandans to hope that a sufficient number of their countrymen become appropriately wealthy and that those rich Ugandans will agitate on all of our behalf for democratic accountability from their position of wealth. In other words, Ugandans should hold out for the benefits of trickle-down democracy. However, those nit-picking rules, derided by skeptics as evidence of mere proceduralism, speak for a wider democratic value: that all Ugandans, by virtue of their citizenship alone, should be able to participate in the holding to account of their government, not merely the wealthy few, whose only interest in good government is in preserving their pecuniary advantage.

In any case the premise that the best means of impersonalising the state is to entrust all of its functions to the person of the autocrat is preposterous. No better environment for the arbitrary exercise of power is there than an autocracy. Commerce - the skeptics' preferred agent of change - hates the uncertainty of autocratic whimsy. The market reacts badly to official diktats because market players realise that an executive order that enabled the doing of smooth business can as swiftly beget another order that dispossesses them entirely. Witness Shell's retreat from sub-Saharan Africa. Only in predictable, rules-based environments does business prosper and remain anchored.

Ugandans should be careful what they wish for. In praying for their well-intentioned autocrat, they should consider what manoeuvres the system will allow them when the autocrat stops intending well.