Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown : How the Rwandan government has legitimized its rule 2010-2019

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to study how electoral authoritarian regimes remain resilient over time, by observing how they handle challenges to their rule. More specifically, the thesis will focus on the strategies used to legitimize further rule. This will be achieved by conducting a case study on Rwanda and investigating how the Rwandan government uses insecurity and threat perception to legitimize further rule during the period 2010-2019. The theoretical framework consists of both Andreas Schedler’s definition of an electoral authoritarian regime as well as securitization theory. The material used is speech acts by important actors from the time period in question as well as law changes and information on how existing laws are used. With the use of critical discourse analysis, the thesis concludes that the Rwandan government has developed a discourse of traitor/patriot by securitizing traitors, strategically varying in intensity throughout the time period. Political opposition is effectively repressed by referring to the threats mentioned in the speech acts. To successfully circumvent the main flaw of electoral authoritarian regimes according to Schedler’s theory (uncertainty), the Rwandan government creates uncertainties themselves and then refers to the very same uncertainties to legitimize continuous rule.