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center‐local struggles for bureaucratic control in Bugisu, Uganda
Author(s) -
BUNKER STEPHEN G.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1983.10.4.02a00080
Subject(s) - peasant , decentralization , politics , bureaucracy , state (computer science) , power (physics) , political science , political economy , centralized government , collusion , control (management) , economics , economic system , market economy , law , management , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science , microeconomics , physics
Various recent studies of East African politics imply a unilinear tightening of state control over national populations. This paper addresses an alternative proposition, that freeholding peasant groups may achieve considerable power in relation to the state if they produce goods that are important to the state's export strategies. I examine cyclical struggles beween local‐level associations and the national state for control of coffee marketing in Bugisu District, Uganda. The central finding is that political mobilization around the threat of partial withdrawal from commercial cropping has repeatedly won effective, if temporary, decentralization of political and economic power. [Uganda, peasants, power, protest, local politics, cooperatives]