Legitimizing Illegality: Constructing Local Governance through Legitimacy in the Illegal Kargasok Trade at the Bunagana Border, Western Uganda.

Abstract

This thesis aims to extend the theoretical discussions on hybrid governance and border politics by displaying an understanding of the strategies behind people’s actions that (re)form local governance. This ethnography will lay out the everyday practices of small scale traders within the micro-politics of cross-border trade of the locally made (illegal) drink Kargasok in Bunagana, Uganda. Specifically it will focus on how local Kargasok traders try to legitimize their actions and therefore how they influence conceptions of what should be legitimate in Bunagana. In doing so I aim to show that they are part of a dynamic playfield wherein perceptions of legitimacy are constantly negotiated and altered. By understanding the practices of legitimation to be part of a ‘serious game’, I can reveal how a manifold of different actors influence the process of legitimation and thus take part in the forming of governance on a local level.