Introduction

Studies of student politics, generally and in Sub-Saharan Africa, primarily focus on external relations of student organisations with university management, political parties and the state (Dominick, 2014; Klemenčič & Park, 2018). These studies emphasise the role of student governments and student activism as political organisations and institutions via which collective student interests are aggregated and intermediated to other actors within the higher education or political context (Klemenčič, 2014). They focus on student politics’ external relations, which partly reflects a more general understanding of student politics as a relational concept, i.e. “the activities related to the power relations between students and other social actors in and outside the higher education system” (Klemenčič & Park, 2018: 468). Tensions, divisions and conflicts of interest between the actors in this nexus are given priority, (implicitly) assuming that student governments are organisations that take unitary action and represent the interests of the student body in a unified manner. In doing so, they may be assuming student governments to be more homogeneous than they might be.

This is problematic because without an understanding of how student governments function internally, we will only have a partial understanding of how they function externally. We cannot properly understand why student leaders, on behalf of their representative organisations, act and position themselves the way they do in relation to actors in the environment if we do not know how, why and what they do inside their organisation.

Representative student governments have three core functions. They (1) present a system of rules, norms and institutions which organise and govern student bodies within an institution; (2) provide academic and welfare support services to students; and (3) aggregate collective student interests towards other actors within higher education politics (Klemenčič, 2014). As long as the underlying intra-organisational political processes and their social mechanisms within student governments remain a black box, we are not able to have a comprehensive insight into the first two functions, in turn limiting our knowledge of the third, more external, function.

I analyse the intra-organisational conflicts, i.e. incompatibilities or disagreements among units within an organisation (de Gregorio et al., 2012), within student governments, and aim to uncover the internal dynamics of student governments as a social system in an authoritarian context. Student governments are conceptualised as heterogenous political organisations, composed of representatives with diverse interests and institutional goals. I argue that intra-organisational conflicts arise from competing institutional work, where student representatives purposely act to maintain and disrupt institutionalised practices, norms and values embedded in their organisation to advance institutional projects. The questions the article answers are as follows:

  • How intra-organisational conflict arise from competing institutional work,

  • over which institutions conflict occur, and

  • who engages in such conflicts

I use the Makerere University Students’ Guild (the Guild) in Uganda as a case of internal conflicts and institutional work within student governments. While internal conflict is expected in any student government, this is even more likely in an authoritarian context (Burawoy, 1976), because they operate within a particular institutional setting, and are thereby partly “structured, conditioned and shaped by the distinct institutional arrangements and organisational matrices of the setting” (Badat, 1999: 21). In modern authoritarian regimes, there is continues tension between authoritarian rule and democratic institutions (Tapscott, 2021). In Uganda, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and President Museveni have been in power since 1986. The NRM dominates all levels of government, which makes it difficult to distinguish the political party from state institutions (Freedom House, 2023). It retains power through informal autocratic practices of political patronage, co-option and clientelism, ethnic-based networks, surveillance, intimidation and repression. Nevertheless, the presence of democratic institutions offers opportunities for the political opposition to challenge the regime in power (Tripp, 2010).

At Makerere, where student organisations are tied to political parties (Mugume & Katusiimeh, 2016) and embedded in an autocratic political environment characterised by uncertainty, fragmentation and contestation between political parties (Tapscott, 2021), internal divisions can be expected to be more persistent. The Guild is an exceptionally illustrative case for the study of intra-organisational conflicts, given the conflictual nexus between student representatives and the authoritarian political regime. Moreover, the case bears historic significance because Makerere was the first university in East Africa and has the oldest structures of student representation in the region (MacPherson, 1964). Today it figures as a flagship university in Africa, which illustrates its importance beyond Uganda (Bisaso, 2017). Understanding this case contributes to a better understanding of student governments in other Sub-Saharan African, authoritarian or post-colonial settings, as it expands on the understanding of students’ institutional behaviour and institutional ambiguity in authoritarian states (Schedler, 2010).

To make sense of internal political processes, I use institutional work (Suddaby & Lawrence, 2006) as an analytical tool to re-construct and interpret the competing actions of student representatives. The framework is used to make sense of complexity and allows us to see who engages in internal politics, on what issues and what implications this has for the organisation. I identify the types of institutional work student representatives engage in and, subsequently, identify the intra-organisational conflicts evident within the Guild, which student representatives are in conflict and over which institutions conflicts arise. The theoretical point of departure is that conflict arises whenever student representatives engage in competing institutional work to maintain and disrupt norms, values and practices within their organisation (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009). The article contributes to neo-institutionalist studies of higher education by demonstrating how, by use of institutional work, we can enhance our understanding of internal dynamics in heterogenous actors in higher education institutions.

This article finds that the Students’ Guild is heterogenous in terms of political interests and institutional goals. Institutional maintenance and disruption occur concurrently, and student representatives engage in social manoeuvering as a response to institutional ambiguity and uncertainty.

I begin by presenting the theoretical framework before I describe the methods used to co-construct and analyse the data. Then, I establish the institutional “baseline” of the Guild and present the analysis of the internal conflicts and the institutional work. Finally, I discuss how we can account theoretically for such intra-organisational political dynamics and the implications they have for our understanding of student governments as political organisations.

Theoretical framework

Student governments are not perfectly unitary actors, and their behaviour is not fixed. They are rather “shaped in the interaction with other actors and the context in which they are embedded” (Klemenčič, 2014: 401) and they have the agency to reproduce, change or replace the institutions in which they are embedded (Lawrence et al., 2009). Suddaby and Lawrence’s (2009) framework makes it possible to analyse how student representatives act to affect the institutions of which they are part. Institutional work refers to micro-processes of intentional action in which individuals engage to further their own interests. Actions become institutional work when they deliberately and simultaneously contribute to advance institutional projects (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2009: 179). Viewing institutional work as purposive action puts focus on the work itself and the processes, rather than the outcome of such work. Their conceptualisation comes close to Jepperson’s (1991: 143) definition of institutions as a “stable, routine-reproduced pattern of behaviour, combined with norms and conception that are taken for granted by larger or smaller groups of people which can be formal and informal”.

The framework offers operationalisations of three types of work in which individuals purposefully engage to create, maintain or disrupt recognised practices, norms and values of institutions of which they are part. Practices are understood as shared routines and “recognized forms of activity” (Barnes, 2001: 19). Institutional work then refers to “actors’ efforts to affect the recognition and acceptance of sets of routines”, rather than simply engaging in those routines (Ziestma & Lawrence, 2010). Institutions then, are the product of purposive action taken to reproduce, alter or destroy them (Suddaby & Lawrence, 2006: 216). In this way, institutional work highlights reflexive forms of action that are aimed at intentionally affecting institutions (Lawrence et al., 2009).

Institutional work aimed at creating institutions comprises acts aimed at institutional innovation by introducing and institutionalising new practices and adapting or removing barriers to adoption (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). The second type aims to maintain institutionalised practices, norms or values by ensuring adherence to rule systems and reproducing existing norms and belief systems, e.g. defending or promoting institutionalised practices and values or defending the boundaries of the institution in response to challenges (Lawrence et al., 2009). Actions aimed at disrupting institutions aim to breach institutionalised practices, norms and values, e.g. by delegitimising practices, or dismantling the institutional support for practices within an organisation (Ziestma & Lawrence, 2010).

This framework allows one to analyse both highly visible clashes and more low-key tensions in student governments. Institutional work refers to practices student representatives intentionally and deliberatively engage in to advance institutional projects—either by working to maintain institutions—norms, values and practices—or to disrupt them. When one group of representatives acts to maintain an institution while another group of representatives acts to disrupt the same institution, competing institutional work is going on. Competing institutional work is thus when representatives have different institutional goals and engage in reflexive forms of action aimed at intentionally affecting the same institution. When different groups of representatives engage in competing institutional work, intra-organisational conflicts become evident.

To analyse competing institutional work and understand the meaning of the institutional work that student representatives engage in, I first need to identify the institutional setup of the student government. This institutional “baseline” is a depiction of the formal and informal rules, practices, norms and values of the Guild. By knowing the institutional baseline, it becomes possible through the framework of institutional work, to see which student representatives engage in maintaining or disrupting existing institutions, over which institutions conflicts occur and how these conflicts unfold. Some of the internal conflicts may subsequently result in changing practices, norms and values of the Guild. Given that the Guild is an established organisation, it is not likely that there is a lot of work to create completely new institutions, so it is expected that internal conflict is primarily linked to institutional work to maintain and disrupt the existing institutional baseline. Nevertheless, all sub-types were included in the analysis, because the sub-types of creating institutions, as defined by Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), in my view may also be used to maintain or disrupt institutions. By including all sub-types applicable to student governments, we can nuance the ways in which groups of representatives act to affect institutions.

Sub-types of institutional work applicable to student governments as a semi-autonomous organisation,Footnote 1 are given in Table 1.

Table 1 Sub-types of institutional work. Adapted from Suddaby and Lawrence (2006)
Full size table

Methods

Case description

This is a case study of the Students’ Guild at Makerere University, specifically the institutional work student representatives in the 86th Guild engaged in during its sitting cycle (May–October 2021). The Guild is officially recognised as a formal student organisation with compulsory affiliation of the entire student body. It comprises the General Assembly, the Guild’s Representative Council (i.e. the legislature) and the Guild’s Executive. The Council sanctions and approves the policies of the Executive, deliberates on all matters that affect the members of the Guild and resolves measures to be taken by the Guild. The Executive is responsible for the day-to-day running of the affairs of the Guild, initiates policies and carries them out after the approval of the Council, and is responsible for, and implements the decisions of the Council (Guild Constitution, 2016).

Data and analytical approach

The study relies on an interpretivist approach to reveal the internal political processes of the Guild (Scwhartz–Shea & Yanow, 2012). Qualitative techniques were used to co-generate and collect the data material. Interviews with 42 people involved in student politics at Makerere were conducted in January–March 2022 after the 86th Guild had been dissolved. Thus, interviews were not conducted during the time of the conflicts presented in the analysis. The respondents were student representatives of the 86th Guild Council and Executive, and student representatives of previous Guilds, including representatives across all Colleges and halls of residences.Footnote 2 The interviews focused on their roles and positions in the Guild and other student groups and networks, the issues they did and did not address, the challenges and obstacles in relation to advocacy and policy formation, the intra-organisational conflicts and conflict resolution, and the misconceptions of the Guild among external actors.

Interviewing in a cross-cultural setting may pose challenges of access, trust and relationships of power (Mullings, 1999). By acknowledging the fluidity of positionality, I was able to draw on the strengths of both the “insider” and “outsider” positions in the fieldwork process (Carling et al., 2014). Emphasising my “student” identity as a doctoral researcher and previous experience as an undergraduate at Makerere helped me gain a level of trust with informants. In addition, I was able to rely on cultural competencies obtained over time when encountering context-specific dynamics within Makerere. At the same time, the outsider position motivated respondents to make explicit processes that were often taken for granted within the Guild.

The organisational principle of the analysis adhered to the political processes and practices addressed in the interviews. The first step of the analysis identified the institutional work that the student representatives engaged in by coding the material into the three broad categories of creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions. The more detailed coding identified which sub-types of institutional work their actions constituted and which institution representative acted to affect. Since institutional work constitutes purposeful action, the third step identified the representatives’ institutional goals to determine whether the actions corresponded with the goals. Interviews with representatives engaging in the same types of institutional work over the same institution were identified and grouped together to uncover similarities as well as discrepancies and inconsistencies in narratives within and between the groups. The “us” vs. “them” narrative was prevalent in many of the representatives’ interview accounts. While this may have been used strategically to frame the actions of other representatives, it highlighted the power struggles between groups of representatives, and made the intra-organisational conflicts more comprehensible.

The analysis drew on both the explicit and tacit dimensions of interviews to search for underlying meanings, patterns and processes (Altheide & Johnson, 1997). This made the nuances and the subtleties of the representatives’ meanings more visible and helped unpack the informal norms, values and practices of the Guild which had often been normalised and thus rarely questioned, and the institutional work representatives engaged in. To gain a contextual understanding of events, institutional documents, and campus-based and national newspapers were consulted and juxtaposed with the interview accounts.Footnote 3 The conflicts, fractions and tensions in the Guild were thus uncovered over time, as representatives’ narratives were synthesised (Barnett–Page & Thomas, 2009).

Establishing the institutional baseline

As student governments present a system of rules, norms and institutions which can be formal or informal (Jepperson, 1991), this section presents the predominant institutional baseline of the Guild, which the representatives acted to maintain and disrupt. While rules are always pronounced, norms may be handed down within organisations via the processes of socialisation and internalisation (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

Formal institutions

The Guild’s Constitution regulates the conduct of the different arms of the Guild. Council representatives (GRCs) should act in a manner that avoids conflict between “personal interests and public or official duties”, “comprising any public or official interest in favour of personal interests” and “demeaning the office” (Guild Constitution, 2016: 15(1)). Similar regulations apply to the Office of the Guild President. The Guild Tribunal should act impartially in decision making and not engage in corruption. Electoral offences are understood as “soliciting funds either to be voted for or to vote for a candidate, and any forms of interfering with the electoral process” which makes acts of vote bribing and buying patronage prohibited (Guild Constitution, 2016: 71(i)(j)).

Representatives are required to show respect for the office and promote “worthy traditions” (Guild Constitution, 2016: 7). Independence, objectivity and impartiality in decision making are values ascribed to the Tribunal and the Electoral Commission, to ensure that “decisions are not influenced by nepotism, favouritism, other improper motives or corrupt practices” (Guild Constitution, 2016:67(1)). Committee and Tribunal representatives are to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of the office and to be non-discriminatory on any grounds. In addition, Tribunal representatives are to be of “high moral character” (Guild Constitution, 2016: 56(3); 59(1)).

Contrary to other universities in Uganda, Makerere allows student representatives to affiliate with political parties (Mugume & Katusiimeh, 2016). This is not a formal rule, nor is it against formal regulations, and has come to be an institutionalised practice. Political parties are influential organisations in student politics; Guild elections are conducted along political party lines, where many candidates are subject to party primaries in their respective party chapters on campus; and parties fund candidates during elections and train representatives (Oanda, 2016). Student representatives, on their side, use their political power in exchange for material goods or symbolic favours and offer political support to political parties in elections in exchange for study bursaries and the promise of jobs after graduation (Mugume & Luescher, 2017).

Affective relations between representatives and political parties were reflected on and confirmed by all representatives. These links between national party politics and student politics are part of the institutional baseline, even if various actors did not like it. Representatives who disapproved of this relationship acted to disrupt it, as explored in the analysis.

Informal institutions

There was a tangible lack of cohesion between the prescribed practices and the actual conduct of representatives, and several informal norms, values and practices were evident in the Guild. While descriptions of some of these were found in previous literature, most became evident from the interview material. Representatives narrated that, over time, a subversion of formalised practices and their corresponding values and norms had emerged, whereby informal practices had been established and/or regulated within the Guild.

Corrupt behaviour in the form of clientelism, disbursing benefits, buying patronage and vote bribing was regarded as normalised in Guild elections and in the operations of the Guild—to the extent that “politics in Makerere is regarded as a business initiative” (86th Guild, Executive representative–3). In the Makerere Council press release, the Guild was arguably occupied by “Self-seeking individuals who […] manipulate unsuspecting students for personal gain” (Magara & Nkabala, 2022: 2). The press release illustrates that the university management framed student representatives as opportunistic and that internal processes of the Guild did not always follow constitutional regulations.

As with Uganda in general, Makerere is ethnically diverse, and cultural groups influence student politics (Mugume, 2015). Ethnic associations are structured under the Guild, and the Guild should “preserve and promote all the desirable aspects of our indigenous culture” (Guild Constitution, 2016: preamble). The presence of different tribes was found to influence the composition of the Guild, and tribalism was believed to cause fractions between ethnic groups, although respondents did not refer to any specific event where it caused an overt conflict. As this practice was highly taken-for-granted, it was only challenged by representatives who originated from neighbouring countries and were thereby considered “outsiders”. Earlier studies of student representation at Makerere indicate that rivalry among ethnic associations intersects with national party politics on campus (Mugume & Katusiimeh, 2016).

The prevalence of affective relations and self-serving behaviour suggests that some of the formal norms, values and practices listed above are weak. That informal practices were part of the functioning of the Guild indicates that its institutional baseline is incoherent. The incoherence of the institutional setup in an organisation refers to the interplay between formal rules, and normative and cultural-cognitive dimension of institutions (Scott, 2008). In the case of the Guild, this incoherence was expected given the interplay of clientelism, ethnic-based network and political patronage with the formal democratic institutions in the Ugandan governance (Tripp, 2010). Further, if rules, values and norms were very perfectly in line with each other, there would not be institutional ambiguities present which representatives could strategically use to advance their institutional projects. This contradiction thus gave student representatives the opportunity to engage in institutional work.

Intra-organisational conflict and institutional work

The institutional baseline shows that representatives had several sets of expectations linked to the roles they occupied within the Guild, owing loyalty not only to their constituency but also to their political party and ethnic group. What transpired was a complex web of competing demands and shifting political interests and behaviour among groups of representatives. The incoherence between formal and informal behaviour opened the space for actors to engage in institutional work, seeking to maintain some but disrupt other institutional aspects of the Guild. This section presents two major conflicts that were uncovered during the analysis, the (sub-)types of institutional work identified in each conflict, over what institutions competing institutional work occurred, and for what purpose.

Types of institutional work in the conflict about the influence of political parties

Although political party influence on Guild processes was not forbidden, there was strife concerning its influence within the Guild. While almost all respondents addressed concerns about how party politics had come to influence decision making and political processes, the way they challenged this was rarely aimed at abolishing the party politics within the Guild, and it was difficult to imagine a Guild free from such influence. Those aligned with the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) expressed concern about how the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) influenced the Guild, and vice versa, but critical reflection on how the parties with which they aligned negatively impacted the Guild was not expressed. In other words, when respondents expressed that they wanted to disrupt party politics from the Guild, this only meant the influence of opposing parties, thus indicating an opportunistic attitude towards parties’ influence in the Guild.

The latent party conflict had spilled into the formation of “candidate teams”, which are identified as prominent political groups within the Guild. Different actors came together to form informal candidate teams to influence Guild politics and take political action within the organisation. A candidate team was described as a particularly informal team of current and former student representatives, student activists and alumni who did not occupy positions in the Guild, but who influenced political processes and practices both during elections and once a Guild had been sworn in the following:

Students form their own things, the “Abakooto” people, the “New Kids”, so those various things actually are the ones that run the politics [in the Guild]. The political parties are just a face of what happens. But the real politics is done by those teams, that they will get a candidate, finance, work with them, when they win the team will benefit. (86th Guild, Legislative representative–12)

Although the teams comprised current representatives, they were led by actors outside the Guild. The groups mainly followed the national party lines, had different visions for Guild politics and competed for influence and power. Some of the teams which operated during the 86th Guild had split away from other teams established previously, as disagreements about profile, strategy or candidates arose between the team leaders. The most central actors in these teams saw themselves as the “thinkers for the campaigns” and the “king makers” (84th Guild, Legislative representative–29) of Guild politics, even when they did not occupy any formal position in the organisation.

I consider establishing these teams to constitute institutional work (i.e. creating normative networks) because each team had a joint aim for Guild politics and acted upon it, and this was another way of undertaking institutional work related to party politics in the Guild. The teams had the capacity to initiate political actions and acted strategically to maintain and strengthen the influence of the political parties they aligned to and fronted while disrupting the influence of competing parties and groups. Hence, the conflict between NRM and NUP representatives arose over party influence given representatives’ partial interests and competing institutional work.

The narrative presented by NUP respondents was that the influence from the ruling NRM was restricting student politics, because “they have the money, they have the police, they have everyone from their side” (86th Guild, Executive representative–3). A representative who was instrumental in establishing one of the candidate teams explained the purpose of their team and how they operated:

[…] in the aftermath that was when we began infiltrating [the Guild] because we sat down and thought “if the student leaders themselves are betraying us like this, then let us rethink what we do, let us now first get a good student leader, put the person there so that we can fight the fight knowing that all these student leaders will not betray us because he is ours, at least we can call him, sit him down and slap him if needed be, and then tell him to get back in line”. So, it became easier once we began bringing in our own people, because there we would hold them accountable. (84th Guild, Legislative representative–29)

Strategic action to maintain the influence of political parties was taken by the team leaders when choosing which candidates they trained (i.e. educating) and fronted. In turn, the chosen Guild candidates owed loyalty to those teams while in a position to make decisions in the Guild either as ministers or GRCs. Within these teams, common values constituted an important basis for the order and normative sanctions ensured that the Guild representatives acted in line with the interests and institutional goals of the candidate teams.

A significant discrepancy was found between respondents aligning with the national government party and respondents aligning with one of the opposition parties.Footnote 4 Only those aligning with the opposition chose to disclose their party affiliation and talked about this with great pride, and they more openly expressed taking action, which indicated institutional work to maintain the influence of the parties they aligned with, in the Guild. Neither those who aligned with the ruling NRM nor those who had contended as individual candidates addressed this directly but hinted at their affiliation more implicitly and were also more subdued. How they talked about these fractions often revealed what party they aligned with, and I was thereby able to trace the NRM and NUP tails of institutional work in the Guild. Despite feeling outnumbered by the opposition, NRM respondents did not directly reflect on how they acted to disrupt the influence of NUP.

Overall, the creation of the candidate teams and the practices they engaged in was the most evident type of institutional work, although its informal character made it less visible. These candidate teams represented a form of cooperation understood as an informal institution that is organised along voluntary and self-enforcing lines, where practices become normatively sanctioned, and compliance is ensured through adherence to informal rules and monitoring (Hyden, 2013).

Although the majority of representatives in the 86th Guild were concerned about the role of parties in the Guild, the 87th Guild’s leadership defended this as a constitutional right when the Makerere management tried to temporarily ban partisan politics in Guild elections (CB Reporter, 2023). This move by the 87th Guild leadership is understood as institutional work to maintain external influence on the Guild, despite representatives clearly expressing concerns about its negative implications. While the Guild leadership did not act to directly maintain the informal practices that came with the party influence, it did explicitly defend it despite it being a continuously contested issue within the Guild. This illustrates that when the Guild leadership was given an opportunity to directly disrupt the influence of political parties, they were not willing to do so.

Overall, in this intra-organisational conflict concerning the influence of political parties, we see groups of representatives engaging in competing institutional work by creating normative networks to maintain and strengthen the influence of the parties they aligned with (through educating, policing, and embedding and routinising). Intra-organisational conflict occurred because these candidate teams concurrently acted to disrupt and delegitimize the influence of other parties by demonising and mythologizing other groups of representatives. While reinforcing and maintaining the party fractions within the Guild, organising political action through candidate teams goes beyond the institutionalised political party influence and gives representatives and external actors within the teams agency within the organisation. This is so because it gave students and alumni with no formal position in the Guild a platform to increasingly engage in and influence political processes within the student government.

Types of institutional work in the conflict about financial resources

In the 86th Guild, a conflict occurred during the budgetary session over the stipulated expenses of the Executive. The conflict revolved around how its ministersFootnote 5 gained access to financial resources:

I feel like some people must have acted greedy. Yes, the [re]allocation of the Guild funds to the different Guild ministries was a major conflict because some ministries were given more money than was allocated [initially] and someone given less money than they were allocated, and that left most of the people dissatisfied and held us having a conflict. (86th Guild, Legislative representative–5)

During the session, it became evident that the allocation of funds had been changed from the stipulated budget, whereby the principle of financial accountability became disputed. What was contested was whether the distribution of financial resources followed the constitutional regulations or whether it was based on personal interests. A group of council representatives and ministers argued that the reallocation was poorly justified, and they fronted allegations of corrupt behaviour among ministers. The incoherence between the constitutional budget regulations and the actions of the ministers gave room for GRCs to engage in institutional work to maintain adherence to the constitutional regulations in the form of policing. By coming up with and passing a resolution by simple majority vote for the Minister to return the Guild funds (Kamukama, 2021), representatives ensured compliance to the regulations through enforcement. This type of work maintained the constitutional norm of accountability and respect for the office. The general argument underlying the conflict was that representatives found ways to benefit financially from their positions and that they engaged in clientelist practices.

Besides the conflict that emerged, a fraction of the Guild was perceived on a regular basis to accept money and financial favours from the university management, such as tuition fee waivers in exchange for siding with the university management when formulating policies. Representatives argued that in this way the management aimed to promote and secure its interests within the Guild. Co-optation through patronage, many representatives argued, had culminated in the 84th Guild, sparking outrage and controversy in consecutive Guilds, which was a clear expression of conflict between outgoing and incoming Guilds.

One important tacit aspect of the interviews concerned the respondents’ involvement in clientelist or other corrupt practices. Although almost all respondents addressed this as common conduct within the student government, none stated that they were personally involved. Based on a shared narrative among independent and opposition-aligning respondents, however, the data suggests that NRM representatives mainly acted indirectly to maintain these practices.Footnote 6 Indirectly, because representatives never defended it or stated that the institutional goal was to maintain them. If this is so, it suggests that representatives’ clientelist practices cannot be understood as institutional work because they lack the purposive element in those acts.

Those who explicitly addressed that they aimed to disrupt clientelism mainly aligned with oppositional political parties. The arguments fronted by these respondents were that a 15% annual tuition increment policy had been passed without consulting the whole Guild and there were accusations of student leaders in the committee that had been consulted having been co-opted by the university management to promote its interests (The Independent, 2023). While not part of the committee, a student representative explained:

I was also called [by the university management] because what they would do was, they would call the ring leaders on that entire thing [the strikes] and promise you heaven on earth, they would promise you the bursary bit, that you would not pay tuition. Personally, I rejected. (84th Guild, Legislative representative–29)

Rejecting to be co-opted, in this context, constituted institutional work (i.e. policing) because by rejecting, the representative deliberatively maintained adherence to the constitutional ban on patronage relations.

The argument was not that all representatives extracted funds from the Guild to cater for their personal interests or engaged in clientelist relations. Rather, a clash was evident between those who did and those who aimed to disrupt these practices. Due to such underlying fractions, the conflict about access to resources was a recurring one within consecutive Guilds, and it was difficult to reconcile the representatives.

This was a controversy which drained attention from its mandate. A consequence was that “politics in Makerere is actually fading” (86th Guild, Executive representative–3), and some respondents had lost hope in the Guild as a democratic, independent and representative student government. One group, comprising NUP affiliated respondents, argued that the corrupt practices had made representatives betray the students’ cause and thus they acted to restore the Guild as an autonomous institution, independent of the interests of the management and the national government. Restoring in this sense, comes close to Suddaby and Lawrence’s (2006) notion of maintaining institutions, because these representatives aimed to restore adherence to the formal rules and practices of the Guild, which they argued had eroded over time. The group simultaneously acted to disrupt self-serving behaviour within the Guild. Coming together to form their candidate team was understood as a watershed moment:

The Guild had been fashioned off as a dining House where leaders come to be compromised, that whoever would come in as a Guild president, the administration or the regime would come to them and compromise them in whichever way they choose. So, we wanted to begin a new culture, we wanted to take back the Guild to its rail. It wasn’t a new culture, but the Students’ Guild had lost its image. (85th Guild, Executive representative–2)

Through the creation of a normative network, this team acted to restore the Guild by changing the norms of the political practices within the Guild; educating its chosen candidates within the Guild with the knowledge and skills necessary to promote its interests (i.e. educating); valorising its chosen Guild representatives and other teams members (i.e. valorising), sustain stories regarding the history of the Guild and the NUP (i.e. mythologising); and ensuring compliance through monitoring and sanctioning when representatives failed to comply (i.e. policing). In this way, both the act of establishing the candidate team and the practices its members initiated and engaged in can be seen as institutional work to maintain and strengthen adherence to the formalised rules while disrupting the taken-for-granted practices of patronage. The overarching goal was to make Guild representatives accountable to the ordinary students.

Another group acting to restore adherence to the formal rules and democratic practices of the Guild was the Female Caucus comprising female representatives across the Cabinet and Council. They too organised their activities in smaller groups or “cells” to gain influence. One representative explained how they worked to disrupt and delegitimise the practices of co-optation and self-serving behaviour by mentoring female GRCs (i.e. educating and embedding and routinising) in conduct in line with the constitutional regulations and in so doing challenging the taken-for-grantedness of the unconstitutional practices. Work on delegitimisation was necessary given that self-serving behaviour was part of the institutional baseline. Yet respondents from this group also reported that they advocated for the need to fundamentally construct a new structure of student leadership, which would require innovative action and the establishment and institutionalisation of radically new practices (i.e. creating institutions).

In this intra-organisational conflict about the distribution of and access to financial resources, we see a conflict between representatives who indirectly reproduced and maintained patronage relations and clientelism, and representatives who acted to disrupt them while also maintaining adherence to the constitutional regulations (through educating, embedding and routinising, valorising, mythelogising and politicing). The recurring conflicts concerning resources and clientelism occurred between representatives who largely took such practices for granted, rarely questioned them and/or acted to reproduce them, and those who deliberately sought to disrupt them through institutional work. Those who acted to disrupt the clientelist behaviour, did not aim for a wholesale turnaround, but for a gradual undermining of the moral foundation of the clientelist practices which are understood as institutional work. The fact that the groups mainly served to “restore” the Guild illustrates that the informal practices and norms had become institutionalised over time. Unlike what other studies on institutionalised clientelist practices in higher education institutions (Jansen, 2023) find, rationalisation of such behaviour did not occur within the Guild. This means that representatives did not make self-serving justifications to defend clientelism or co-optation, but largely signalled compliance with the formal rules, norms and practices. The institutional work to disrupt patronage relations shows that the taken-for-grantedness of these informal practices was not absolute and that although they were deemed desirable by some representatives, they were not widely accepted and considered legitimate overall.

Discussion and conclusion

In this study, I sought to analyse intra-organisational conflict through reconstructing and interpreting institutional work through which student representatives aim to maintain and disrupt the institutions embedded in the Students’ Guild at Makerere University.

I find that the Guild is heterogenous in terms of political interests and institutional goals and that there are shifting and unsettled relations of power between groups of representatives. Rather than constituting representatives making unitary decisions and acting unitarily, the Guild is occupied with intra-organisational conflicts due to competing institutional work. The ambiguity of the institutional baseline and the disagreement about what should be the norms and values underpinning the Guild opened the space for groups of representatives to act strategically. They engaged in competing institutional work (i.e. concurrently working on maintaining and disrupting the same institution), thus making intra-organisational conflict visible.

None of the representatives, however, acted consistently and solely to either maintain or disrupt institutions. The strong influence from political parties on politics in the Guild had split student representatives into groups competing for influence within the student government. They did so by navigating shifting opportunities and constraints within the Guild, while also navigating those presented by political parties and the university management. These findings resonate with Hyden’s (2013) argument that actors operating in a setting where informal institutions dominate frequently engage in social manoeuvring as a response to uncertainty. The recurring intra-organisational conflicts in the Guild maintained and reinforced the uncertain institutional environment of the student government.

This article contributes to the literature on student governments by analysing the internal dynamics of such organisations which have previously been neglected. The analysis of intra-organisational conflict through competing instutional work allows one to see student governments as internally complex and conflictual, occupied by heterogenous representatives with diverse institutional goals and characterised by institutional ambiguity, social manuevering and unpredictability. Given the strong influence from external actors, this may in part be a product of the institutionalised features of the authoritarian regime. If this is so, we should not expect another group of representatives in student governments to act differently under similar circumstances. Second, it adds depth to our understanding of the connectivity between student governments and the broader political landscape. The findings suggest that how student governments relate to different external actors or position themselves concerning issues is affected by who is winning the intra-organisational conflicts. Finally, it provides a theoretical contribution to neo-institutionalist studies of higher education. The analysis of internal political processes through the framework of institutional work enriches our understanding of the embedded agency of student representatives. This framework could be used to study conflict also among other heterogenous actors in higher education institutions.

Future research should account for how internal conflicts in student governments affect their effectiveness and representativeness to the student body. Participatory research would aid in a more nuanced understanding of how student representatives frame the “other” in the context of conflict. Finally, exploring the internal dynamics of student governments in a democratic setting would enable comparison across political and institutional environments.