Abstract
The focus of this thesis lies on participation in the framework of aid interventions. In my research, I followed participatory forums in practice across multiple sites, ranging from local administrations in three Ugandan towns to central ministries and the offices of international organisations in Uganda’s capital Kampala. The first chapter introduces the topic and empirical object of the study. It then presents an overview of theoretical concepts, research design and empirical context.
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Notes
- 1.
All individual names used in this thesis are pseudonyms. Additionally, in order to anonymise the research participants even further, masculine and feminine pseudonyms and pronouns are used at random. This means that the gender used for an individual in the thesis does not necessarily coincide with the gender of individual participants in the study (see Chapter 3).
- 2.
Annex I explains how the empirical data is referenced in the text and provides a list of interviews, observations and other empirical data used in this thesis.
- 3.
The other two municipalities studied in this thesis are anonymised as B-Ville and C-City. Section 3.2.2 (Fieldwork) provides information about these municipalities.
- 4.
USMID had originally been scheduled to run until 2018 and was then extended for five years. It is now scheduled to run until 2023.
- 5.
I use the past tense in my writing about my empirical research. Consequently, I also use the past tense with respect to USMID, despite the fact that USMID is still being implemented at the time of writing.
- 6.
Unless they mark the beginning and end of a quote from the literature or the empirical data, I use double quotation marks when I want to express my own critical distance to a term commonly used in the field, as is the case for the term “the community” here.
- 7.
Unless they indicate a quote within a quote, I use single quotation marks to highlight a term or concept that is used in the field. Single quotation marks are further used to signal the use of a colloquial term.
- 8.
In participation research, the term institutionalisation is not used in the neo-institutionalist sense as taken-for-granted elements and collectively shared scripts of social reality. Rather, it explicates whether a participatory mechanism is a permanent fixture.
- 9.
While the literature speaks about projects, the empirical research was done with respect to programmes. This is not least due to the fact that in the early 2000s, projects were strongly criticised in the field of development, both by practitioners and academics, and there was a move towards the implementation of aid interventions in the form of programmes. These were thought to be more comprehensive and less prone to disadvantages such as short time frames and limited focus of activities. As such, they were expected to “reduce transaction costs, allow for the exploitation of synergies and have a better political leverage” than projects (Rosin, 2009: 76, author’s translation). From an organisational perspective, however, programmes are merely an “application of the project form on itself”, and today, neither practitioners nor academia differentiate clearly between the two (Rosin, 2009: 78, author’s translation). Therefore, the theoretical considerations that have been elaborated for projects are very much applicable to the organisational form of a programme.
- 10.
Theoretical concepts are emphasised by italicisation when they are first introduced in the text and also upon their first mention in the theory chapter. In the rest of the text, however, concepts are not italicised.
- 11.
Although in reality, as Section 3.2 shows, these phases were not as clearly delimited as is posited here.
- 12.
This thesis is written in British English and therefore spells the term ‘organisational’ with an ‘s’. The theoretical concept of the organizational field, however, is commonly spelled with a ‘z’ and the thesis adopts this spelling when speaking about the theoretical concept.
- 13.
Besides the organisations presented in this section, other organisations were involved in TSUPU and USMID. In both programmes, for example, the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFPED) was responsible for the dispersion of funds but otherwise not involved in the implementation of the programme. This section presents only the central actors in the field of organisations as it presented itself in the empirical research.
- 14.
In the field, “institutionalisation” was used to describe the integration of MDFs into Uganda’s existing legal frameworks in order to ensure their sustainability over time. The meaning of “institutionalisation” in the field is thus more akin to the use of the term in participation research (see Section 1.1). It does not signify institutionalisation in the neo-institutionalist sense of taken-for-granted elements and collectively shared scripts or frames of social reality. The narrative of institutionalisation of MDFs in the field is analysed in detail in Section 6.3.
- 15.
However, no representative of the MoLHUD was present in either of the MDF meetings in A-Town or in B-Ville I observed, although both meetings involved the election of a new forum executive.
- 16.
Reflecting a critical perspective on global north-south relations, I use the terms Global South and Global North to specify what has in the past often been denoted “developing” and “developed” or “third world” and “first world” countries (Dados and Connell, 2012).
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Schindler, E.M. (2021). Introduction. In: Structuring People. Sozialwissenschaftliche Zugänge zu Afrika. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35903-4_1
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