Understanding Development Under Constraint in Uganda : Global Asymmetries, Regional-National Realities, and Endogenous Pathways

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how Uganda’s development trajectory is shaped by the interaction of global structural constraints, regional institutional frameworks, domestic political-economic dynamics, and discursive knowledge practices. Challenging conventional success-or-failure narratives that misidentify structurally produced conditions as domestic governance failures, the study argues that Uganda’s development possibilities are co-produced across scales rather than determined at any single level of governance. Deploying an integrated multiscalar analytical framework, combining critical political economy, regional political economy, post-structuralist epistemology, and post-growth thinking complemented by the Capabilities Approach, the study addresses three research questions: how global trade regimes, sustainability governance frameworks, and financial architectures shape Uganda’s policy space; how these constraints are regionally and domestically mediated, including through epistemic actors; and what endogenous development can realistically mean under these conditions. Drawing on documentary analysis, critical discourse analysis, and eight semi-structured interviews, the study finds that Uganda’s policy space is narrowed by interlocking mechanisms of trade conditionality, sustainability regulatory asymmetry, and macro-financial constraint. Regional frameworks provide limited buffering, and domestic planning architectures intensify rather than interrogate export orientation. Endogenous development orientations are analytically credible at the margins but systematically vulnerable to co-optation, partiality, and discursive containment, structural failure modes whose resolution requires reforms in global trade and finance governance beyond Uganda’s unilateral reach.