IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/devchg/v32y2001i1p55-76.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Failure of Popular Justice in Uganda: Local Councils and Women’s Property Rights

Author

Listed:
  • Lynn Khadiagala

Abstract

Advocates of alternative dispute resolution argue that informal, community‐based institutions are better placed to provide inexpensive, expedient and culturally appropriate forms of justice. In 1988, the Ugandan government extended judicial capacity to local councils (LCs) on similar grounds. Drawing on attempts by women in southwestern Uganda to use the LCs to adjudicate property disputes, this article investigates why popular justice has failed to protect the customary property rights of women. The gap between theory and practice arises out of misconceptions of community. The tendency to ascribe a morality and autonomy to local spaces obscures the ability of elites to use informal institutions for purposes of social control. In the light of women’s attempts to escape the ‘rule of persons’ and to seek out arbiters whom they associate with the ‘rule of law’, it can be argued that the utility of the state to ordinary Ugandans should be reconsidered.

Suggested Citation

  • Lynn Khadiagala, 2001. "The Failure of Popular Justice in Uganda: Local Councils and Women’s Property Rights," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 32(1), pages 55-76, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:devchg:v:32:y:2001:i:1:p:55-76
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-7660.00196
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7660.00196
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-7660.00196?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Olivia D'Aoust & Olivier Sterck, 2016. "Who Benefits from Customary Justice? Rent-seeking, Bribery and Criminality in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 25(3), pages 439-467.
    2. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Ayalew Ali & Takashi Yamano, 2008. "Legal Knowledge and Economic Development: The Case of Land Rights in Uganda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(4), pages 593-619.
    3. Meghna Dutta, 2018. "Globalisation, Corruption and Women Empowerment," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 37(3), pages 327-343, September.
    4. Deininger, Klaus & Castagnini, Raffaella, 2006. "Incidence and impact of land conflict in Uganda," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 321-345, July.
    5. Varley, Ann, 2007. "Gender and Property Formalization: Conventional and Alternative Approaches," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 1739-1753, October.
    6. Hickey, Sam, 2005. "The politics of staying poor: exploring the political space for poverty reduction in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 995-1009, June.
    7. Dastan Bamwesigye & Raymond Chipfakacha & Evans Yeboah, 2022. "Forest and Land Rights at a Time of Deforestation and Climate Change: Land and Resource Use Crisis in Uganda," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-14, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:devchg:v:32:y:2001:i:1:p:55-76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0012-155X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.