Intra-organizational Political Processes and Practices in Student Politics: The Students` Guild at Makerere University

Studies of student politics in sub-Saharan Africa tend to treat student governments as unitary organizations, although few have studied the intra-organizational political processes and practices of such organizations. Through an interpretive case study of the Students` Guild at Makerere University, this article aim to move beyond the understanding of student organizations as tightly integrated entities taking univocal decisions. The study uses the theoretical framework of Institutional Work to map how student representatives take action to create, maintain or disrupt the institutions they are part of, and how they relate to each other`s political acts. By applying the abductive logic of reason, the article focusses on the meaning-making of student representatives in their context. I find that student representatives have multiple and diverse political interests and that they act on them in competing ways which leads to cleavages within the Guild. While most student representatives act to maintain the practices, norms and values of the Guild, others aim both to disrupt the Guild and to restore it as an independent institution. What action student representatives engage in are largely determined by what national political party they are affiliated with and what informal candidate team they are supported by.