When rights collide: land grabbing,force and injustice in Uganda

The realisation of rights and enforcement of correlative duties through practice and politics legitimate the use of force against some, to protect and fulfil the rights of others. When a conflict occurs, whose rights and which rights should take priority require clarification. Land grabs represent a conflict not just between use and exchange values but also potentially between different types of rights – such as property rights and the right to the means of subsistence. In such cases, it seems that the dictum ‘between equal rights force decides’ seems to be particularly applicable. This paper explores recent experiences of displaced people in the Karamoja and Teso regions of North Eastern Uganda in order to examine this phenomenon. A socially inclusive and just epistemic perspective requires that we extend our gaze to take account of the local political dynamics and impacts on, and voices of, people who have been displaced and how their basic rights have been affected – ‘putting the last first’. The analysis suggests that the transition to formalised property regimes based on liberal conceptions of ‘rights’ represents a case where the language of rights is usurped to serve the interests of the powerful and privileged rather than challenging social injustice.     

Opportunities for Collaboration and the Adoption of Local Government Investment Pools

This study examines the determinants of state adoption of local government investment pools (LGIPs) for commingling public funds for investment. It uses aggregate local government panel data from 41 states over a 40-year period and conditional fixed-effects logistic regression. The study finds that opportunities for collaboration, the extent of interlocal collaboration, local financial/economic conditions in a state, and proximate coterminous neighbors increase the likelihood that a state will adopt an LGIP. The finding that opportunities for collaboration contribute to the likelihood of LGIP adoption is an important evidence in support of the collaboration idea and extends the theory to interlocal cash management.