This paper analyses how Ugandan army commanders have mobilised transborder economic networks to exploit economic opportunities in eastern DRC during the military intervention of the Ugandan People's Defence Force (UPDF) in Congo's wars (1996Á97; 1998Á2003). These transborder networks are the starting point of our evaluation of the informal political structures and networks linking Uganda's political centre to Congo's war complex. While it is often claimed that military entrepreneurismalism in the DRC has undermined political stability in Uganda, we argue that the activities of Ugandan military entrepreneurs and networks under their control were an integral part of Uganda's governance regime. Crucial to the development of this entrepreneurialism was the existence of pre-war transborder networks of economic exchange that were connecting Congo to eastern African markets. Military control over these highly informalised networks facilitated UPDF commanders' access to Congo's resources. Rather than operating as privatised sources of accumulation, these military shadow networks were directly linked to the inner circles of the Ugandan regime.

Party defections have increasingly become a major trend of Ugandan multiparty politics, not only for individual elites at the national level and in the parties' leadership but at the grassroots level by local party members too. These shifts of allegiance are now systematically part of the staging and imagery of President Museveni's electoral campaigns. A common explanation of this phenomenon points at the inconsistency of partisan loyalties and ideologies. It is often taken for granted that defections are expressions of clientelism, political opportunism and above all democratic immaturity and a misunderstanding of multipartyism. This paper argues on the contrary that mass defections reflect the social technology of the National Resistance Movement hegemonic rule at the local level, and the constraints for opposition parties whose structures it co-opts. They are part of the monopolisation of organisational initiatives at the grassroots level by the regime. Defections are not simply a symbol of electoral opportunism but part of a routine economic posture in a context of straddling lines between the economic and political spheres. Following up the trajectories of two specific groups of defectors from Teso over several years, this paper seeks to give precise insights on the local presence and rooting of political parties, their modes of mobilisation, recruitment, their repertoires of action, and more generally on the transformation of identities, partisan practices and political activism but also on the hegemonic ruling party's mode of governance at the local level. This micro-sociologic approach opens windows on how hegemony is built in a dialogic way with local political entrepreneurs and vote brokers. Hegemonic rule therefore also contains its own limits as it requires a permanent renegotiation with individual actors embedded in a set of local power relationships.

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