Paper short abstract:

This paper explores challenges of representative organisation in democratic transitions, focusing on a transport association in Uganda that became an exploitative mafia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the rise and decline of the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA) as a lens onto the challenges of representative organisation and democratisation in Uganda. Through this case, the article examines how organisational forms that appear to represent large constituencies can actually exclude and exploit them, bolstering the power and wealth of political-economic elites, consolidating authoritarian domination and generating anti-democratic impulses that reverse earlier democratic gains. Challenging conventional understandings of 'elite capture', it argues that UTODA's organisational power evolved through processes conceptualised as 'double capture', which can only be understood by scrutinising the complex evolving relationship between the association and the state over time.