Abstract:International norms of what it means to be a state dictate domestic policy within developing and unrecognised states but must co-exist with internal demands. With a mutual dependence between internal and external considerations and, indeed, legitimacy, at the fore of Somaliland's statebuilding project and its stability, it is a useful study in achieving 'success' in statebuilding and in what success can mean in bringing together internal and external demands. This article examines the impact of the hybrid inclusion of traditional authority in the central democratic government as the marriage between internal and external demands. This article argues that the Somaliland state is successful because it is a flexible process rather than a project; a process that reflects the demands and expectations of society, an aspect that is often absent in statebuilding projects. The 1991 failure and collapse of the state in Somalia ushered in what was to become a long-term and largely unsuccessful effort aimed at internationally driven post-conflict statebuilding. Despite persistent failures the international community and Somalia's neighbours continue their endeavours aimed at building a stable, unified and accountable Somalia. However, as Spears (2004, 179-80) notes, 'in a few cases [of state failure or collapse], the breakdown of large, arbitrary state units has given way to more coherent and viable (though not always more benevolent) political entities.' In Somalia, this breakdown was immediately apparent and it continues to take place. Although emerging political entities within Somalia are not always lasting or stable, pockets of locally created governance have emerged, providing social and physical stability and security to the people. In the northeast province of Puntland, a long-standing regional government offers basic services and security to the population. And in the northwest territory of Somaliland, the most organised and developed of these, a new 'state' that exhibits what has so far eluded the south is emerging, and an extraordinary project of domestically-led statebuilding is taking place within the larger failure of Somalia. Keywords 1Throughout the literature on failed states and that of statebuilding, the on-going project in Somalia is a frequent point of reference. Within these studies the existence of an independent Somaliland has 2 widely been seen as problematic for the long-standing goal of re-establishing a government able to exercise its power throughout the entirety of Somalia. Despite its 1991 declaration of independence, the insistence on the territorial integrity of Somalia coming from the West as well as strongly from the African Union ensures that Somaliland's stability remains in the context of stability in greater Somalia. Although Somaliland is gaining increasing academic attention, it still remains an underresearched area. In the realm of policy, despite increasing external engagement with the territory, much of this takes place under the guise of Somalia-wide projects. The cas...
Abstract:For unrecognized states in the international system, recognition of sovereign statehood is the ultimate goal. Not being 'a state' means being excluded from global networks. However, even in the most basic definitions and criteria for unrecognized states there is a period of relative autonomy due to non-recognition. It is a period when political actors can use isolation to establish the state's narrative, identity, and structure. It is this period that provides the foundations for external interaction. It is in this period that the state is born. This article examines another side to the politics of recognition: the politics of non-recognition. Drawing on the contemporary examples of Somaliland and Kurdistan, this article assesses whether the benefits as well as the costs of non-recognition.
Even in the context of a relatively flourishing state, fragility can be an enduring feature of a political system, particularly in the case of recently established or unrecognised states. This article examines the nature of statebuilding in a specific context to question the assumption that forms of hybrid governance or pre-existing forms of governance are a necessary evil be tolerated but which needs ultimately to be overcome during statebuilding. It does this by adopting the language of resilience and focusing on the case of Somaliland to highlight the role of clan governance as a mechanism of political resilience and as a means of promoting the flexibility required for statebuilding. Yet, at the same time, the process of statebuilding often involves formalising governance and limiting the role of traditional social-political forms of governance such as clans, ignoring their role in legitimating and stabilizing the political system. However, as this article argues, stability and fragility are inextricably linked; while the clan system has been an important force in stabilizing the state, it has also become a pressure point for the state's latent fragility. By contextualising fragility and stability within the language of resilience, though, this symbiotic relationship can be better analysed.
Sixty years of liberal development engagements with African states has had a significant impact upon socio-political relationships and expectations within the state. Societal expectations for the liberalization of economic-political space are evident within many African states, shaped through forms of normative intervention and liberal conditioning. However, with a rise of Chinese intervention in the African state, primarily through relationships centered on economic exchanges between China and African elites, the pressure for political change is being removed. This hegemonic shift not only changes who is influencing the African state, but also what is influencing as a normative shift is concurrently taking place. If societal expectations of liberalization are no longer supported by external pressures for change, what impact will this have on socio-political relationships within African states? This article questions the impact of a normative shift, or a potential normative shift, within development interactions and transactions, arguing that the removal of direct external liberal demands will raise socio-political tensions, and thus threaten stability, within African states engaged in Chinese development interactions.
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