Understanding Statebuilding

Traditional Governance and the Modern State in Somaliland

Rebecca Richards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472425898
• eBook ISBN: 9781317004653
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Filosofia politica

Much analysis of state building focusses on dissecting specific projects and attempting to identify what has gone 'wrong' in states such as Afghanistan and Iraq. What draws less attention is what has gone 'right' in non-interventionist statebuilding projects within 'unrecognised' states. By examining this model in more depth a more successful model of statebuilding emerges in which the end goal of modern democracy and good governance are more likely to be realized. Indeed 'states-within-states' such as Somaliland where external intervention in the statebuilding process is largely absent can provide vital new lessons. Somaliland is a functioning democratic political entity in northwestern Somalia which declared its independence from the troubled south in 1991 and then embarked on an ambitious project to create a democratic government and successful state in the post-conflict environment. The leaders and the people of Somaliland have since succeeded not only in maintaining peace and stability, but also in building the institutions of government and the foundations for democracy that have led to a succession of elections, peaceful transfers of power and a consolidation of democratization. The resulting state of Somaliland is widely hailed as a beacon of success within a politically turbulent region and provides a useful framework for successful statebuilding projects throughout the world.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Anyone who has watched enough documentaries on dangerous or ‘no-go’ places in the world is sure to hear about Somaliland at some point. Somaliland is a ‘place that does not exist’. Officially on most government no-go lists because it is technically a part of Somalia, the idea of traveling to Somaliland has an air of intrigue, mystery and daring to it. Anyone actually planning a trip to Somaliland, though, will encounter a different experience. Visitors can obtain visas from small offices hosting Somaliland consulates prior to their arrival (these are unofficial offices, of course. In London it can be found in a standard terrace on a back street in Whitechapel). Regular flights from Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Dubai on major carriers make Somaliland easy to reach. As mysterious travel goes, it is all fairly mundane. Upon arrival, you disembark in a relatively developed airport, pass through immigration and customs, and are met outside by taxi drivers in cars with Somaliland license plates clamouring to get your custom. The roads in the cities are paved and maintained, the Somaliland flag flies above most buildings and adorns almost anything imaginable in a show of nationalistic pride. It is against the law to use certain plastic bags in the market as the thin blue variety have a tendency to escape and collect in the bushes and trees, turning them an odd shade of blue in an otherwise dusty and brown environment. The democratic government is stable, political debate is commonly heard in most tea houses and cafes, and the opposition is very vocal. The capital, Hargeisa, is growing, it is vibrant and it is booming. Most notable, though, is the remarkably peaceful and orderly nature of Somaliland. The conflict that plagues the south is conspicuously absent, and sometimes you have to remind yourself that you are indeed technically in Somalia. Ask any Somalilander why Somaliland is different and they are certain to reply with ‘we are not like Somalia. We are civilized and peaceful’. Somaliland may be on the list of places that do not exist, but being in Somaliland tells a completely different story. Somaliland is a state without being a state, and for more than 20 years it has been undergoing, and undertaking, a remarkable self-led statebuilding process. Guided by both external expectations and internal necessities, it has created the apparent antithesis to its parent-state, Somalia. The question is, however, how did it do it?

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 state reconstruction and statebuilding. Since 1992 Somalia has been the subject of numerous peace conferences and a succession of attempts at re-establishing the state apparatus and a government. The current government in Somalia continues to be plagued with difficulties, not only from within the government itself but also from various factions within society, including an increasingly outward looking and al Qaeda aligned militant movement: al-Shabaab. The 2006 return of Somalia’s government from more than a decade in exile in Kenya was not met with jubilation in the streets, but rather the continuation of violence so intense in the capital city of Mogadishu that the returning government opted to base itself in Baidoa, nearly 160 miles away. Today’s unstable and unpredictable situation in Somalia leads one to question the sustainability of not only the current incarnation of the government but also, more broadly, of an externally created government within the archetypal failed state. Despite the persistent failures at re-building the state, the international community and Somalia’s neighbours continue their endeavours aimed at building a stable and accountable Somalia. Where the international community and its statebuilding activity is largely absent, however, pockets of locally created governance have emerged. In many areas outside the major cities, clan governance continues to provide 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 pockets of governance, a new ‘state’ that exhibits the central democratic government that has so far eluded the south is emerging. It is here that an extraordinary project of domestically-led statebuilding is taking place within the larger failure of Somalia.

Throughout the literature on failed states and that of statebuilding, the ongoing project in Somalia is a frequent point of reference. Within these studies the self-declared independent territory of Somaliland is often referred to as a region of Somalia or as a breakaway territory that refuses to engage with the wider project of reconciliation and rebuilding of the state. Whilst it is true that there is minimal contact between Somalia and Somaliland on the nature of Somaliland’s status, the continuation of viewing Somaliland as region or territory of Somalia creates a situation in which the causes for Somaliland’s secession and the successes in creating a state are not acknowledged. Instead, the existence of an independent Somaliland is problematic for the long-standing goal of re-establishing a government able to exercise its power throughout the entirety of Somalia. The insistence on the territorial integrity of Somalia coming from the West as well as strongly from the African Union ensures that very little official attention is paid to the statebuilding process in Somaliland. It therefore remains conspicuously absent from much of the statebuilding policy, practice and literature.

The insistence on an externally-led project of creating a central democratic state in Somalia reflects the current development trend of promulgating a universally applied style of state. Indeed, statebuilding in Somalia, as the first post-Cold War statebuilding project informed by the idealistic New World Order, marked the start of the promotion of an idealised modern democratic state through statebuilding and development projects. With a flux of new Eastern European states creating increased competition for investment and development assistance from the West, the message portrayed to states seeking support regarding what was needed to obtain support became clear. As Dowden, in reference to African states, recollects:

Europe and America gave African governments three conditions for their continued, if diminishing support: pursue free market policies, as laid down in the Washington consensus, respect human rights, and hold democratic elections – by which they meant multi-party democracy.¹

These demands reflect wider expectations of what the state should be. However, whilst broader academic examinations of the state and the changing understanding of it are nothing new, within literature and indeed policy on statebuilding, what the state ‘is’ is often assumed rather than analysed. And whilst expectations of what the state should be are commonly found within development literature and policy, these too reflect assumptions surrounding the state. The literature on theory and philosophy of the state is vast, and the intention here is not to provide an overarching theoretical picture of the state. What is of primary interest, however, is how the state is portrayed and treated in practice and the assumptions and expectations encompassing and underpinning that. It is this treatment that informs not only external policies, but also in some instances internal action.

The ‘State’

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia is widely accepted as the landmark agreement that laid the foundation for the creation of independent demarcated sovereign states as well as the beginnings of the interstate system. Control of territory and a monopolisation of force necessary to extract rents and taxes was considered vital to the growth and sustainability of the state.² Indeed, the early emphasis on control of a clearly demarcated territory as the primary characteristic of the state is still reflected in Max Weber’s widely accepted definition of the state.³ The Westphalian state and the development of the concept of sovereignty, with the emphasis on the sovereign’s ability to control a territory and accumulate the capital necessary to ensure and maintain the territorial integrity and security of the state, left little room or concern for what took place within the boundaries of the state. Even within Weber’s augmentation of the rudimentary Westphalian conception of the state, where there is an acknowledgment of the empirical actions of the state, the concern with the empirical maintains the focus on state actions in maintaining juridical security and control within the state rather than the more human focused state actions that have become associated with more contemporary assessments of the state. Consistently for Weber, if the monopoly of force by the national government is absent, the territory exists in a realm of statelessness. Whilst social, humanitarian, economic and political responsibilities may be interpretively derived from this definition through an examination of the elements of control or organisation, whether charismatic leadership, traditional leadership, or bureaucratic control,⁴ engrained in this definition is the persistent emphasis placed on the monopolisation or legitimisation of force necessary to first achieve and then maintain statehood. This force-centric understanding of the state continues to underpin contemporary conceptions of the state, yet they do not occupy the entirety of the space in understandings and expectations of what the state is and should be.

Whilst control and a monopoly of force remain essential components of modern statehood, the evolution of what it means to be a state has resulted in increased importance being placed on the actions of the central government outside the realm of physical or territorial security. Drawing on the criteria of statehood codified in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, Ian Brownlie describes the state as a legal entity – recognised by international law – with four main elements: a defined territory; a permanent population; an effective government; and independence, or the right to enter into relations with other states.⁵ Although the Montevideo Convention simply states ‘government’ as one of its criteria for statehood, Brownlie added emphasis on the internal occurrences and practices of the sovereign with his identification of ‘effective government’. In a similar theme, Robert Jackson articulates that modern states must exhibit not only juridical – or legal territorial – statehood, but also empirical statehood – or fulfilling domestic sovereign responsibilities through institutional authority and organisational capacity – in order to be ‘complete’ states.⁶ Development and statebuilding policy and discourse extend the empirical much further than Jackson’s authority-based conception and into the realm of good governance. Indeed, the mere existence of the term ‘failed state’ indicates the dominant expectation that even though the state may juridically and therefore legally exist, merely maintaining sovereign borders is not enough to fully meet modern expectations of statehood.

As Jessop notes, the notion of what it means to be a state is a perpetually incomplete and constantly evolving understanding.⁷ Although Jessop discusses the changing nature of the state as a result of changing economic practice, the observation can also be applied to changes resulting from normative values determining what it means to be a state. In other words, what has changed is not the state, per se, but rather the conception or understanding of the state. This is clear in evolving understandings not only since its inception at Westphalia but also since the time of Weber’s now dominant conception of the state was written.⁸ Concerns over the empirical attributes of statehood have gone beyond a sovereign or government able to exert institutional control and authority through a monopolisation of force. Following rapid decolonisation, juridical statehood trumped the existence of an empirical state, and as such, according to Jackson,

many [ex-colonial states] have not yet been authorized and empowered domestically and consequently lack the institutional features of sovereign states … They disclose limited empirical statehood: their populations do not enjoy many of the advantages traditionally associated with independent statehood. Their governments are often deficient in the political will, institutional authority, and organized power to protect human rights or provide socioeconomic welfare.⁹

Caught in the geopolitical struggle of the Cold War, however, the concern regarding many of these new states, as well as many ‘old’ states, was predominantly ideological; again the empirical concerns stopped at whether the state was ‘for us or against us’. It was not until the end of the Cold War that focus increasingly and rapidly shifted towards the relationship between the state, governance and the population: a focus dominated by issues now associated with not only good, but also legitimate governance and the exercising of empirical sovereignty within those states that Jackson implies were ‘behind’ or ‘problematic’ from the start. Vital to this shift is the expectation of international political and financial cooperation, perceived to best be achieved through the establishment of liberal democracies. Indeed, the push for familiar and proven liberal democracies as a ‘sure bet’ form of statehood reflects the prioritisation of external expectations of the state; expectations that are perceived to be necessary not only for the legitimacy and security of the state in question, but also for the political, physical and economic security of the system. It must be clear, though, that the legitimacy referred to here is not solely domestic acceptance of a government; it also refers to an international acceptance of the actions and functions of the state.

In the 1990s, humanitarian considerations and good governance replaced ideological leanings and the militarisation of the state as points of attention. As evidenced in President George H.W. Bush’s short-lived New World Order, and later prevalent in the output and actions of the United Nations, as well as the advent of humanitarian intervention, the empirical actions of state leadership in regards to the treatment and conditions of the populace challenged the state’s juridical sovereign right to non-intervention.¹⁰ Whilst provision of public goods and empirical statehood are not new concepts in relation to the state, the conception of expected state action, both externally and domestically, shifted from a focus on force or control to a focus on provision, both to the international community and the domestic population of the state in question. It is within this realm where the legal state separates from the normative state. Whereas there continues to be an emphasis on the legalistic monopolisation of force, contemporary conceptions of effective statehood have come to include the state’s ability to provide for its citizens in the realm of territorial security as well as in terms of political, social, economic, and human security. Whilst the legal definition of sovereignty and statehood has changed little since the formation of the early European states, the normative conception of statehood has evolved. Further, following the end of the Cold War the notion of a link between the liberal state and systemic security became dominant, firmly entrenching the empirical occurrences in an individual state in the security of others, particularly the liberal democratic states of the West. With this link made, threats emanating from states became much more than just military or territorial ones and not only the style of state but also domestic actions of the government became a concern of more than just the population inhabiting a sovereign territory.

In his oft-cited work, Rotberg expounds upon the increasing em...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Norms, Ideals and Modern Statebuilding
• 3 Legitimacy and the ‘Built’ State
• 4 The Clan, Governance and the Build-up to Breakdown
• 5 The Emergence of the New State
• 6 The Institutionalisation of the Traditional
• 7 Somaliland at the Crossroads?
• 8 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index