Somaliland's best kept secret: shrewd politics and war projects as means of state-making

Balthasar, Dominik

doi:10.1080/17531055.2013.777217

Cited by 48 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…While the 'traditional authorities' played an important role in peace-building and statemaking during the early years, for example, they had forfeited much of their legitimacy already by 1996 (Höhne 2011, 319). Similarly, in arguing that statemaking in Somaliland 'invariably emerged from below' (Böge et al 2008, 13), the framework also fails to acknowledge the significant top-down and authoritarian traits of state-making it experienced between 1993 and 2001, a time during which state-making was in full swing (Balthasar 2013).…”

Section: -2001: the Case Of Somalilandmentioning

confidence: 95%

From Hybridity to Standardization: Rethinking State-Making in Contexts of Fragility

Balthasar

2015

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding

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Section: -2001: the Case Of Somalilandmentioning

confidence: 95%

From Hybridity to Standardization: Rethinking State-Making in Contexts of Fragility

Balthasar

2015

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding

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“…Unlike the other two cases -where armed groups aim at controlling the central state, which includes the symbolic act of taking over the capital -Somalia's armed groups are territorial (Hoehne, 2016). The former Somali National Movement took control of Somaliland and formed a de facto (stable hybrid) state with a traditional governing system in 1991 (Ahmed and Green, 1999;Balthasar, 2013;Lewis, 2008;Walls, 2009 1998, but its political order remains less institutionalized than Somaliland's (Johnson and Smaker, 2014). Ahmed Madobe's Raas Kambooni took over the capital of Jubaland in 2013 (Mwangi, 2016), and the ASWJ are attempting to take control of Somalia's central areas.…”

Section: Figure 1 Fsi Security Apparatus Scoresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike the other two cases — where armed groups aim at controlling the central state, which includes the symbolic act of taking over the capital — Somalia's armed groups are territorial (Hoehne, ). The former Somali National Movement took control of Somaliland and formed a de facto (stable hybrid) state with a traditional governing system in 1991 (Ahmed and Green, ; Balthasar, ; Lewis, ; Walls, ). The former Somali Salvation Democratic Front formed the autonomous region of Puntland in 1998, but its political order remains less institutionalized than Somaliland's (Johnson and Smaker, ).…”

Section: Approaches and Constraints To Measuring Fragilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Handle with Care! A Qualitative Comparison of the Fragile States Index's Bottom Three Countries: Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan

Glawion¹,

Vries²,

Mehler³

2018

Development and Change

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For the past four years, the Fund for Peace has ranked the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan as the 'most fragile states' in the world, in its annual Fragile States Index (FSI). The three countries' almost identical scores suggest comparability; however, critics raise concerns about the FSI's data aggregation methods, and its conflation of causes and consequences. This article treads the uncharted path of unpacking the empirical realities that hide behind FSI indicators. Drawing on data collected during field research in the three states, the authors investigate three security indicators (security apparatus, factionalized elites, and external intervention) and propose an alternative, qualitative appreciation. Each country's fragility is based on how security forces, elites and interventions evolved over time and installed themselves differently in each region of the country. The qualitative assessment presented here shows that not every indicator matters in all cases at all times or throughout the country. Most crucially, the authors unveil enormous differences between and within the FSI's three 'most fragile states'. Such variations call for better-adapted and more flexible intervention strategies, and for quantitative comparisons to be qualitatively grounded.

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“…With an interest in the co-production of circulation and political order around the Berbera corridor perimeter, we suggest that politics of circulation can be analysed by looking at (a) the interplay of multiple rationalities of circulation; (b) the prominence of templates for simultaneously enabling circulation and managing the security threats of/to circulation; and (c) the role of anticipation and ‘economies of anticipation’ (Cross, 2015) as projects of circulation develop into corridors. In so doing, we link key insights from the area studies literature (particularly Bradbury, 2008; Balthasar, 2013; Ciabarri, 2010, 2017) to recent critical scholarship on logistics and infrastructure. This analytical move raises important questions pertaining to the global and networked dimensions of trade politics and logistics in the Horn of Africa, which the area studies literature tends to overlook.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics of circulation: The makings of the Berbera corridor in Somali East Africa

Stepputat

Hagmann

2019

Environ Plan D

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This article explores the co-production of political order and circulation in what today is known as Berbera corridor, a trade and transport corridor that connects landlocked Ethiopia and Berbera Port in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland. We analyse the ‘politics of circulation’ that are set in motion by the articulation of different projects of making goods circulate and capturing revenue from circulation. Such politics involve a plurality of rationalities, the emergence of technologies that seek to balance circulation and security, and substantial elements of anticipation. Our empirical analysis focuses on three overarching projects of circulation: Somaliland’s foundational state-building-based-on-circulation project of the 1990s; shifting Ethiopian customs regimes and strategies to discipline and capture cross-border trading and livestock exports in the 2000s; and the transnational state-of-the-art corridor project of the 2010s. The article depicts Berbera corridor as a state-building frontier as well as a frontier of global logistical networks and rationalities, where new agents of circulation rearrange relations between former ones and cut across international as well as public/private boundaries.

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Somaliland's best kept secret: shrewd politics and war projects as means of state-making

Cited by 48 publications

References 20 publications

From Hybridity to Standardization: Rethinking State-Making in Contexts of Fragility

From Hybridity to Standardization: Rethinking State-Making in Contexts of Fragility

Handle with Care! A Qualitative Comparison of the Fragile States Index's Bottom Three Countries: Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan

Politics of circulation: The makings of the Berbera corridor in Somali East Africa

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