THE STATE, DEVELOPMENT, DEMOCRACY, AND PEACE IN UNRECOGNISED SOMALILAND

Abstract

This study examines the national state-building experiment in Somaliland, an unrecognised state in the Horn of Africa, in the three decades after its independence from Somalia in 1991. There are three dimensions of national state-building in Somaliland discussed in this study, namely economic growth, political development (with a particular emphasis on democratisation), and peacebuilding. This study uses a qualitative-descriptive methodology, utilising previous studies and mass media publications to assess the role of the Somalilander state vis-à-vis those three dimensions. This study discovered that the Somalilander state and its government can be considered as a strong state. Furthermore, the Somalilander state has an instrumental role in encouraging economic growth by way of cooperation with national and foreign business interests, encouraging political development through a highly successful, novel method of democratisation and political institutionalisation through deliberation and consensus in cooperation with traditional and religious institutions present in the country’s territory, and encourages peacebuilding within the country’s territory by neutralising threats of terrorism and horizontal interclan conflict through inclusive state governance. This study also finds that the Somalilander government’s role is central in uniting the various clans and armed militia groups of the country into unified state institutions, in a way that is absent in southern Somalia. Therefore, this study finds that the “Somalilander Way” as practiced by the Somalilander government for the past three decades is a good example for other states in the world coming out from conflicts.