Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State
Building a State in Somalia
Master thesis University of Amsterdam
Department Philosophy
Date:
June 11th 2009
Student:
Floortje Moes
Bloys van Treslongstraat 18huis
1056 XA Amsterdam
Email:
[email protected]
Student nr.: 0399795
Word count: 17 059
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Abstract
After thirteen failed attempts since 1991 to install a central state in Somalia, the
country remains stateless. Nevertheless, the pursuit of a central Somali state
continues; currently in the form of a Government of National Unity that is supposed
to be installed after the Somali people express their approval of this government in a
constitutional referendum. This study questions the legitimacy of this state-building
approach. It aims to uncover and scrutinize the fundamental assumptions about
state-legitimacy underlying the state-building attempts in Somalia. It detects a
deficiency in the assumptions that are foundational to contemporary state-building
practice. As the case of Somalia illustrates, state-building practice that is based on the
deficient assumptions on what makes a state legitimate, can result in the
establishment of abusive governments, or fail to establish any government at all. The
study also proposes measures that compromise the deficiency of the contemporary
approach to state-building, and explores an alternative approach. In consequence,
this study provides a critical analysis of the state-building approach in Somalia, and
in doing so, revisits and reconsiders ingrained assumptions about state-legitimacy. It
aims to combine philosophical, sociological and historical work to generate a new
perspective on the issue of political authority, political obligation and the situation in
Somalia.
Key words: Political obligation, political authority, state-building, Somalia
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
POLITICAL OBLIGATION IN A DISINTEGRATED STATE. BUIDLING A STATE IN SOMALIA
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................................. 4
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
1. Popular Consent and the Government of National Unity..................................................................... 11
1.1 Why government at all? ......................................................................................................................... 11
1.2 From a state-of-nature to the act of consent......................................................................................... 14
1.3 The Concept of Consent: Unanimous or Majoritarian?...................................................................... 17
1.4 Conclusion................................................................................................................................................ 22
2. The Government of National Unity: a Horizontal Perspective ............................................................ 24
2.1 Political Obligation to obey the Government of National Unity ...................................................... 24
2.2 Government of National Unity without a Political Society ............................................................... 26
2.3 The Issue of Political Authority............................................................................................................. 30
2.4 Conditions of Publicity ........................................................................................................................... 32
2.5 Conclusion................................................................................................................................................ 33
3. A Central Government and the Somali People: a Mismatch?............................................................... 36
3.1 Somalia and Central Authority ............................................................................................................. 37
3.2 Regional Governance in Somalia........................................................................................................... 41
3.3 Recognizing public reasons.................................................................................................................... 44
3.4 Conclusion................................................................................................................................................ 49
Concluding remarks ......................................................................................................................................... 51
Annex 1: Chronological history of Somalia ................................................................................................. 57
Annex 2: Maps of Somalia............................................................................................................................... 61
References and Further Selected Reading.................................................................................................... 62
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Acknowledgments
Writing a thesis is a long and lonely process. I owe gratitude to many that have made
this process a dynamic and educative experience for me. I have enjoyed support,
encouragement and inspiration from four persons in particular. I would like to thank
Gijs van Donselaar for his guidance in this process. I have enjoyed the private
lectures on the magical world of game theory, tremendously. Besides, I appreciate
the way he put things into perspective, whenever I took things out of context.
Furthermore, I owe a special thanks to Dorota Mokrosińka, who took the time and
effort to comment on my work, even when abroad. I experienced her critique as
motivating, and the detailed comments kept me attentive, and helped me focus my
argument. My brief representation of Mokrosińka’s theory does not do her work
justice, and I would like to advise everyone interested in the topic of this study to
read her inspiring book. It captures the complexity of the problem of political
obligation magnificently. I would like to thank Jeroen Visser and Linde Wolters for
their comments and helpful contribution to this document. Obviously, none of these
persons can be held accountable for deficiencies that remain in this thesis. I am
grateful to everyone who took the time to listen to me, because these “sessions”
helped me structure my thoughts on the situation in Somalia, and the issue of
political obligation.
4
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Introduction
Somalia has been mockingly dubbed ‘the world’s foremost graveyard of externally
sponsored state-building initiatives’ (Menkhaus 2007: 74). In 2008, the latest
initiative, known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), was on the brink of
collapse. Even though this interim government was endorsed by the United Nations
(UN) and given diplomatic, financial and military support 1 , the TFG did not have
constituency in Somalia and merely existed on paper (ICG 2008: 1). The interim
government faced strong and violent opposition from a complex of rebel movements,
consisting of warlords, militias and other oppositional alliances. 2 But now, the
transitional government seems to have made a comeback. On the 31st of January
2009 the TFG elected a new President: Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. This is the first time an
Islamic president is chosen. This leader does seem to have constituency among
ordinary Somalis (Gettleman et all. 2009a). That is probably why -after thirteen failed
attempts to install an effective and official government in Somalia- many seized the
news of the election of Sheikh Ahmed ‘as a window of hope’, and believe that he ‘is
the sort of man who can make a change’ (Gettleman et all. 2009a).
And change is needed in Somalia. Once Somalia was thought to be the country
that would be most capable -compared to other African nations- of forming a
modern (democratic) state, because the Somali people form a homogeneous ethnic
group. However, since independence in 1960 the country has been plagued by
governmental clientalism, corruption and nepotism. The abuse of political power
caused Somalis to live in constant fear of exploitation by one group or another for
decades, and contributed to the fact that Somali society is disintegrated. On top of
that, Somalia has been stateless since 1991, when dictator General Siad Barre was
ousted.
The UN authorized the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) that secures the offices and
officials of the TFG. Furthermore, the UN Security Council has been discussing the deployment of a
UN peacekeeping force.
2 Conflict analysts have had difficulty in distinguishing and categorizing these different oppositional
groups (AAB Somalia 2009: 11). For the purpose of this essay, the term “warlords” refers to ‘modern
political or military actors who seize control of tribal or clan structures’ (Giustozzi 2005: 12). The term
“militia” is used for armed groups operating for private material gain, or ideological interests, not
necessarily connected to clan structures.
1
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
External parties generally blame the statelessness and related lawlessness in
Somalia for the country’s social and economic hardship. That is one of the
proclaimed reasons why the UN aims to install a central government in Somalia. The
UN has welcomed the presidency of Sheikh Ahmed. After the election, the UN
Security Council members, therefore, ‘called upon President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed to
constitute a Government of National Unity at the earliest possible date’ (UN Security
Council 2009). The UN believes that this new and improved central government can
end statelessness in Somalia. Will Sheikh Ahmed’s envisaged Government of
National Unity indeed end the chain of failed state-building attempts? Will this
government end the anarchy and violence in Somalia? Will the UN-envisioned
Government of National Unity manage to consolidate political authority in Somalia?
New York Times journalist Jeffrey Gettleman has worked extensively on EastAfrica analyzing the thirteen failed state-building attempts for the Global Policy
Forum, a monitoring body for UN policies. He concluded that ‘part of the problem
[…] is that the bulk of outside efforts have concentrated on setting up a strong central
government, which may be anathema in a country where authority tends to be
diffuse and clan-based’ (Gettleman 2008a). Indeed, before the start of colonization in
the end of the 19th century, Somalia’s political life was organized along clan-lines. Up
until this day, these clan affiliations define essential aspects of political, social and
economic life in Somalia. 3 This undoubtedly abates the enthusiasm about the UNsponsored central government; the TFG might have the financial and diplomatic
means to create a Government of National Unity, but will this be a solution for the
Somali people? Gettleman suggests that there is a mismatch between the statebuilding approach outsiders employ in Somalia, and the political structure of Somali
society. This consideration invites us to take a closer look to the way in which statebuilding in Somalia is approached. In the wake of numerous failed state-building
attempts, and with raised expectations about another such effort, it is time to ask
some essential questions about the legitimacy and plausibility of such an endeavour.
Historian Charles Geshekter once characterized Somalia as follows: ‘When Somalis meet each other
they do not ask: Where are you from? Rather, they ask: Whom are you from? Genealogy is to Somalis
what an address is to Americans’(Charles Geshekter in Gelletly 2003: 14-15).
3
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
The TFG is the only political entity on the territory of Somalia that has been
recognized by the international community. It was initiated in 2004 –supported by
the United Nations- with a mandate to gain political authority on the whole of
Somalia and form a Government of National Unity. With the election of Sheikh Ahmed,
the mandate of the TFG has been extended from 2009 until 2011. The UN works on
the premise that (liberal) democracy should be installed in Somalia. With the general
consensus being that political tools to establish such a legitimate central government
are a national referendum, and open and fair elections. Nowadays, ‘elections have
become the principal means to legitimate […] new leadership and the institutional
structures that emerge from a peace process’ (Lyons 2004: 269-270). Even if
“Somalia’s future is in Somali hands” -as Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, UN Special
Representative for Somalia, phrased it- the Somali future is structured according to a
preconceived model of state-building that the UN employs worldwide (UNPOS
2009b). But these legitimization measures might not be the best way to ensure a new
democratic state, in some cases they may not even establish a legitimate authority.
Is the proposed Government of National Unity a good solution for the Somali
people? Will its consolidation through a referendum and open and fair elections
make this government legitimate? In order to answer the question about the moral
quality of the UN-approach to state-building, we will have to enter the domain of
political theory. More specifically, we have to revisit the contemporary assumptions
about state-legitimacy that are foundational to the current state-building attempts
adopted by the UN in the case of Somalia. This requires us to address the
relationship between a people and its government; the issue of political authority
and political obligation. These issues of political authority and the obedience of a
people, are ancient and have been discussed since Plato, but it is a discussion still
relevant today: What reasons do the Somali people have, after almost two decades of
statelessness, to abide by the rules of the Government of National Unity? Why have a
government at all? And why would this particular political authority be legitimized
to claim the Somali people’s obedience to its laws?
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
In addressing this topic, a distinction should be made between a de facto
authority and legitimate political authority. 4 Building on the support of the
international community, the Government of National Unity may gain de facto
authority on the territory of Somalia, but this does not mean it will automatically be a
legitimate government. This essay engages with the question of the legitimacy of the
consolidation of authority by the Government of National Unity. At this moment,
there is a de facto absence of central authority in Somalia. But now that there is hope
for the successful establishment of a central government run by Sheikh Ahmed, the
normative question about the legitimacy of this state-building process surfaces. What
conditions should the government fulfil in order to consolidate legitimate political
authority? And, is it plausible that the Government of National Unity can consolidate
authority in this way?
This study questions the legitimacy of the state-building approach of the UNbacked TFG to create a Government of National Unity. Using the analytic frame of
theories of political obligation, it investigates what assumptions about statelegitimacy are foundational to state-building policies in Somalia. This way the wider
scope of political theory can be used to scrutinise the (narrow) liberal democratic
perceptions of legitimacy and the ensuing state-building policies, and explore
alternatives. The analysis of political practice from the theoretical perspective of
political authority and political obligation adds new insights to the academic
literature on Somalia. It gives us a more critical stance towards the state-building
approach in Somalia, while the translation of political practice into political theory,
also provides new understanding of the plausibility of theories of political obligation
and authority.
In addition, this study aims to uncover the discrepancy between external
(liberal democratic) state-building efforts in Somalia and the internal political
structure of Somali society. In order to do so, conditions for legitimate state-building
posed by the UN (e.g. open and fair elections) will be explored. In other words, this
De facto political authority means that the relationship between a people and a regulative body is
characterized by the regulatory body’s power to enforce rules and give orders to the people. However,
in discussing the legitimacy of such a political authority the debate enters the normative domain. (For
more detail visit: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/authority/)
4
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
study seeks to find out what the principal means proposed to establish a legitimate
political authority on the territory of Somalia are. Departing from the idea that these
conditions are grounded in underlying assumptions about the relationship between a
people and a government, this research aims to test the assumptions underlying the
current state-building efforts in Somalia on their validity. It will show that the
assumptions that are currently foundational to the conditions posed to state-building
have a significant deficiency. This deficiency is especially visible when the model of
state-building based on these assumptions is applied to a disintegrated and
fragmented society, such as Somalia. As a result, the deficient assumptions lead to
conditions proposed for state-building that do not (necessarily) achieve what they
claim to achieve; that is to endow a government with legitimate political authority. In
accordance with the political theory of Dorota Mokrosińska, new essential conditions
are proposed to resolve this deficiency. Somalia’s historical and contemporary
political structure is examined to analyse past and current state-building efforts in
the light of these new conditions. This essay aims to combine the best of
philosophical, sociological and historical work to generate a new perspective on
legitimate political authority, political obligation and the situation in Somalia.
Chapter one examines the assumptions about what makes a government
legitimate that underlie the currently posed conditions to state-building in Somalia. It
revisits some of today’s ingrained assumptions about state-legitimacy, and shows
that these assumptions are not as self-evident as they might seem at first sight. The
chapter highlights the conceptual problems that these assumptions encounter. In the
second chapter a more fundamental problem is highlighted that contemporary
concepts of legitimacy face. The chapter employs arguments of political philosopher
Dorota Mokrosińska to explain the most important deficit of these assumptions.
Furthermore, in accordance with Mokrosińska’s argument, conditions are proposed
that have to be fulfilled in order to endow a government with legitimate political
authority. Chapter three examines the socio-political structure of Somalia in order to
find out whether these conditions posed by Mokrosińska were satisfied in the
attempts to build a state in Somalia. Finally, the concluding chapter evaluates the
legitimacy and plausibility of the state-building project of a Government of National
9
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Unity. It finishes by exploring the future of the Somali state, in light of the
conclusions drawn in this study.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
1. Popular Consent and the Government of National Unity
The TFG proposes in article 11.3 of the Transitional Federal Charter that ‘an
internationally supervised National Referendum shall be undertaken’ to approve a
constitution establishing the Government of National Unity (TFC 2004: 7). The UN
expressed its support to this legitimisation process, in saying that ‘the constitutional
process, preparation for the “national population census” and the holding of “elections”‘
should be finalized as soon as possible (emphasis added in UN Secretary-General
2007d: 17). This approach suggests that a legitimate official government of Somalia
would be installed through the expressed approval of the Somali citizens. This
method for establishing legitimate political authority can be interpreted as a consent
approach in political philosophy. 5 Consent theory is constructed around the thought
that political authority is consolidated as citizens express their approval of that
authority. If a citizen gives his consent to the regulatory actions of a political agent,
he consequently authorizes the actions of that agent. And through that authorization
the citizen gives that political agent a ‘special right to act’ (Simmons 1979: 76). Before
we go on to discuss this consent-based legitimization process of the Government of
National Unity, we should shortly consider the most fundamental of assumptions on
which state-building is founded. In order to do so, an essential question should be
asked: Why government at all?
1.1 Why government at all?
For a start, the absence of political authority implies a state of anarchy. It is this
anarchic situation in Somalia, which is thought to be its fundamental problem. Jeffrey
Gettleman characterized Somalia as a country where ‘no one is safe, and perhaps no
place on earth more closely meets Thomas Hobbes' characterization of a state of
nature in which life is “nasty, brutish and short.” Nothing seems to be able to lift
Somalia's curse of anarchy’ (Gettleman 2008a). The concept of a state-of-nature was
introduced by Hobbes in his book ‘Leviathan’(1651), and marked the start of modern
John Locke introduced the concept of consent into political philosophy in his book ‘Two Treatises of
Government’ in 1689.
5
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
political thought. 6 The state-of-nature is a pre-political situation, and pictures the
conditions of human life in a state without law and order. People are completely free
to do as they please. In this state-of-nature people constantly fear exploitation or
harm by another person. Consequently, people in a state-of-nature face a “security
dilemma”. ‘If each of us believed that the other will attack without warning at the
first opportunity, each of us may feel it necessary in self-defence to attack without
warning at the first opportunity’ (Thomas Schelling in Kasfir 2004: 60). As a result,
two parties are drawn into (violent) conflict over security considerations, even
though neither party may actually pursue conflict. 7 That is why many have claimed
that ‘the most fundamental aspect of the security dilemma [is] that it is a
“tragedy”’(Roe 1999: 183).
It should be noted that the intentions of all individuals living within a state-ofnature might be to live in peace and cooperate with one another. However, the mere
suggestion of the existence of individuals that have intentions to harm and exploit is
enough to generate the perception of a risk. People lack the assurance that the other
will cooperate on interaction, and that is why they fail to do so themselves. 8
Therefore, this coordination problem has also been referred to as the “Assurance
Problem”. Cooperation in social interaction would yield the best outcome for both
actors as two persons can bundle their strengths and stand stronger than one person
alone. But, cooperation necessarily involves both actors; it is an interdependent act.
Consequently, there is a risk that if the other person does not reciprocate in
cooperation, the efforts of the cooperative actor go to waste. Temptation to defect
arises in this coordination problem only due to the uncertainty and the fear that the
6 In Hobbes’ time politics was deeply interwoven with religious institutions. Hobbes sought to
‘separate the realm of religion from that of politics’(Hampsher-Monk 1992: 3). He refused to base
politics on the assumption of a Divine God that provides human beings with rules an laws. Rather,
Hobbes proposes politics based on rational thinking. Politics, he suggests, is not given to the world by
God. Politics is rather a human construct that helps people to organize the complex and violent world
surrounding them.
7 That is why, as Hobbes suggested, a security dilemma results into a ‘warre of every man against
every man’(1651: Ch.13).
8 Nelson Kasfir: ‘The point of the security dilemma is that all competitors prefer peace, but feel
insecure about the intentions of their rivals. They would like to cooperate, because they share
the same goal. If they could only be sure that their rivals agree, and will continue to agree in
the future, they would neither prepare for hostilities nor engage in them’ (2004: 65).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
other might defect. This course of thinking turns defection in interaction into an
attractive strategy, even though all know that mutual cooperation yields the best
result for all. The state-of-nature is, thus, a situation characterized by conflict, fear of
exploitation, violence, but above all of collective action problems. Furthermore, due
to collective action problems such an exploitative and violent environment disables
development of social or public goods that benefit all. 9 The individual’s strive for
survival dominates and obstructs social and economic progress.
In order to live a secure life in which progress is possible, people have to
collectively install rules and laws. This system of rules can function as some kind of
assurance in mutual cooperation. In that case, all citizens relinquish their complete
freedom and subject themselves to a regulative body. One political agent is
appointed to regulate the social interaction between citizens. Subsequently, people
are assured that acts of exploitation or other forms of harm, as described by the laws
of the regulative agent, will be punished. The fear for punishment by the authority
for a prohibited act, will regulate people’s behaviour. The people can have mutual
expectations of the behaviour of others and social cohabitation will be possible. As a
result, people form a political society, in which everyone has a political obligation to
obey the political authority.
The answer to the question why a government should be installed in Somalia
lies herein; it is a way to end anarchy, and the insecure life of constant fear of
exploitation that anarchy generates. A regulative body, in the form of a government,
ends the security dilemma in the state-of-nature and makes social and economic
progress possible. The first assumption that underpins any state-building effort, thus,
is that a government is a solution to the undesirable state of anarchy. Modern
political thought is based on this assumption; it is rational to subject oneself to a
regulating authority, because it ends anarchy and enables a (political) society, that
can host social and economic progress.
Hobbes: ‘In such conditions, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and
consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of commodities that may be imported by
Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much
force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and
which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore,
nasty, brutish and short’(1651: 92).
9
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
1.2 From a state-of-nature to the act of consent
Before we can address the legitimacy of the consent approach to the Government of
National Unity, another question needs to be answered: how do we decide what
political entity people can consent to? Consent theory generally works from the
assumption that within the territory of a nation one political agent is “available” to
consent to. In the case of Somalia, the proposed political agent to which people will
consent (or not) is the Government of National Unity in a popular referendum.
However, the political situation in Somalia is more complex, as there are more
political agents on the territory of Somalia claiming political authority.
In 1991, a part of the country claimed independence: Somaliland (former
British Somaliland). Somaliland developed as a de facto independent state. Even
though Somaliland established the Constitution of the Republic of Somaliland on the
18th of May 1991, and aimed for de jure independency, it has not been recognized as
such. Moreover, on the 23rd of July 1998 Puntland declared itself an autonomous state
within the territory of Somalia. And on May 5th of 2001 Puntland adopted the
Transitional Constitution of the Puntland Regional Government. The region does not
aspire to be independent, but has a regional administration until authority is
consolidated in Somalia. Puntland advocates a federal system for the whole of
Somalia, but until this is established it will continue to function as a de facto
independent region. Furthermore, until recently, there was a non-recognized political
structure of influence in the south of Somalia. This provisional governing structure
was locally established and is generally referred to as the Union of Islamic Courts
(UIC). The UIC had substantive support from the Somali people, and was an
organically grown form of unofficial local governance (Menkhaus 2007: 83). These
regulative courts were established to handle conflicts and decisions across clan lines,
and ruled according to Shari’a (Islamic law). Even though the courts had relative
social, political and economic success, the international community did not tolerate
the Islamic courts nor did local secular warlords. The UIC dissolved in 2006, when
the Islamic courts -accused of hosting Al-Qaeda terrorists- were chased out of the
country by the TFG with the help of Ethiopian forces supported by the United States
(US).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
The previous paragraph raises a question: why is the Government of National
Unity the only political agent that is “up for consent”? How did the TFG gain
monopoly in the political arena? Below, the process of monopolization by a political
agent will be described from a theoretical as well as a historical perspective. For the
theory of consent, it does not matter how such a monopolist political agent emerged,
as long as consent is expressed by the people to that agent. Nonetheless, let us
explore shortly, how such a monopolization process evolves.
Political philosopher Robert Nozick claimed that people living in a state-ofnature want to end the continued fear of exploitation, and therefore form protective
agencies. Clusters of individuals can perform protective functions better than the
single individual. However, as no protective authority has been established yet, some
citizens might join protective agency A and other will join agency B or C. Initially in
a state of anarchy, ‘several different protective associations or companies will offer
their service in the same geographical area’ (Nozick 1974: 15). This picture of
alliances also describes the situation in a collapsed state. Within the field of conflict
studies it is widely claimed that in situations where the state’s authority fails, groups
take over security functions. When violence is no longer channelled and regulated by
the central government, usually a ‘widespread privatisation of security’ occurs (Klare
2004: 119). Social groups recognize that they no longer enjoy physical (and social)
protection by the state, and form their own alliances that fulfil the protective
functions. Somalia is an example of this process, and different alliances that were
formed after state collapse, include the TFG, Somaliland, Puntland, and the UIC, but
also warlords and militias. In short, a state of anarchy, before the very existence of a
state or after its collapse, is a battlefield between different security alliances or
‘protective associations’ (Nozick 1974: 21). Still, the alliances are trapped in a security
dilemma, as they constantly fear exploitation or attacks from other alliances in their
environment. Nozick suggests that market forces will, in time, provide one agent
with a monopoly in the political arena. Historian, political theorist and sociologist
Charles Tilly describes a similar process in historical description of the establishment
of European nation-states. Tilly stated that ‘governments stand out from other
organisations by their tendency to monopolize the concentrated means to violence’
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
(Tilly 1985: 171). Alliances will continuously try to strengthen their association,
annexing smaller alliances, improving artillery etc. The “security” market is
characterized by ‘large economies of scale’ (Tilly 1985: 175). Mergers and fusions of
smaller alliances into bigger ones is the result, because a bigger scale provides more
means to protect (e.g. more manpower, and more arms to defend). Eventually, this
will lead to a monopoly on the market for protective agencies.
In the case of Somalia, the TFG has more or less monopolized the “means to
violence”. The major difference, however, is that this monopoly has not been
achieved through a scale advantage on the domestic security market, but due to
support from the international actors. The TFG received military support from
international organisations. 10 Without the support of the international community,
the TFG would probably have been defeated, by the UIC or another faction. But due
to the fact that the TFG has such strong support of the international community other
“alliances” had virtually no chance to survive. Now, the only viable option is to
collaborate or fuse with the TFG. 11 Nonetheless, out of anarchy one specific political
agent has evolved that is presented to the people for consent.
The description of Tilly and Nozick of the establishment of a monopolistic
political agent is not a moral method. It is rather an economic way in which power
and resources are joined to establish one political authority. To make the submission
of a people to a government moral, the authority needs to be legitimized. So, another
assumption to state-building in Somalia is that the consent of a people legitimizes the
political authority of an agent, no matter how this agent received the monopolistic
position within the political arena. Now that we have gained perspective on the
10 Currently the TFG enjoys protection of troops of the African Union, called AMISOM (African Union
Mission in Somalia). Furthermore, it is not unlikely that the United Nations will, in the (near) future,
take over the AMISOM mission and send a UN force to protect the interim government.
11 A salient example of this process is the defeat of the UIC. In Somalia, the UIC had substantive
support from local people. The UIC could be seen as an organically grown form of unofficial local
governance, fed by the demand for (social) security (Menkhaus 2007: 83). The courts convicted
criminals according to Shari’a. And because they fought criminality, they were often financially
supported by local businessmen who wanted to protect their businesses (Leeson 2007). In 2006,
however, the TFG, with military support of the US-backed Ethiopian troops, chased the UIC out of
Somali territory. An opposition movement born out of the UIC -the ARS-Djibouti- collaborated with
the TFG in the Djibouti peace talks in 2008. The TFG needed more power on the ground in Somalia,
something that the ARS had to offer. In January 2009, the parliamentary organization of the TFG was
altered in order to incorporate ARS representatives. Shortly after, the former leader of the UIC, Sheikh
Ahmed, was elected president of the TFG.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
development of one single authority in Somalia, we can engage in the discussion on
making this authority legitimate through the act of consent of the people.
1.3 The Concept of Consent: Unanimous or Majoritarian?
The theory of consent, introduced by John Locke in his ‘Two Treatises of Government’
(1689), has greatly influenced the direction of political institutions since the 17th
century (Simmons 1979: 57). The method of consenting to a political agent gives
people a choice in their subjection to an authority. ‘An act of personal consent to the
government’s authority is a paradigm case of voluntary and intentionally assuming
political obligation’ (Mokrosińska 2007: 10). However consent constitutes an
approval of authority only if the consent was given deliberately and voluntarily
(Simmons 1979: 76). Coerced consent or unintended consent cannot be considered an
approval of authority. Consent authorizes the acts of the political agent, and gives
the agent a right to –in Locke’s words- ‘command and be obeyed’ (Locke, 1689: I,
§120). In other words, consent provides the authorized government with a claimright to the obedience of the consentors.
The method of consent circumvents the situation where an individual is
bound to a political authority which he finds impermissible (Simmons 1979: 69).
However, no government has ever enjoyed the approval of all its citizens. Does that
mean that not one government has ever been legitimate? If we interpret the consent
approach as unanimous consent it is virtually impossible for a government to be
legitimate, because, the term “unanimous” implies that one person’s dissent renders
the entire government illegitimate (Simmons 1979: 71). If consent is to be unanimous,
it is unlikely that a legitimate authority can ever be consolidated. And, as individuals
do not owe obedience to illegitimate governments, no person in history or in the
future is likely to have an obligation to obey the government’s rule. Consequently,
the consent theory that bases legitimacy on unanimous consent is implausible. One
might argue that, despite a no-vote, a government is considered legitimate. In that
case, the governmental rules only apply to those people that have consented to the
authority. This raises a new problem. ‘What to say about those who have not
consented’? […] It would be absurd to maintain that people who have consented
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
must obey the law and the rest can do as they please’ (Johnson 1975: 25). This would
imply that the no-voter can live within the same territory as the yes-voters, but he
lives amongst them as an outlaw. The situation of choice, to be bound by law, or to
live as an outlaw, does not lift people out of the cruelty of the state-of-nature. People
still live in insecurity and face exploitation by one or some of the people living in
their surroundings. So, either the failure of unanimous consent renders the entire
government illegitimate, or consent is binding to consentors, while dissenters live as
outlaws. This, however, would not lift the security problems of the state-of-nature.
Unanimous consent as a basis for legitimacy is implausible. Therefore, this line of
argument is generally abandoned right after its introduction of the concept of
consent (even by its initiators, Locke and Rousseau).
The problems of unanimous consent have led scholars to adopt another line of
argument in consent theory: ‘majority consent’. In the case of majority consent, the
majority of the people participating in the referendum will have to vote ‘yes’ in order
for the referendum to be considered “consent” of the people. Consequently, consent
of a majority of a people generates an obligation to obey the government for all
citizens. The desirable assumption of consent theory that ‘no man can be bound to
any government except through his personal consent’, is rendered meaningless
(Simmons 1979: 72). The method of majority consent does not give the individual the
direct choice in his subjection to a government. The individual vote does not control
the outcome of the referendum, as it is an embedded vote. That is why the vote cannot
count as personal consent or dissent.
Some philosophers proposed that the solution to this problem can be found in
the antecedent acceptance of the voting procedure. If people consent to the fact that
their vote is going to be embedded (and that a majority vote counts as consent) the
referendum is legitimately binding to all citizens. Political philosopher D. D. Raphael
argued that this acceptance of a voting procedure is given in partaking in that
procedure: ‘If one takes part in an election, or in a vote (whether it be a referendum
of the whole populace or a vote in a legislative assembly), one can be assumed to
have agreed to the presuppositions of voting procedure, namely that the majority
opinion will be treated as decisive’ (Raphael 1970: 112). This majority consent,
18
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
however, is only legitimate if all have agreed or consented to the procedure of the
majority voting system. Raphael grounds this agreement or consent in the fact that
‘to take part in an election is implicitly to promise to accept the majority verdict’
(Raphael, 1970: 112). The fact that the consent is implicit or tacit and not explicitly
expressed, constitutes the major problem for theories of majority consent.
The essential problem is that this type of tacit consent can only generate
genuine consent after meeting several essential conditions. As this type of consent is
tacit, it is implied in an act, and not explicitly put in words. In that case, it is essential
that a person knows exactly what act implies consent. As was proposed before,
consent should be given intentionally and voluntarily. 12 Now, in order to give consent
intentionally, one has to be fully informed about the options of choice and the
manner in which one has to consent. Only when one is fully informed about what
acts express consent or dissent, one can intentionally do this. Besides, the consentor
will have to have the reasonable option to dissent. If dissent means that one will be
thrown in jail, then one does not have a reasonable choice. Restrictions on the option
to dissent corrode the voluntariness of the consent.
Now, let us apply these conditions to the case of Somalia. The Transitional
Federal Charter –the official document of the TFG- states that ‘a National Census
shall be undertaken’ prior to the popular referendum (TFC 2004: 7). The people that
are partaking in this national census will be counted as participants of the
referendum. And to all participants of the referendum, the majority vote will be
binding. Suppose that the Somali people have to fill in a form with the number of
people that constitute their household. If they do not know that they are
participating in a national census, which is an implicit acceptance of the upcoming
referendum (as Raphael suggested), their completed form cannot count as consent.
People will have to know the exact conditions that constitute consent to the
According to Simmons the conditions are: ‘[1] The situation must be such that it is perfectly clear
that consent is appropriate and that the individual is aware of this. [2] There must be a definite period
of reasonable duration when objections or expressions of dissent are invited or clearly appropriate,
and the acceptable means of expressing this dissent must be understood by or made know to the
potential consentor. [3] The point at which expressions of dissent are no longer acceptable must be
obvious or made clear in some way to the potential consentor. [4] The means acceptable for indicating
dissent must be reasonable and reasonably easily performed. [5] the consequences of dissent cannot be
extremely detrimental to the potential consentor’ (Simmons 1979: 80-81)
12
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
referendum (whereof the majority vote is binding). If Somalis do not know the
consequences of their actions, they cannot consent intentionally. So, if it is not
explicitly stated that the participation in the national census constitutes consent to
the upcoming referendum, the intentionality condition is not fulfilled. Consequently,
Somalis’ tacit consent cannot be counted as genuine consent.
Before the argument is refuted, let us imagine that all Somalis are, indeed,
fully aware that their cooperation with the national census will be counted as their
consent to elections. This is not a solution to the problems. This only brings us back
to earlier problems of unanimous consent. Now it is possible that the population
intentionally consents to a voting system. In that case, either all Somalis consent and
the elections are legitimate, or one person dissents and the whole system and the
outcome of the elections are illegitimate. The awareness of the conditions of tacit
consent is the main obstruction to unanimous consent. The awareness enables people
to make a deliberate choice. And it is not plausible that after deliberation, all Somalis
will have the exact same opinion on the political situation. So, unanimous consent to
the voting procedure is not plausible. Solving the problem of the implausibility of
unanimous consent with the consent to (voting) procedures generates an infinite
regress. 13 In the end, unanimous consent and the problems it raises cannot be
avoided. 14 So, what to do with people that have not consented? Should the
dissenting Somalis just leave the country?
Locke is amongst the philosophers that have argued that residence in a
country implies a tacit consent to the government of that territory. 15 If the potential
consentor knows exactly what conditions constitute consent to governance, he can
13 A (majority) procedure might pre-empt the difficulties of unanimous consent, but it still needs to be
accepted unanimously. The unanimous acceptance of majority consent could be circumvented
through the invention of another voting procedure, but this, again, needs unanimous consent to be
legitimate, etc.
14 Remember that, in the situation where unanimous consent fails, either the whole system is
illegitimate, and nobody is obliged to obey it., or the system is considered legitimate, but only for
those people that have consented. In that case, dissenters live as outlaws amongst consenters, and it
was already established that this does not lift the people out of a state-of-nature.
15 Locke’s Second Treatise § 119: ‘ Every man […] give his tacit Consent, and is as far forth obliged to
Obedience to the Laws of that Government […] it reaches as far as the very being of any one within
the Territories of that Government’ (Locke 1689: 348). Furthermore, Political philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau stated: ‘When the State is instituted, residence constitutes consent ; to dwell within its
territory is to submit to the Sovereign’ (Rousseau, 1762: IV.ii.). More contemporary work on tacit
consent in residence is written by W.D. Ross.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
dissent through leaving the country. This way, the dissenter does not become bound
to a government he opposes. In the meantime, the people that do approve of the
government, consent by staying in the country. Their consent through continued
residency causes the government to be legitimate. This approach faces another
fundamental problem. Consent, as we have seen, should satisfy not only the
intentionality condition, but consent should also be given voluntarily. Simmons
postulated two voluntariness conditions: ‘[a] the means acceptable for indicating
dissent must be reasonable and reasonably easily performed. [b] the consequences of
dissent cannot be extremely detrimental to the potential consenter’ (Simmons 1979:
81). If these conditions are not fulfilled consent is not really voluntary but coerced, at
least to some extent.
In the case of Somalia, dissent through emigration is not easily performed. For
instance, ‘the Kenyan government officially closed the border to all traffic to and
from Somalia’ (USSD 2008). Furthermore, external movement of Somali people is
difficult, as ‘few citizens ha[ve] the documents needed for international travel’(COIR
2007: 140). Due to the closed borders of the neighbouring countries, Somalis face
extreme hardship in leaving the country: ‘hundreds of Somalis have drowned this
year in desperate attempts to cross the Gulf of Aden by boat to Yemen’ (HRW 2008a:
6). In the light of the consent through residence theory, dissent and consequent
emigration violates Simmons’ condition [a] and [b]. Therefore, residence in Somalia
is not voluntary. 16 As a consequence, consent through residence cannot count as
genuine consent. Even though some Somalis, despite the fact they do not have
another choice, reside in Somalia intentionally, they are indistinguishable from the
people that inhabit Somalia involuntarily and unintended. In that case, one’s mere
residence in the country cannot count as tacit consent to a potential government,
because it is not an expression that distinguishes consent from dissent. 17
Even in cases less extreme than Somalia, the problem of residence as tacit consent arises. People’s
home and country of residence harbors a person’s most valuable possessions. (Simmons 1979: 98.) The
choice between dissent and the abandonment of the cornerstones of one’s life is not a reasonable
choice. Dissent has life-changing consequences (condition b) for the dissent, and dissent is, thus, not
easily performed (conditions a).
17 Some philosophers have tried to separate legal obligations from political obligations on the basis of
residence. E.g. Karen Johnsons claims that all persons residing in a country have at least a legal
obligation. If a citizen is within the jurisdiction of a state he should respect the laws of the state,
16
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
1.4 Conclusion
Somalia has been depicted as finding itself in a state-of-nature. The motivation
behind the efforts to build a central state in Somalia is to lift the country out of this
situation, to create a political society, to endow a government with political
authority, and to place Somalis under a political obligation to obey this government.
This chapter showed that there are two assumptions that are foundational to consentbased legitimization of government that the UN works with in the case of Somalia.
First, it is assumed that the government is a solution to the undesirable state of
anarchy. Second, state-builders assume that no matter how this government has
come to reach its monopoly in the political arena (e.g. domestically or externally
imposed), as soon as the population consents to it, it is legitimate. The aim of this
chapter was to show that the establishment of a state under the conditions that it is
approved by its citizens –for example through a referendum - is not as self-evidently
“legitimate” as might appear on first sight. It did so, by pointing to the implausibility
of unanimous consent. If we aspire unanimous consent of citizens to a government,
no government has even qualified as legitimate, nor is it likely that a government
ever will. For consent theory to provide a plausible condition to state-building we
have to weaken the concept of consent, for instance by arguing for majoritarian and
irrespective of the citizen’s approval of it. This legal obedience is the bare minimum of the political
obligation of a citizen. Political obligation is further extended as someone accepts his place within
society. Some citizens will happily accept their membership in society, others will not. Johnson sees
acceptance or intentionally being part of a society as consent to a government. As soon as a citizen
consents to his membership in society, he obliges himself to participate in politics, especially because
he is in captivity. The captivity does not leave the citizen with another option than to stand up and
raise his “voice” (pro-government or anti-government) (Johnson 1975: 20). Political participation is an
active political obligation that people have as they recognize themselves as members of a specific state.
However, Johnson leaves it up to personal taste and ambition to what extent people participate in
politics and fulfil their political obligation. Johnson says that ‘ultimately, each citizen must decide for
himself what his political obligation requires of him’(Johnson 1975: 28). However, if people can decide
for themselves whether they are going to live according to the minimal legal obedience or actually
fulfil a more extensive obedience in the form of participation in politics, their political obligation does
not give anyone the right to claim political obedience, only legal obedience (See also Beran 1987: 4649). Furthermore, the legal obligation is a given that comes with residing in a country, and is therefore
more like a command. The obedience by law is required without consent. Everyone is bound to the
law of a country regardless of one’s consent to these laws. This means legal obedience is prior to any
individual consent to the government in the form of accepting one’s role in the association. In that
case, if the laws of a country prohibit assembly or association, no political participation is possible,
neither is “voice”. The minimum of a political obligation in the form of legal obedience is a dangerous
concept. If the freedom to raise one’s “voice” and to participate in politics is not provided for in real
life, the membership-as-captivity account of Johnson turns into actual captivity.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
tacit consent of the citizenry. But, the essential conditions of voluntariness and
intentionality that any type of consent must satisfy, pose problems for consent theory
relying on tacit or implied consent. As it turns out, this watered-down type of consent
necessarily involves a certain degree of coercion, or at least involuntary and
unintended consent to a government or government-installing procedures.
If we, nonetheless, accept the concept of majority consent as a guideline
towards legitimate government, we must have a reason for it. For instance, we accept
the majority vote in a referendum, because it helps people to establish a government,
as fairly as possible, that regulates their social interaction and lifts them out of the
undesirable state of anarchy. If that is the case, the act of consent to a government
through a majority vote in a referendum is merely a tool to install a government. As a
result, the consent itself, is morally insignificant and does not legitimize the
government. But if the act of consent itself does not legitimize a government, there
must be something else that legitimizes a government’s authority: its ability to
govern society that, in turn, exits the state of anarchy. The core of what makes a state
legitimate, then, lies in its ability to govern a political society, and not merely in the
fact that people have consented to its rule. The next chapter argues that a polity
merely based on consent, does not necessarily satisfy this essential function.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
2. The Government of National Unity: a Horizontal Perspective
The aim of the international community is to provide a national government for the
whole of Somalia. This means one government for all Somalis, despite the fact that on
the ground, the Somali people are disintegrated. 18 Due to the tremendous support of
the international community, the TFG is the assigned political agent that is to
transform into a Government of National Unity. But not until Somalis consent to its
rule in a national referendum. After successful implementation of this elective
procedure, it is expected that the Government of National Unity will be endowed
with legitimate political authority; that the Somali people are legitimately placed
under the political obligation to obey the Government of National Unity; and that the
currently disintegrated Somali people will form a political society. In chapter one
several conceptual problems of this consent-approach were highlighted. For now let
us assume –inline with conventional state-building practice- that the state-building in
Somalia based merely on majority consent would be a legitimate process of installing a
government. What we essentially need to know is: can this consent-based approach
to state-building achieve what it intends to achieve? That is: create a political society,
place individual Somalis under political obligation, and endow the TFG with
political authority? The following sections aim to answer this question, and for that
purpose the political theory of Dorota Mokrosińska is employed.
2.1 Political Obligation to obey the Government of National Unity
A consent-based national referendum in Somalia to constitute the Government of
National Unity essentially establishes a ‘special two-party relationship’ between a
citizen and a political authority (Mokrosińska 2007: 21). In case the Somali people
install the Government of National Unity in the referendum, each individual Somali
citizens is –by the act of the (majority) vote- placed under the obligation to obey that
government’s directives. If the arrangement between the individual and the
Government of National Unity is, indeed, understood in this way, the obligation that
18
Chapter three elaborates on the political structure of Somali society.
24
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
a citizen has to abide by the rules of the government is a private obligation. In other
words, the obligation is one of which the obligor is the individual citizen, and the
obligee is the government.
Dorota Mokrosińska shows in “Political Obligation” (2007) that it is this private
character of the relationship between a citizen and the government that the act of
consent establishes, that is the fundamental problem of consent theory. She dubs this
problem the “Private Fallacy” (Mokrosińska 2007: 20). In a consent-based polity, the
obligation to obey the government is private, and therefore, the terms of one’s
submission to that government are -in essence- also privately arranged. 19 The consent
of the Somali people through a positive outcome of a referendum, places all Somalis
individually and personally under the obligation to obey the Government of National
Unity. The situation described above essentially sketches a special arrangement
between an agency (which happens to be the government) and a certain number of
individuals. It is unclear, however, what exactly is political about the individual’s
obligation to obey the agency.
Mokrosińska argues that the private character of the obligation to obey the
government compromises the political aspect of the obligation. A polity based on
citizens’ private obligations to obey the government hosts a danger that the
relationship between the citizens will come to resemble the relationship between
people in a state-of-nature situation. The next section explains this matter. For now it
is important to note that, if it is, indeed, the case that the obligations to obey the
government essentially cannot change the situation of the state-of-nature, these
obligations are not characterized by any political aspect. Because, for an obligation to
be political, it must be (part of) the solution that lifts a people out of the undesirable
state-of-nature, and creates a political society (see section 1.1). So, if the private
obligation to obey the government cannot –in essence- solve the situation of the stateof-nature, it is not a political obligation. Mokrosińska suggests that for an obligation
Many readers will immediately protest against this statement, and claim that the terms of a citizen’s
submission are not individually arranged but collectively, and that all are subject to the government
on the same, equal terms. However, in theory, if the a citizen and the government engage with one
another privately, their relationship and the terms of their interaction are also private matters. The
idea of a “standard contract” of submission and equal citizenship, e.g. as is generally enshrined in a
constitution of a country, is addressed later on in this chapter.
19
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
to be political, it should ‘engage individuals in ways that bind them to each other, as
opposed to engaging them independently of each other’ (2007: 8). The next section
elaborates on this point, and explains why mere vertical and private relationships
between citizens and a government re-create the state-of-nature situation.
2.2 Government of National Unity without a Political Society
Because the consent-based contract between citizens and the government is private,
the people under these obligations do not form a political society. Rather, a polity
based solely on individual contracts with a government, is a ‘picture of a collection of
individuals all of whom are possibly acting in the same way, but doing so
independently and irrespective of one another’ (Mokrosińska 2007: 21). In that case, a
consent-based polity is not necessarily a social order, and consequently, the
government would not rule over a political society.
Furthermore, Mokrosińska argues that such a polity does not differ
significantly from the state-of-nature, because it does not end the assurance problem
between individuals (2007: 22-24). An example can explain this claim. Imagine that a
government is established by the expressed consent by the Somali people in an
elective procedure. By the act of consent, all Somalis have an obligation to abide by
the rules of this government. One of these rules is that Somalis are obliged to pay a
certain amount of taxes to the government. In exchange, the government provides
the Somali people, amongst other things, with access rights to water. However, -just
like ‘the Barre regime awarded certain client groups preferential access to arable land
and water’ (Little 2003: 36)- this government has an unequal way of distributing
access to water amongst the Somali population. At this point, it is important to note
that this type of preferential engagement between the government and specific
individuals or groups of individuals cannot be considered illegitimate, due to the
private nature of the citizen-government relationship established through the act of
consent. The reason for this, is that if the agreement between a citizen and the
government is private –which is essentially the case in the act of consent (see previous
section)- the (observance of the) terms and conditions of the agreement are also of a
private nature. As a result, it is “legitimate” for the government to handle
26
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
arrangements between individual citizens and the government asymmetrically. 20
Having said this, let us return to the example.
Imagine that it is commonly known amongst Somalis, that the government
engages in clientalism and nepotism; it provides access rights to certain clans, and to
people in exchange for loyalty in elections, etc. Now, a Somali farmer, citizen X,
wants to build a well in order to water his crops. However, he cannot pay for the
well all by himself. Therefore X wants to suggest to his neighbour, Y -who is in need
of a well too- that they jointly invest to build it. X and Y have a good reason to
engage with this joint-venture, because they both benefit from the cooperation to
construct the well. However, the problem is that X nor his neighbour has any idea of
the private arrangements that the other has made with the government. Imagine, that
X suspects that Y has friends within the ministry of agriculture. X fears that if he
invests in the well, Y might broker the exclusive access rights to the water the well
provides. If that were the case, X would be worse of than before, he would have lost
a large amount of money and would still lack water to cultivate his land. The lack of
assurance of X that the mutual benefit of cooperation is reached, makes X‘s
cooperation with Y a risky step (and vice versa). In the end, due to the risk involved
with the joint-venture of building the well, X never proposes to build a well together,
nor does Y.
The example shows that the deficit of assurance about another’s terms of
submission to the government -due to the private character of the way citizens relate
to the government- forms an obstruction to healthy social, political and economic
interaction between citizens. In particular, if citizens ‘are not sure whether the terms
of political subjection the other has negotiated for himself are disadvantageous for
him, they are trapped in a collective action problem called the assurance problem’
(Mokrosińska 2007: 24). The fact that the assurance problem still characterizes the
polity, does not distinguish it significantly from a state-of-nature, which is
characterized by collective action problems. Moreover, this lack of assurance might
Another consequence is that the claim-right to the fulfilment of the arrangement is private; meaning
that nobody but the government can legitimately claim a citizens’ obedience to the government’s
directives. Besides, an individual citizen can claim nothing but the satisfaction of the terms of his
personal agreement with the government. In other words, citizens have no legitimate means to fight
the unequal engagement with other citizens.
20
27
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
give people ‘a reason to make their terms of political submission disadvantageous for
another’ just to “play it safe” (Mokrosińka 2007: 23). E.g. citizen X, out of fear of
being exploited by Y, starts brokering a deal for exclusive access rights to water in his
region before Y does. In other words, due to the lack of knowledge about one
another’s arrangements with the government, citizens are locked in a competition for
power and influence. Citizens compete to arrange for themselves the best contract
possible, and as a result, structural fear of exploitation prevails in such a polity.
In short, a referendum constituting a government essentially establishes a
private obligation for individual citizens to obey the rules of that government.
Mokrosińska shows that the private character of this relationship between
individuals and the government, would not necessarily create a political society.
Rather, it is an ‘institutionalised state-of-nature’, because the polity is creates, does
not eliminate the ‘balance of power that existed between [individuals] in the state of
nature, but only reproduces and reinforces it’ (Mokrosińska 2007: 24). The following
paragraphs explore two solutions to this problem.
2.2.1 Transparency and even-handedness
The major problem in the (institutionalised) state-of-nature is the fact that people
lack the assurance that mutual cooperation is reached and generates the promised
benefits. This lack of assurance is caused by the absence of knowledge about the
arrangements that other citizens made with the government. One could argue, that
the lack of assurance is solved, if common knowledge on the terms of contracts of
others with the government are made available. If all citizens know what the
government has arranged with whom, all can predict the outcome of their social
interaction with one another. The introduction of common knowledge does, indeed,
eliminate the problem of assurance. However, the fact that people know about the
agreements of others with the political agent, does not change the nature or the
content of these arrangements. Insight into the bargains of others, does not
necessarily make them fair. Mokrosińska states that ‘while the introduction of
common knowledge makes the differences in power and bargaining positions
[between citizens] public, it does not eliminate them’ (2007: 26). Think, for instance,
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
about the example of clientalism. Imagine X’s suspicion was correct, and that citizen
Y had, indeed, arranged an exclusive access right to water if a well were to be built as
a joint-venture. Now, the fact that X knows about the arrangement of Y, does not
change anything. X will still not cooperate with Y, he will not even consider it. X feels
disadvantaged, and there is still no healthy social, political and economic interaction
between citizens. What is needed is not merely common knowledge on the
arrangements made by others, what needs to change is the inequality in the
negotiating power of individual citizens. People do not just want to know the content
of another’s arrangements with the government, rather, they want to be assured that
the arrangements are fair.
For arrangements to be fair, they should somehow provide equal opportunities
for all citizens. E.g. equal submission to a political authority, this would mean that all
are subjected to the authority on the same terms. In practice, the equality of the
arrangements between citizens and the government are arranged in a country’s
constitution. In the Transitional Federal Charter –the official document of the TFGequality of submission is guaranteed too. Article 15 reads: ‘[1] All citizens of the
Somali Republic are equal before the law and provisions of this Transitional Federal
Charter and have the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without
distinction of race, birth, language, religion, sex or political affiliation. [2] Equality
shall include the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms’ (TFC 2004: 9).
This clause implies a “standardized contract” between citizens and the government,
and rules out privileging particular citizens over others. As a consequence, citizens
do not have to fear that fellow citizens have a better contract with the government.
Suppose, then, that a majority vote to a Government of National Unity endows
that government with legitimate authority, but only in as far as it employs a
“standardized contract” of submission for all citizens. Does this end the assurance
problem? Seemingly it does. However, it does not solve our problem in essence. 21
There is an additional problem that a standardized contract encounters, which has been briefly
discussed in section 1.4. The standard contract, on which terms the citizens all individually subject
themselves to the government, are predetermined by the government. The citizen’s choice to subject to
the government’s rule is thus structured in advance and not open for discussion. In that case, the
choice of that citizen to submit to the governments authority is not entirely free. The choice is: live as
an outlaw (which is problematic in itself as we have seen in chapter one), or live conform
21
29
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Even in case of a perfectly equal standard contract, the citizens are still individually
and privately subjected to the Government of National Unity. The compliance with
the “standardized contract” and its terms of submission are a private concern. So,
even if a constitution stipulates the equal treatment of all citizens, the observance of
this standard contract is a private issue to be arranged between individual citizen
and government. If the observance of the contract is privately dealt with, this can
(legitimately) be done asymmetrically. In that case, the equalizing clauses in the
standard contract are rendered powerless. The problem lies in the fact that the
content of the contract between citizen and government does not change the nature
of the relationship between citizen and government. The people abiding by a
standard contract, still do so irrespective and independent of one another. As a
result, they do not necessarily form a social entity, and the standardized contract
does not create a political society. The next section explores the consequences for the
concept of political authority if the relationship between a citizenry and its
government is private.
2.3 The Issue of Political Authority
The previous section suggested that even perfectly equal submission of all Somali
citizens to the Government of National Unity does not necessarily create a political
society. As the obligation of citizens to abide by the government’s standardized rule
is private, the claim-right to citizens’ obedience lies with the government, and nobody
else. Due to the private character of the observance of the (standard) contract, a
predetermined rules. It can be debated, then, whether this type of subjection is really voluntary, and
subsequently can count as voluntary submission – or consent- to a government’s rule. If we believe
that this type of consent is not given voluntarily, the contract is necessarily invalid. But, suppose that
we do think that there is a legitimate reason to structure the citizen’s choice in that manner. In that
case, the argument that legitimizes the restriction of choice refers to a reason prior to the standard
contract. In other words, the actual moral reason of people’s political obligation to a government based
on consent through a standardised contract is not the fact that a citizen has signed a contract, but the
reason is antecedent to the act of consent. That reason could be that our choices to consent are
restricted, because this is the only way to end the coordination problems that characterizes the stateof-nature. Then, the moral reasons that grounds a political obligation is not the signature on a contract
that constitutes consent, but the fact that coordination is made possible through the signing of that
contract. The political obligation of a people is then grounded in the fact that to leave a state of
anarchy and form a social order rules and laws should be installed to equally and fairly coordinate
social interactions. Consequently, the ground for political obligation does not lie with consent, but
prior to consent (Mokrosinka 2007: 27).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
government can still be unfair, or exploitative in the observance of the standard
contract they have with every individual Somali citizen separately. The fact that the
contract has the same shape and the same content -in other words that it is standarddoes not necessarily make the polity it creates better than the state-of-nature: it was
already shown in the example about the water well, that in case of clientalist or
nepotistic rule, coordination problems reoccur because people lack assurance that
rules and laws are consequently upheld and impartially executed. Moreover, the
government could offer a standard contract that is exploitative to all citizens. An
absolutist ruler or a despot could turn a standardized contract into a means to exploit
the citizenry.
So, if the government is the only party that holds the legitimate claim to the
observance of the standard contract, individual citizens do not have the means to
legitimately interfere with one another’s contracts. As a result, the only tools a citizen
has, to counteract the abuse of power of the government is [1] to improve his/her
own terms of contract, or [2] to unite with other disadvantaged citizens to oust the
abusive government. Both tools to counteract the government, bring back the
situation of a state-of-nature. First, if citizens start to compete one another for better
deals with the government, the assurance problem is resurrected (see section 2.2).
Secondly, if groups unite against the government, a situation emerges in which
political alliances fight one another for power, which is also a form of the state-ofnature (see section 1.2).
To conclude, if citizens only have their own contract as legitimate means to
interfere with governance, a government is transformed into an institute to which
people turn to bargain their privileges and power with respect to other citizens. In
other words, the government becomes an institute for power distribution.
Essentially, this institutional form of power over individual citizens does not provide
a solution to the state-of-nature and, thus, it is not a political authority. This section
showed, furthermore, that transparency or even-handedness do not solve the
“Private Fallacy”. What needs to be done is not making the citizens’ terms of
submission to the government identical, but changing the nature of the relationship
between citizens and their government.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
2.4 Conditions of Publicity
The previous sections showed that the vertical relationship between particular
Somali individuals and the Government of National Unity that would be established
in a referendum in Somalia, encounters the Private Fallacy. The essential problem lies
in the fact that citizens engaged in a private contract obey the government
independent and irrespective of one another and, hence, do not necessarily form a
political society. If there is no political society, there is no political authority, nor a
political obligation of the people to abide by the rules of that authority (Mokrosińka
2007: 20-21). Mokrosińska suggests that obedience to a government should not be a
private act, but a public one. For this reason, Mokrosińska proposes two ‘conditions
of publicity that reasons to obey the government must satisfy if they are to govern
political obligation’ that –in turn- creates a political society and installs a political
authority (2007: 144).
First of all, Mokrosińska proposes the condition of interdependency of reasons to
obey the government. Interdependent reasons are reasons that bind people only if
they bind others. Only if reasons for obedience to a government are interdependent,
it makes sense to say that individuals acting on them, form a political society,
because in order to form a political society, actions of political obedience should
qualify as social actions, in the sense that they are acts that are executed dependently
and respectively of other citizens (Mokrosińska 2007: 21). The previous section
showed that if this were not the case, and people only have private reasons to obey
the government and, thus, do so irrespective and independent of one another, a
(institutionalised) state-of-nature situation rises. Secondly, Mokrosińska claims that
‘the content of this [political] obligation and its observance are a matter of mutual
and multilateral claim-rights’ (2007: 142). This condition of publicity dictates that the
arrangement to install and abide by a government -formed out of public reasons- is
multilateral. This implies that citizens necessarily have a stake in all other citizens’
obedience to that government, in order to exit the state-of-nature situation. Due to
the fact that the arrangement is multilateral and the stake in everyone’s compliance is
multilateral, the observance of the agreement is also a multilateral issue. That is why
the claim to obedience to the government is a multilateral matter too. So, the
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
obligation to obey the government is one that citizens hold towards one another,
rather than to the government. If the reasons that individuals have for obeying a
government are of this specific sort– namely interdependent reasons that are a source
of multilateral claim-rights- the obligation to obey the government turns from a private
obligation into a public one. 22 It also transforms a bundle of individuals privately and
separately related to a government, into a political society, and endows a
government with political authority.
2.5 Conclusion
Imagine that all Somalis give their personal consent to the Government of National
Unity. Even though consent is unanimous, the entity this creates is not necessarily a
social order, it can be a mere bundle of individuals living under the same
government. For this cohabitation to constitute a political society, Somalis have to
stand in a relationship to one another; their actions have to refer to each other. In this
chapter it was argued that a consent-based referendum fails to create a political
society, if it does not satisfy the conditions of publicity ([1] interdependency of
reasons to obey; [2] mutual claim-rights to obedience). And if it does not construct a
political society, it does not place Somalis under a political obligation, nor does it
endow the Government of National Unity with legitimate political authority.
According to Mokrosińka, the legitimacy of a government is grounded in the nature
of the reasons of the citizenry to obey that government. The legitimacy of a
government is given with the citizens’ public reasons to obey this government.
Because, if our reasons to obey a government are not governed by “social” or
“interdependent” considerations –if our reasons to obey are not public but private‘the political domain [collapses] into a series of private and normatively separate
relationships of domination and submission’ (Mokrosińska 2007: 141).
Now the question that needs to be asked, is: can a referendum to install a
Government of National Unity fulfil the two conditions of publicity? If it is to satisfy
It should be pointed out, that not all interdependent reasons are a source of multilateral claimrights. For instance, take the example of the water well: even if both citizens have an interdependent
reason to install it, citizen X nor citizen Y has a legitimate claim to the compliance of the other. What
causes an interdependent reason to be a source of multilateral claim-rights, is the fact that compliance
is a political act that constitutes a solution to the state-of-nature situation.
22
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
the conditions, the obligation the referendum produces should be one that Somalis
[1] have public reasons to obey, and [2] provides Somalis with multilateral claim-right
to one another’s obedience to the Government of National Unity. This, however, can
only be realized in two ways. First, the consent expressed in the referendum to abide
by Government of National Unity is one given by Somalis to one another, rather than
to the government. But, this is simply not the case. In the referendum, Somalis
express their consent to the constitution installing a Government of National Unity,
and this way Somalis place themselves under the obligation to obey that
government. The referendum does not commit Somalis to one another. Secondly, the
conditions would be fulfilled if the reasons for Somalis to partake in the referendum
are public, and have their source in a horizontal relationship among them. This could
be the case, for instance, if Somalis participate in the referendum, because they belief
that the ensuing government is of interdependent interest as it would lift the state-ofnature situation and create a political society, and therefore would provide Somalis
with multilateral claim-rights.
However, these reasons to participate in the referendum are, then, a necessary
antecedent to the expression of consent in the referendum. As a result, the moral
ground of the political obligation is not the vote in the referendum, but the reasons to
participate in the referendum. And if that is the case, the mere act of consent in the
referendum to install a Government of National Unity by itself does not ground the
political obligation of Somalis nor endow this government with legitimate political
authority. Rather, the public reasons that have their source in the horizontal
relationship among the people legitimizes the political authority. It is this horizontal
relationship among a people that makes the essential difference between a state-ofnature and a political society, not the act of consent to a government. So, elective
procedures can only be an instrument to coordinate the installation of a political
authority of which the legitimacy lies in the horizontal relationship within the
citizenry. This chapter, thus, showed that the Somali referendum can by no means
install a legitimate political authority by itself, but it can be a tool to coordinate the
establishment of a legitimate political authority for Somalis, if they have antecedent
public reasons to install and obey such an authority.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
We have to conclude, then, that the assumption that ‘elections represent a
critical mechanism to legitimize new leaders and institutions following state failure
and civil war’ is invalid (emphasis added in Lyons 2004: 273). The critical aspect that
legitimizes any political authority lies not in the elections constituting it, but in the
horizontal relationship within society that calls for the elections and the ensuing
government. The next chapter investigates the socio-political structure of Somalia to
see if these public reasons, indeed, characterize Somali society.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
3. A Central Government and the Somali People: a Mismatch?
‘The United Nations and donor countries are plowing millions of dollars into the
Transitional Federal Government, an entity essentially created by the United
Nations, with the idea of bringing order to Somalia from the top down’ (emphasis added
in Gettleman 2008a). So far it has been shown that mechanisms of consent alone can
never create a legitimate political authority. When a people consents to a government
this results in a bundle of individual relationships between citizens and the
government, which does not automatically qualify as a political society. The act of
consent does not -by itself- create a political order that is significantly different from
the state-of-nature situation. Therefore Mokrosińska postulated two conditions of
publicity that should govern any political obligation to obey the state, if statebuilding were to create a political society. Legitimacy of a central Somali government
is grounded in the public reasons –interdependent reasons that are a source of
multilateral claim-rights- of Somalis to install and obey such a government. If public
reasons do not govern the process of building a state, a referendum (or any elective
mechanism) may bind individuals to obey the state but the obligation it creates is not
a political obligation. In consequence, it cannot be a tool to install a legitimate
political authority, it merely establishes an institute for power distribution. In that
case, the very endeavour to install a central state should be questioned.
This chapter examines the satisfaction of the conditions of publicity in past
attempts to build a central Somali state. First, this chapter looks back at the
establishment of a central state in Somalia in the end of the 19th century, and its
influence on the Somali state after independence in 1960. It shows that the conditions
of publicity were not satisfied in the state-building attempts in Somalia during and
after colonialism. Secondly, it is argued that these conditions are satisfied on a
regional level in Somalia, namely in Somaliland, and Puntland. Finally, social
processes promoting the satisfaction of the conditions of publicity are examined.
They help to understand why regional state-building was based on public reasons in
Somaliland and Puntland, and why this fails to be the case at a central level.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
3.1 Somalia and Central Authority
Pre-colonial Somalia was characterized by pastoral nomadism, meaning that small
family groups herded animals. The harsh environmental condition demanded
constant mobility. Somali people adjusted to this environment by organizing pastoral
production in small family groups that spread widely throughout the country, so
that they could use the scarce natural resources as effectively as possible. 23 This way
of living resulted in a social order of which kinship was the cornerstone. ‘For the
Somali pastoral nomads the kinship system did not only regulate the production of
the livestock economy but also governed all aspects of cultural, social and political
life’ (Mohamoud 2000: 54). Secular xeer rules (xeer is the traditional legal system of
Somalia) and religious Shari’a were used to regulate social interaction. In times of
conflict elders of different kin or clan groups would enter into dialogue and used
these traditional mechanisms to solve their disputes. 24 Therefore, “stateless” Somalia
was nonetheless ‘capable of controlling capriciousness, managing inter-subjectivity
and offering order and continuity’ (Ahmed Samatar in Mohamoud 2002: 55).
These local coping mechanisms made a central coordinating authority
practically redundant. In a society where a central authority is not necessary and,
therefore, is superfluous in its function, there are no reasons to install and obey such
a government, and consequently, no public reasons. In case social interaction is
widely and effectively coordinated by some (traditional) mechanism, nobody living
within that coordination scheme can have any particular reason to install a central
government, unless this government fulfils a necessary coordinating function that
the traditional system cannot. Thus, in the case of pastoral Somalia, the lack of a
coordinating function of a central state, made it impossible to have a public reason for
using this central authority (simply because the reasons for it, were not apparent to
all).
To this day the majority of Somalia’s population consists of pastoral nomads.
Some might wonder what the relationship is between Somali kin-groups and the clan system. This
can be characterizes as follows: Somalia’s population is divided into five major clans: Hawiye, Darod,
Isaq, Dir, and Digil-Mirifle. Each of these major clans is divided into approximately six clans, which
are in turn divided into sub-clans and sub-sub-clans, ‘all the way down to lineages and extended
families’ (Adam 1995: 69). The most stable of these affiliations are the kin-groups (Adam 1995: 69).
23
24
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Nonetheless, colonization brought the Somali people a central government.
During colonial rule, the Somali territory was divided -without any regard of clan
structures- in five independent political regions. 25 All colonial regions were provided
with a central administration, with an obvious disregard to the fact that the Somali
people did not experience the need for such a central political system and, thus, did
not see (public) reasons to abide by this government. Meanwhile, from the colonialist
perspective, the central administration functioned merely to ‘secure a supply market,
to check the traffic of slaves, and to exclude the interference of foreign powers’
(British government quoted in Mohamoud 2002: 66). Furthermore, the colonial rulers
used “divide-and-rule” policies, arming loyal clans to fight against hostile groups.
This created conflicts between Somali clans, and more importantly, it provided
Somalis with private reasons to engage with the central administration: power and
money were vested in the central state. This new source of wealth, altered ‘the
mandate of political leadership […] from regulating kin relations and entitlement to
pastoral resources, to regulating access to political and economic benefits of the state’
(Bradbury 1997: 5). So the Somali people had been provided with private reasons to
engage with central authority by the colonial rulers. This tendency was later
confirmed under the dictatorial rule of Siad Barre between 1969 and 1991, which was
characterized by divide-and-rule policies, clientalism and nepotism. Divide-and-rule
policies during colonialism and Siad Barre, illustrate the private nature of the
relationship of those regimes with the citizens in Somalia.
The present borders of Somalia were created in 1960. In that year, the British
Somaliland Protectorate and Italian Somalia were merged and the independent
Republic of Somalia was established. The central government was “given back to the
Somali people”. The Somalis were expected to be especially capable of forming a
modern state in comparison with other African peoples. This expectation was based
on the idea that Somalis form a homogeneous ethnic group ‘defined by a common
language, a pastoral economy, a commitment to Sunni Islam and a clan-based
political system’ (Kibble 2002: 11). Apparently, external parties assumed that Somalis
These five regions were: British Somaliland Protectorate, Italian Somalia, French Somaliland (now
Djibouti), the Ogaden region in South-Eastern Ethiopia, and Kenya’s Northern Frontier District
25
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
-living within the newly established territory- would constitute a central government
through the constitutional referendum of June 20th 1961 (AED 2008); that this
referendum would endow the established Somali government with legitimate
political authority; that the Somali people would be placed under the political
obligation to obey that government; and that the homogeneous Somali people would
form a political society. A political society, however, is not automatically formed
when a group of people expresses it consent to a government (see chapter two), not
even when this group of people is homogeneous. For these people to form a political
society, they have to obey the government respective and dependent of one another.
At independence, however, Somalis still did not see any public reasons to use a
central authority. Central government had not evolved out of the necessity to
coordinate social interaction on a central level, instead, it was imposed upon the
Somali people from the top-down. Because the central state did not fulfil a necessary
function for the people, those engaging with it did not see any reasons for using it,
apart from what this government had to offer them individually. The lack of public
reasons combined with the bolstered private reasons to be involved with the central
state, might explain why private interests constantly undermined any efforts to
pursue public interest in Somalia. Furthermore, this could be the reason why ‘there
was no clearly articulated collective national project and a lasting consensus on the
fundamental issue of governance and social organization’ (Mohamoud 2002: 98).
The colonial government as well as that of Siad Barre arranged individual
contracts with Somalis. The relationship between the central Somali government and
the Somali people was based merely on a bundle of independently arranged vertical
agreements between individuals and the government. The central state was never
supported by public reasons to obey its directives, as it was superfluous in its public
function for Somalis from the start. The case of Somalia is an illustration to
Mokrosińka’s suggestion, that a polity solely based on vertical and private relations
between citizen and government is bound to result into a situation of absolutism,
clientalism, nepotism and corruption. A government that is installed despite the
absence of public reasons to use that central government, is likely to develop into a
system of mere power distribution. The only function that people attribute to the
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
state is that of distributor of power and privileges, and that is also what they use it
for. Such a government cannot sustain a political society because it invites
relationships that otherwise characterize the state-of-nature, as the individual focus is
not on society but on the state and its resources. Clearly then, the condition of public
reasons to install and obey a government that we posed to state-building was never
satisfied on a central level in Somalia. The reasons that individuals had for obeying a
central Somali government were never interdependent reasons that were a source of
multilateral claim-rights. Due to the private character of the relationship between
citizen and state, people were outsiders to one another’s relationship with the
government. A lack of control by individual citizens to influence the government’s
engagement with other citizens, caused each citizen’s life in this system to be filled
with frustration, lack of power to change the status quo and fear of exploitation.
People living in such a situation do not seem to be better off than in a state-of-nature.
Structural fear still determines day-to-day life.
To conclude, the case of Somalia demonstrates the working of the Private
Fallacy: vertical individual relationships between citizens and the government
resulted in abuse of power and, subsequently, replicated the situation of the state-ofnature. The central Somali state was never a political authority ruling over a political
society, because the people did not obey the government respective and
interdependent of one another. The situation under Siad Barre further illustrates
what happens if citizens lack the legal means to fight abuse of power by a
government. Under Barre’s rule, state resources were systematically used to privilege
members of Barre’s clan, ‘the Marehan, while alienating other groups’ (Little 2003:
36). As a result, disadvantaged clans lacking tools to influence their position with the
government, started forming political factions, e.g. the Somali Patriotic Movement,
the Somali National Movement, and the United Somali Congress. ‘United against
government’s predation on non-Marehans, they joined forces to oust Barre’ (Leeson
2007: 10). As the case of Somalia shows, the private character of the relationship
between citizen and state can even result in a fallback into a state-of-nature where
political alliances fight one another (see section 2.3). This process reflects
Mokrosińska’s claim that a government based on vertical contracts alone, is likely to
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
be instable (2007: 25). In short, in Somalia the lack of public reasons to obey a central
government, combined with the private reasons to engage with the central
authorities, turned the state into an institute for power distribution. As a result of the
lack of multilateral influence on each other’s interaction with the government
disadvantaged groups resorted to alternative forms of influence on the situation: the
creation of oppositional rebelling factions. As a result, the state as a centre of power
distribution crumbled.
3.2 Regional Governance in Somalia
The previous section showed that the conditions of publicity to state-building were
absent in the case of a central Somali government from the beginning. The lack of
public reasons to install and obey a central government can explain why the Somali
state was always a fragile one, and eventually broke down. Nevertheless, two
regions in Somalia have managed to install -effective but informal 26 - regional
political authorities. The northern regions of Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland, have
been able to maintain peace and security, despite the fact that southern Somalia is
plagued by constant fighting. 27 This section shows that the conditions of publicity
seem to have accompanied the process of installing informal regional governments.
The northern region of Somaliland, has been praised for its success in
stabilizing the region and setting up a democratic government. The Somaliland
government is a fusion of traditional political mechanisms, such as the “Guurti” or
“House of Elders”, with a democratic state model (Kibble 2002: 14). Mark Bradbury
claims that, Somaliland’s politics ‘has given the Somaliland administration a popular
legitimacy that Somalia's previous [central] governments lacked’ (emphasis added in
Bradbury 2003: 475). After state collapse in 1991, a conference was held in northern
Somalia to discuss political solutions to the collapse of a central governing apparatus
(Bradbury 2003: 456). At this conference, ‘two points dominated the discussions. One
was the widespread desire for reconciliation throughout the North […] The second
The term “informal” refers to the fact that these governments are not officially recognized by
external actors.
27 Southern Somalia also experienced a period of relative peace and stability, due to the socio-political
regulation of the UIC. Nonetheless, in 2006 the UIC was expatriated, and violence and instability
returned to the southern region. Because the UIC has dissolved, it will not be discussed in this section.
26
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
factor was general support for independence’ (Gilkes 2003: 179). Elders participating
in the conference had reasons to coordinate their actions; they all perceived a mutual
gain in achieving, first, reconciliation in the north and, second, independence of the state
of Somaliland. The northern people’s engagement in a regional government was not
due to private reasons of clan or individual gain. Rather, the engagement stemmed
from the hope to find a political solution to the state-of-nature situation that was
imminent at state collapse; the northern people feared that state collapse would bring
anarchy, violence, conflict and instability. Moreover, in order to formulate and
negotiate a political solution, coordination was essential. In other words, northern
people were interdependent of one another’s actions to reach the mutually perceived
gain; a political solution to the state-of-nature situation. Somalilanders also hold de
facto multilateral claim-rights to one another’s obedience to this established political
system. In case a person acts in such a manner that is disruptive to social order and
economic well-being of Somaliland society, people sanction this person directly
through traditional customary law. 28 ‘Only in exceptional cases, when the integrity
and stability of Somaliland is at stake, do central government institutions such as the
House of Elders [Guurti] or the national armed forces intervene directly’ (Hagmann
2009: 49). There is, thus, a decentralized form of customary law that is enforced
between citizens, as well as a regional system that enforces laws if the decentralized
level fails to protect social order effectively. These socially enforced multilateral
claim-rights to compliance with the political system are legitimized by the fact that
they are required to achieve the mutual gain: the political solution to the state-ofnature. In consequence, Somalilanders form a political society: first of all, they have
public reasons to obey the regional government, because it has brought reconciliation
in the north and aims for independence, and this was what people generally pursued.
Second, they have a stake in one another’s compliance with the system, because in
order to achieve reconciliation and independence everyone’s compliance to the
political system is required. Related, Somalilanders have a multilateral claim to
everyone’s obedience through customary law. The above illustrates that there were
This is done according to traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution such as xeer and diya
(bloodmoney), on a decentralized level.
28
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
public reasons for forming the political authority of Somaliland. As a result, the
Republic of Somaliland was proclaimed in 1991. This government is a political
authority, as its raison d’être lies in the horizontal relationship within the Somaliland
society, and it is part of the solution that lifts the Somaliland people out of a state-ofnature situation.
Puntland is a non-secessionist regional administration situated in the northeast of Somalia. After the state collapsed in 1991 local “interim” administrations in
the region took over regulatory tasks of the central government for several years.
However, ‘after the repeated failure of national reconciliation, the popular pressure on
the political actors in the region to organize some overarching regional
administration increased’ (emphasis added in Hoehne 2009: 262). In consequence, a
conference -similar to the one held in Somaliland- was organized in Garoowe in 1998.
In that year, Puntland declared itself autonomous. The regional political authority of
Puntland has, thus, also been established out of a collectively sensed need for
regional stability and socio-political regulation (a solution to a state-of-nature
situation). Moreover, in Puntland a form of multilateral claim-rights to compliance
with the regional governance system characterizes society. An illustration of this is
for instance how Puntland society has responded to the rampant piracy in the region.
Gettleman recently reported that ‘Sheiks and government leaders are embarking on a
campaign to excommunicate the pirates […] “The pirates are spoiling our society,”
said Abdirahman Mohamed Mohamud, Puntland’s new president ‘(2009c). In short,
Puntlanders have public reasons to obey the regional government, because it has
achieved relative stability and socio-political regulation, which was popularly
demanded. Moreover, Puntlanders have a stake in one another’s compliance with the
system, because in order to achieve stability all have to abide by the regional
government. Related, they employ a multilateral claim to everyone’s compliance
with the political system; if people do not comply with the political system they are
socially ostracized. The Puntland regional governance is, thus, a political authority,
because the people obeying it, do so respective and interdependent of one another,
and in doing so form a political society as opposed to a state-of-nature.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
The paragraphs above show, that in Somaliland and Puntland public reasons
(as opposed to private pursuit) characterized the regional state-building efforts. 29 In
particular, the demand for regional governance finds its origin within the horizontal
relationship of the people living in Somaliland, or Puntland. There was a popular
and bottom-up demand for socio-political regulation. As a result, the regional
governments appear to be ‘rooted in the popular consciousness, rather than imposed
from above’ (emphasis added in Bradbury 2003: 475). Somalilanders and Puntlanders
shaped their own solution to a (threat of a) state-of-nature situation, in the form of
regional political authorities. A question rises: what can explain the successful
fulfilment of the conditions of publicity for state-building on a regional level, and the
failure to satisfy these conditions on a central level? The next section aims to answer
this question.
3.3 Recognizing public reasons
Section 3.1 showed that the central state was never used by the Somali people for
public reasons, the state was rather used for private reasons, such as material gain
and individual power. This problem of the prevalence of private interest in citizen’s
relationship with a state in places such as Somalia, has been recognized by scholars
in the field of Development Studies. It has been noted, for instance, that stateThe southern region also managed to consolidate some social regulatory structures, as the UIC
gradually developed as a form of local governance. The first Islamic court established in the northern
area of Mogadishu in 1994 ‘as a response to the need for some means of upholding law and order’
(emphasis added in Barnes et all. 2007: 152). These shari’a courts ruled only locally, but were
successful and had popular support. Therefore, in 1998 some Islamic courts were set up in the south of
Mogadishu. It was not until 2000 that the Islamic Court gradually started to coordinate their actions in
‘an umbrella organization, popularly known in the Western media as the Islamic Courts Union’ or
UIC (Barnes et all. 2007: 151). In the south the UIC brought relative stability for a short period of time.
This governing structure crossed clan boundaries and seemed to gradually accumulate trust and
reciprocity. The courts were successful in dealing with criminality (Nenova 2004; Barnes et all. 2007).
The days of the UIC are often seen as a “Golden Age” by Somalis (Barnes et all. 2007: 157). However,
the UIC was chased out of the country in 2006 by the TFG and the US-backed Ethiopian troops. The
people in the south that lived under the UIC formed a political society; they had public reasons to obey
the UIC’s directives, because it provided the “means of upholding law and order”, which was
popularly demanded. Second, people had a stake in one another’s compliance with the system,
because in order to achieve stability and predictability in social interaction, all had to abide by the
rules and laws of the UIC. Furthermore, people’s multilateral claim right to one another’s obedience to
the laws was vested in the legitimate claims people could make to the courts to sanction or
excommunicate those people that violated the rules of the system. The UIC could be seen as a political
authority, because the people obeying it, did so respective and interdependent of one another, and in
doing so lifted the undesirable state-of-nature.
29
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
building necessarily ‘involves ideological efforts to persuade people that the
centralization of authority in the state is in their interests’ (Cramer et all. 2002: 891).
For a government to be used and sustained effectively, people have to understand
that it is in their interdependent interest to have a well-functioning central
governance, or, that they have public reasons to install and obey a central authority.
However, it is debatable, whether what is in a person’s interests can be pointed out
to him by a third party. State-builders –delivering a top-down central state in
Somalia- depart from the idea that this is, indeed, possible. They assume that a
central state can be installed through elective procedures, and that, in this process,
the proper reasons to obey such a state become apparent to all citizens.
With regards to Somalia, it should not be difficult for outsiders to see the
reasons there are for Somalis to reconcile differences and coordinate their efforts on a
central level. One should bear in mind that it was argued earlier that Somalis did not
have any reason to do so in times of pastoralism, because a central state was
practically redundant to their pastoral society. However, this does not mean that
these reasons cannot exist today or in the future. For instance, settling some of the
differences between the fighting groups so that peace and cooperation is established
would provide benefits for all in the long run. What, then, can explain the decades of
civil war? Why do public reasons not guide Somalis towards the effective
establishment of a central state?
The answer to this question involves the ability of people to recognize and act
upon public reasons to obey a government. In chapter two it was argued, that public
reasons to obey a government are necessarily interdependent. 30 This implies that for
someone to have public reasons to obey the government, they are dependent on
other citizens’ reciprocation in the recognition of public reasons. If that is the case,
public reasons to obey the government can only govern a state-building process if
people recognize interdependent interests and have the confidence to act on them. This
involves the ability of a people to establish cooperative behaviour towards one
another. A cooperative disposition involves the perception of a interdependent
30 Section 2.4 argued that public reasons to obey a government, are interdependent reasons that are a
source of multilateral claim-rights. For the purpose of the argument this section only focuses on the
interdependency of reasons to obey the government (the first condition of publicity).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
interests or a mutual gain vested in cooperation, and second, the confidence to
pursue these interests or mutual gain (and to take the risk of cooperation). So, a
critical aspect of the realization of public reasons to obey a government, is the
recognition and pursuit of interdependent interest, that is facilitated by people’s
cooperative behaviour towards one another. This section aims to show that certain
social mechanisms accommodate cooperative behaviour, and in doing so, facilitate
the recognition of interdependent interests (and consequently public reasons). In
Somalia, these social processes facilitated cooperative behaviour on a regional level,
but not on a central level. Therefore, this section argues that the cooperative
disposition of the people in Somaliland and Puntland, helped them to recognize and
realize public reasons to install and obey a government. And that the opposite
happened on a central level.
In the regions of Somaliland and Puntland, traditional social organization was
left relatively unimpaired (compared to the southern region) after colonialism and
Siad Barre’s dictatorship. 31 As a consequence, the people living in the northern
regions were, and still are, strongly embedded in traditional social structures. The
(isolated) northern people were temporally embedded, meaning that they had a
common history of interactions as well as a common future of social interactions with
the people living around them. Furthermore, the people living within these social
structures, were embedded in a social network of kinship and clan affiliation.
Moreover, the northern people were institutionally embedded, as their social
During colonialism Somaliland fell under British rule, while the southern region was governed by
Italians. There was a difference between British and Italian colonial governing methods. For instance,
‘the legal and administrative goal in [British] Somaliland was to concretize social organization’, while
the Italians tried to destroy the lineage networks (emphasis added in Reno 2003: 12). In Somaliland,
thus, the traditional mechanisms regulating social interaction were left relatively intact, while those in
the south were intentionally destroyed. Furthermore, Siad Barre’s rule during the 70’s and 80’s had a
decisive role in destroying tradition coping mechanisms in the south. The capital Mogadishu, located
in the south, was the main connexion to the rest of the world. It was also the door through which the
foreign development aid (2,8 billion dollar between 1972 and 1989, Reno 2003: 15) entered the country.
The guard to this door was Siad Barre, and he channelled the aid money mostly to his governmental
clique. According to William Reno, ‘the consequence later would be that informal mediating
institutions such as xeer and the authority of “traditional” leaders would be weakest in these areas’
where Barre’s nepotistic rule was strongest: around Mogadishu (Reno 2003: 15). So, the traditional
social networks were disrupted by the arrival of Barre’s clientalist network and bolstered private
interests. The –more isolated- northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland were not as spoiled by
private interests as was the southern region. In short, there is a difference in the degree to which
traditional coping mechanisms were left intact by the rule of colonizers and later Barre’s dictatorship.
31
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
interactions were defined and regulated by institutions such as customary laws of
xeer and shari’a. So, at state collapse the people living in the northern regions were
still traditionally embedded in a social –temporal, network and institutional- structure
(see Weesie et all 2000: 13-26). 32 This social embeddedness facilitated cooperation in
social interaction due to two reasons. First of all, if people learn from experience that
cooperative behaviour is reciprocated within their community, they are more likely
disposed to cooperate in social interaction themselves. ‘Individuals are more likely to
volunteer to help solve a community problem if they perceive that there is a general
trend toward increasing cooperation in the community’ (Widner 2004: 229). In that
case, people learn that cooperation results in mutual benefits, and that these benefits
are attainable, because people generally reciprocate. A positive working of the
mechanism of “learning”, can facilitate social cooperation. So, ‘learning refers to the
possibility for actors to improve their choices in given [social] interactions using
experiences from past interactions’ (Buskens et all. 2002: 170). It should be noted, that
this mechanism works both ways: positive experiences in social interaction will
generate a cooperative disposition, while negative experiences produce defective
behaviour in social interaction. Due to the fact that in the north, people were still
embedded in traditional social structures, they had a cooperative disposition towards
one another, because they had learned from experience that cooperation generated
mutual gain. As a result, they were equipped to recognize and negotiate
interdependent interests or mutual benefits.
Furthermore, northern people, in using their traditional systems of customary
law, had some control over the outcome of the social interaction. If people violated
trust or social rules of reciprocation, the rules of xeer and shari’a were employed to
correct the defective behaviour of the non-reciprocating person. The mechanism of
“control” also plays a role in facilitating trust and reciprocity in social interaction.
‘Control refers to the fact that trustors realize that trustees have short-term incentives
for abusing trust, but that some long-term incentives for the trustee are under control
32 It should be noted that the term ‘temporal embeddedness’ refers to an ‘iterated game’ in game
theory. For game theoretical translation of the “network embeddedness” see also: Gauthier 1986,
Axelrod 1981 and Frank 1988, and the evolution of dispositions (see also Coleman, 1988: 105 on the
concept of “closure” of social structures).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
of the trustor’ (Buskens et all. 2002: 171). So, even though it may be lucrative to
violate laws and rules now, defective behaviour has negative consequences on the
long run for the defector (xeer or shari’a sanctions, social ostracism or other types of
exclusion from societal benefits). This mechanism of control, enhances trust and
reciprocity, as it reduces the benefits of defection and with it the likeliness that
people will defect. As a result of the positive working of “learning” and “control”,
social interaction becomes predictable, at least to a large extent. People, then, are
confident to pursue the mutual gain of cooperation, because they benefits involved
are perceived to be attainable. Both “learning” and “control” affect trust and
reciprocity in a community, and work more effectively if actors are socially
embedded. 33 And if trust and reciprocity supervene upon a society, citizens more
easily perceive interdependent interest, and have more confidence to pursue it.
In short, when the state collapsed, the traditional social structures in which the
northern people were still embedded, facilitated not only the recognition of the
interdependent interests vested in the establishment and obedience to a regional
government, but also had the confidence to pursue the long-term benefit of such a
government. The mechanisms of “learning” and “control” resulted in the fact that the
people in those regions were socially equipped to recognize and negotiate the
interdependent interests in installing a regional governance.
This section showed that mechanisms of “learning” and “control” facilitate
and regulate mutual cooperation in a social order. These mechanisms aided the
recognition of public reasons to install and obey the regional governments of
Somaliland and Puntland. On the contrary, on a central level, the mechanisms of
“learning” and “control” had a negative influence on the recognition of public
reasons to obey a central state. The central government had never been established as
a consequence of public reasons, nor was it ever used for public reasons. Any public
pursuit was undermined by acts of private pursuit (see section 3.1). Therefore,
interdependent interests vested in a central state was not recognized, rather, private
interests were the main driving force in the use of a central state. People had learned
For instance, temporal embeddedness facilitates learning, and control is accommodates by a strong
social network and institutional embeddedness
33
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
that a central state was an institution of personal enrichment, over which the
unprivileged had no control. Therefore, the mechanisms of “learning” and “control”
actually discredited the interdependent interests to install and obey a central
government. Even if people perceived the interdependent interests to obey to a
central government, people lacked the confidence to pursue these interests vested in
the central state. History had proven that public interests were unattainable, as they
were consistently sabotaged by private interests. Hence, on a central level, the lack of
cooperative behaviour undermined the recognition of interdependent reasons to
obey a central state. And as a result, it undermined the recognition of public reasons
to install and obey a central Somali state. 34
3.4 Conclusion
This chapter has shown that the lack of public reasons for Somalis to install a central
state, turned the central governments into a collection of private interests. Somalia,
therefore, is an excellent case to illustrate the working of the Private Fallacy. In the
fragmented and disintegrated Somali society, the private relationships between
individual citizens and the imposed central government resulted in absolutism,
nepotism or corruption.
Even though governance failed on a central level in Somalia, the northern
regions of Puntland and Somaliland do host effective informal governments.
Somaliland and Puntland seem to be political societies, within which public reasons
govern the political obligation to obey the regional government, that –in turncharacterizes as a political authority. Public consciousness supervened upon the
efforts to build a regional state, as opposed to private pursuit. In consequence, the
This section seems to suggest that some form of social order is a precondition for the recognition of
public reasons and the subsequent establishment of political authority and a political society. If we
assume that social order is prerequisite to the establishment of a legitimate political authority, then we
refute the assumption on which modern political philosophy is founded; namely that political
authority and related political obedience are a solution to the dreadful situation of anarchy. Yet, this
study merely showed that social mechanisms aided the establishment of political authority regionally,
and that a negative working of these mechanisms obstructed such an effort in on a central level in
Somalia. It cannot be concluded, then, that positive influence of social mechanisms is necessary for
people to install a political authority based on public reasons. The only conclusion that can be drawn
is that certain social mechanisms aid the recognition of public reasons to install and obey political
authority, and that an adverse working obstructs the recognition of these reasons.
34
49
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
regions of Puntland and Somaliland created their own solution to a state-of-nature
situation that was imminent after state collapse.
Furthermore, section 3.3. showed that, in these regions, traditional social
organization was left relatively intact compared to the south. Therefore, the positive
working of mechanisms of “learning” and “control” enabled northern people to
recognize and negotiate public reasons to install and obey a regional government. On
the other hand, the socio-political context in the whole of the territory of Somalia has
been negatively affected by the social mechanisms of “learning” and “control”. These
processes have obscured the recognition of public reasons to install and obey a
central Somali state. In the case of the disintegrated society of Somalia, distrust and
hostility supervene upon society, instead of trust and reciprocity. Therefore, it will be
difficult for the individuals living in this society to recognize and pursue
interdependent interests. That is why it is improbable that public reasons to install
and obey a central state are (readily) recognized and acted upon by Somalis. As a
result, the process of building a central state in Somalia is not likely to be
accompanied by the requisite public reasons of the Somali people to obey a central
government.
This chapter showed, that the recognition of public reasons to install and obey
the regional governments derived from a cooperative disposition within the
community and a popular public consciousness that a government could function as
a solution to a state-of-nature situation. It is doubtful whether public reasons can be
created from the top-down, if society is characterized by defective dispositions and a
popular consciousness that a central state does not solve the state-of-nature situation,
(which is the case in Somalia as a whole).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Concluding remarks
The TFG and the international community pursue a central Somali state. Political
practice dictates elective mechanisms as the critical condition to establish a legitimate
central government. This condition is based on the assumption that a government is
legitimate in as far as a people has expressed its consent to that political authority. In
the case of Somalia, state-builders assume that by the consent of a people expressed
in a constitutional referendum, a Government of National Unity would be
legitimately installed; that the Somali people would have a political obligation to
obey this government; and that the Somalis would form a political society.
However, this study argued that this approach does not necessarily achieve
what it aims to achieve. In accordance with the theory of Dorota Mokrosińska it
showed that a people’s consent in a referendum would -essentially- create a bundle
of private, individual relationships between Somali citizens and the Government of
National Unity. A polity based solely on such vertical relations between citizens and
the state can replicate a state-of-nature situation, which it essentially tries to solve.
Thereby it fails to create a political society and to place people under a political
obligation to abide by a political authority.
Therefore, it was argued that any attempt to install a government should be
characterized by people’s public reasons to obey such a government. Only if the
reasons for obedience are public, a government is a political authority that rules over
a political society, in which citizens have political obligation to abide by its rules.
These conditions of publicity do not exclude the possibility that such an authority is
installed with the help of elective procedures. However, the theory does claim that as
long as the conditions of publicity go unfulfilled in the process of building a state, a
political society or authority is not necessarily created, but rather a polity that is
prone to absolutism, clientalism, nepotism and corruption. The case of Somalia has
proven to be an excellent example to show that the establishment of vertical
relationships between individuals of a disintegrated people and a government can
result in abuse of power.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Taken together, the constitutional process proposed for Somalia, would install
a legitimate government only in case the Somalis have public reasons to partake in
the constitutional referendum, and subsequently obey the Government of National
Unity. However, it was shown in chapter three that that negative working of social
mechanisms of “learning” and “control” in the case of a central state in Somalia
hinder the recognition of public reasons to install and obey a central state. The central
Somali state has a “bad reputation”, it has never been associated with interdependent
interest as it was only used for private interests. Experience tells Somalis that central
government does not have anything to do with public interests, as it never lifted the
people out of a state-of-nature situation. As a result, ‘nearly an entire generation of
Somalis has absolutely no idea what a government is or how it functions’ (Gettleman
2009b). It was argued that cooperative dispositions are required, for citizens to
perceive and pursue interdependent interests, and subsequently to recognize public
reasons to obey a central government. However, the fact that Somali society is
disintegrated, and distrust and defection characterize social interaction, has gravely
impaired the citizens’ recognition and pursuit of interdependent interests; and with it
their ability to recognize and act upon public reasons to obey a central government. If
a central state were to be build despite the absence of public reasons for Somalis to
obey such a government, this state is likely to result in another abusive government
that fails to lift the undesirable state-of-nature situation.
Nonetheless, the international community pursues a central state in Somalia.
Even, ‘after more than a decade of civil war, the Somali state survives as a juridical
entity because the international community deems it so, not because it is recognised
as such by all Somalis’ (Bradbury 2003: 475). Indeed, the international political and
legal order does not allow much room for a political alternative to the nation state.
Despite the regional governance successes, external parties still aspire to a central
state in Somalia, instead of recognizing Somaliland as an independent state. Parties
are generally motivated by two aspects of the international political order. First, the
Somali borders, created in 1960, are not easily altered. Since the end of colonization
the global territory has been divided up into states, and the borders drawn between
states are now mostly fixed. Consequently, peoples living within those frontiers and
52
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
their governments, if any, are left with no alternative then to work with those
boundaries. Secondly, and related to the first aspect, the international political and
legal system is constructed in such a way that recognized states are considered to be
endowed with state sovereignty. After the period of decolonization the newly
formed state of Somalia and its frontiers were recognized and integrated in the
international political and legal system. As a result, even though it has not enjoyed
an official government for almost two decades, Somalia is considered a sovereign
state. As a consequence, ‘any neighbouring country that tried to seize a part of its
territory would be accused of violating the sovereignty of this ghostly Somali state’
(Ottaway 2002: 1003). It is exactly this ‘international recognition of sovereignty which
tends to hamper the exploration of alternative futures’ (Doornbos 2002: 809). The
international community perceives the central Somali state to be the only available
solution to the state-of-nature situation in Somalia. However, this creates a blind-spot
for alternative solutions, such as the governments of Somaliland and Puntland.
Nonetheless, this is –generally- why external actors pursue a central government
representing the Somali people within the official boundaries of the Somali state.
Legally and politically the alternatives are limited. Therefore, even though ‘the
political constitution of Somali society lies not in the centralized political institutions
of a European model’, the pursuit of the central government in Somalia is likely to be
continued (Bradbury 1997: 43). In the meantime the regional governmental successes
will be ignored. The Somalis are left to work with this specific model and make it
their own; ‘it is a procrustean approach: the model is given, and the country will be
pushed and pulled to conform to it’ (Ottaway 2002: 1017). Therefore, it is realistic to
look at possibilities of a central political authority in Somalia that does satisfy the
conditions of publicity, because it may be the only possibility to a central state in
Somalia.
Let us start by noting that currently there are no public reasons to install and
obey a central government. Both Puntland and Somaliland have been functioning as
de facto independent states. These regions have shown little eagerness in
coordinating their governing with the southern part of Somalia. Puntland, even
though it officially aims to unite with southern Somalia as soon as there is an official
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
government, has shown little enthusiasm for the recent development in the TFG and
the election of Sheikh Ahmed. A Puntland minister, Warsame Abdi Samatar, stated
that Puntland does not recognize the newly elected president of the TFG. He said
that Sheikh “Sharif [Ahmed]'s election was illegitimate and we [the government of
Puntland] shall never recognise him and his government” (quoted in Guled 2009).
Furthermore, Somaliland officially seeks secession and is therefore reluctant to
engage in political negotiations with the southern interim government. Nevertheless,
‘Somaliland’s commitment to independence remains flexible’ (Bryden 2004: 25).
Ahmed Yusuf Yasin, Somaliland’s Vice President, has allegedly said that
“Somaliland’s unity with Somalia is inevitable”, and that “if he is elected, he would
consider unity with Somalia”(Roble 2009). On the other hand, Yasin stated that “if
Somalia’s newly elected President achieves his goal of a peaceful Somalia, this will
improve the stability and the peace keeping effort in all of east Africa. Somaliland
would be happy to consider itself a good friend and good neighbour to Somalia, but
there will be no unity with Somalia for the Somaliland people”(Roble 2009). In short,
the regions of Puntland and Somaliland are careful to engage with central political
affairs. This carefulness of Somaliland and Puntland is understandable in light of
their respective interests, or as one Somaliland official once rhetorically asked: ‘Can
you give one reason why it is in the interest of Somaliland to join Somalia?’ (quoted
in Shinn 2002: 6). Indeed, people of Somaliland have a reason not to unite on a central
level. For instance, ‘the integration of two largely incompatible systems—
Somaliland’s embryonic democracy on the one hand, and Somalia’s fragile
transitional national structure on the other—would run the risk of destabilizing both’
(Bryden 2004: 28). Somaliland and Puntland have reasons not to coordinate political
and social actions on a central level of the state, because this implies coordination
with instable southern region that might disrupt their own relatively healthy social
order. The southern region is plagued by constant fighting and lacks healthy social
interaction. 35 Due to fact that northern regions do not have a reason at all to unite
with southern Somalia and form one country, currently there are no public reasons to
35 Note that for some time the south of Somalia enjoyed relative social stability when the Union of
Islamic Courts managed to maintain a certain level of social order. However, the UIC was expatriated
in 2006 and social disorder re-established in the southern region.
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
install a central government in Somalia. This current lack of public reasons to obey a
central government in Somalia makes the establishment of a Government of National
Unity a dubious endeavour.
Nonetheless, if the southern region were stabilized, this would give the
northern regions some incentive to regulate certain aspects of social life with the
south, e.g. national currency, external trade, and foreign affairs. It should be pointed
out that Somaliland has little hope to be recognized by the international community,
as the international political and legal order allows little space for political alternative
to the nation-state of Somalia. 36 There could be reasons to have a central state to
regulate certain aspects that cannot be regulated on a regional level. This watereddown type of a central government of Somalia, is generally referred to as the
building-block approach. Increasingly, Somali and Western academics have argued
for this alternative, bottom-up approach to state-building in Somalia (see e.g.
Menkhaus 1998 & 2003 & 2007, Bryden 1999, Mohamoud 2002). It is argued that
governance should be build up from the grassroots, starting with local governing
structures. These first blocks of governance subsequently coordinate their action with
other governing units on the level of a district or region and eventually, the
governing mechanisms unite at a central level, where only the strictly necessary
national issues are coordinated.
The building-block approach suggests a central state for Somalia, but only in a
minimalist sense of the word. This government could be based on public reasons
(reasons that are interdependent and a source of multilateral claim-rights) to obey its
directives. The reasons for obedience to such a government would be public, if the
government serfs an interdependent interest, which makes the reasons to obey the
government interdependent. Besides, these reasons to obey this government would
be a source of multilateral claim-rights to obedience, if –by multilateral obedience to
the government’s (minimalist) directives- the current state-of-nature situation in
Somalia were lifted.
This is probably the reasons why Ahmed Yusuf Yasin, Somaliland’s Vice President, has said that
“Somaliland’s unity with Somalia is inevitable” (Roble 2009).
36
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Furthermore, as chapter three suggested, the recognition of public reasons to
obey a state is facilitated by people’s cooperative dispositions and popular
consciousness and confidence that interdependent interest are worth the pursuit. In
the case of Somalia, this ability to recognize public reasons seemed to be locally
accommodated, as opposed to a central level. The building-block approach to statebuilding takes this aspect of Somalia’s socio-political structure into account, as it does
not force a comprehensive central state upon the Somali people, but aims to
increasingly coordinate more issues, and more important matters on a central level.
This way, the minimalist central government could undo, step by step, the negative
experiences of Somalis with a central state. Gradually, building blocks establish
bonds of trust and reciprocity between them. Necessarily, this will happen over time,
as ‘bonds strengthen with use’ (Sobel 2002: 150). Any effort of the outside world to
speed up this process, might only have an adverse effect. Since the international
order does not allow for alternatives to a central state in Somalia, the building-block
approach seems to be the only viable option for the formation of an official
governing system in Somalia.
To conclude, this study draws a clear conclusion with regard to the pursuit of
building a Government of National Unity for Somalia: the top-down imposition of a
central state on a disintegrated people that does not have public reasons to obey
such a state, is likely to result in an abusive form of governance. As long as the
Somali people do not have public reasons to install and obey that Government of
National Unity Such, that government will not function as a political authority, it will
not create a political society, nor will Somalis be placed under any political obligation.
In other words, the project of installing a central state without a moral community
with public reasons to install and obey such a central government is –to use
Abdullah Mohamoud’s words- ‘putting the cart before the horse’ (2002: 152).
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Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Annex 1: Chronological history of Somalia
Before the start of the colonization in the end of the 19th century, Somalia’s political
life was organized through clan-lines. Up until this day, these clan affiliations define
essential aspects of political, social and economic life in Somalia. Historian Charles
Geshekter once characterized Somalia as follows: ‘When Somalis meet each other
they do not ask: Where are you from? Rather, they ask: Whom are you from?
Genealogy is to Somalis what an address is to Americans’(Charles Geshekter in
Gellety, 2004: 14-15).
During colonial rule, the Somali territory was divided in five independent
political regions: British Somaliland Protectorate, Italian Somalia, French Somaliland
(now Djibouti), the Ogaden region in South-Eastern Ethiopia, and Kenya’s Northern
Frontier District. This division was made without any regard of clan boundaries. The
present borders of Somalia were created in 1960. In that year, the British Somaliland
Protectorate and the Italian Somalia where merged and the independent Republic of
Somalia was established.
At independence the Somalis were expected to be especially capable of
forming a modern state, in comparison with other African peoples. This was due to
the fact that Somalis form a homogeneous ethnic group ‘defined by a common
language, a pastoral economy, a commitment to Sunni Islam and a clan-based
political system’ (Kibble 2002:11). The Republic of Somalia functioned relatively well
for almost a decade. However, the state’s strong reliance on foreign aid caused clans
to compete for state resources (See Mohamoud 2001: ch. 4 & 5 and Kibble 2002). The
political situation, therefore, was fragile. In 1969, General Mohamed Siad Barre
assumed power, and reigned as a dictator for twenty years. The current situation of
statelessness, that has characterized Somalia for the past decades, started in 1991. In
that year Siad Barre was ousted from his dictatorial rule.
Political entities
It was that same year, 1991, that a part of the country claimed independence:
Somaliland (former British Somaliland). Somaliland developed as a de facto
57
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
independent state. It stands in stark contrast with the rest of Somalia, as it is known
for its relative stability, effective democratic structure, and economic development.
Even though Somaliland established the Constitution of the Republic of Somaliland
on the 18th of May 1991, and aimed for de jure independency, it has not been
recognized as such. Somaliland officials have responded positively to the election of
Sheikh Ahmed as president of the TFG. Nonetheless, Somaliland continues to pursue
independence, at least officially.
On the 23rd of July 1998 Puntland declared itself an autonomous state within
the territory of Somalia. And on May 5th of 2001 Puntland adopted the Transitional
Constitution of Puntland Regional Government. The region does not aspire
independency, but has a regional administration until authority is consolidated in
Somalia. A minister of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, Warsame Abdi
Samatar, stated that Puntland does not recognize the newly elected president of the
TFG. He said that Sheikh “Sharif [Ahmed]'s election was illegitimate and we [the
government of Puntland] shall never recognise him and his government”(quoted in
Guled 2009). Puntland advocates a federal system for the whole of Somalia, but until
this is established it will continue to function as a de facto independent region.
The TFG (Transitional Federal Government) is such an attempt to form a
federal government. It was initiated in 2004 –supported by the United Nations- with
a mandate to gain political authority on the whole of Somalia and form a Government
of National Unity. The TFG is the only political entity on the territory of Somalia that
has been recognized by the international community. With the election of Sheikh
Ahmed, the mandate of the TFG has been extended from 2009 until 2011. However,
the TFG faces strong and violent opposition from a complex of rebel movements.
This opposition consists of warlords, militias and other oppositional alliances. 37
In short, currently there are three semi-official political authorities:
Somaliland, Puntland, and the TFG. Yet, there was another non-recognized political
Conflict analysts have had difficulty in distinguishing and categorizing these different oppositional
groups (AAB Somalia 2009: 11). For the purpose of this essay, the term “warlords” refers to ‘modern
political or military actors who seize control of tribal or clan structures’ (Giustozzi 2005: 12). The term
“militia” is used for armed groups operating for private material gain, or ideological interests, not
necessarily connected to clan structures.
37
58
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
structure of influence on the ground in Somalia. Due to statelessness in Somalia,
some bottom-up provisional governing structures were locally established. These
institutions are generally referred to as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The UIC
seemed to have relative social, political and economic successes as a local political
authority. They had substantive support from the Somali people, and were an
organically grown form of unofficial local governance (Menkhaus, 2007: 83). These
regulative courts were established to handle conflict and decisions across clan lines,
and ruled according to Shari’a (Islamic law). The international community did not
tolerate the courts nor did local secular warlords. Therefore, even though the court
had substantial support of the Somali people, they were never acknowledged as a
political authority. In 2006, the Islamic courts -accused of hosting Al-Qaeda
terrorists- were chased out of the country by the TFG with the help of US-backed
Ethiopian forces. The UIC dissolved in 2006, but in 2007 the UIC-leaders Sheikh
Aweys and Sheikh Ahmed met in Asmara, Eritrea to form an opposition movement
against the TFG: the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).
Recent developments
Remarkably, former UIC leader Sheikh Ahmed, who was chased out of Somalia in
2006 as an enemy of the state, is now president of the TFG. How could that have
happened? The TFG had rapidly lost power as a political agent in 2008. With lack of
constituency on the ground in Somalia, it needed to form an alliance with part of the
opposition to survive: the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).
Negotiations between these two groups –known as the Djibouti peace talks- started
on May 10th 2008 and continued throughout the year. 38 Part of the ARS opposition
was found willing to cooperate with the TFG: Sheikh Ahmed. However, Sheikh
The president of the TFG at that time, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, was an impediment to the peacenegotiations between the TFG and the Islamic opposition, ARS. President Yusuf condemned the
Djibouti talks in an interview with the newspaper Alajeera, in the fall of 2008. He claimed that the
peace-brokering was nothing more than a ‘clan deal’ (Shabelle Media Network 2008). But, when he
stepped down in December 2008, the path was cleared the TFG-ARS alliance. Within a month after
President Yusuf’s resignation, the Transitional Parliament was expanded by an additional 275
members. ‘The Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia
agreed last October on the outline of enlarging Somalia’s Transitional Federal Parliament and forming
a Government of National Unity’ (UNPOS 2009a).
38
59
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Aweys opposed the Djibouti negotiations, causing a split in the ARS (now referred to
as Sheikh Ahmed’s ARS-Djibouti, and Sheikh Aweys’ ARS-Asmara).
The ARS-Djibouti and the TFG decided to expand the Transitional Federal
Parliament to accommodate the opposition party, and in January 2009 275 new
members were inaugurated. This new parliament, consequently, elected the Islamic
opposition leader Sheikh Ahmed as the new president of the interim government of
Somalia on January 31st 2009. The new and improved interim government seems to
have more constituency on the ground in Somalia. International sponsors of the
transitional government, hope that the new institutions will be able to consolidate
political authority over the territory of Somalia.
In short, Somalia’s politics are disintegrated. The external borders of Somalia
exist merely by that of neighboring countries. Internal Somalia is a fragmented
society that can be characterized by a disintegration of the “Somali people” and their
political system. People are divided along clan-lines, but also between different
politically independent or autonomous districts, that enjoy recognition from different
parties (see figure 1: maps of clans and political regions). The establishment of one
particular government, for all Somali people, will be a tremendously difficult task.
60
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
Annex 2: Maps of Somalia
Map 1: political regions in Somalia
Map 2: major clans in Somalia
Source Map 1: http://www.mapsorama.com/political-map-of-somalia/
Source Map 2: http://media.maps.com/magellan/Images/SOMCLA-W2.gif
61
Political Obligation in a Disintegrated State. Building a State in Somalia
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