A Study On State Failure Of Somalia

The State Failure theory emerged in the 1990 s,focusing on such failed states as Somalia,Haiti,Democratic Republic of the Congo,Syria,Yemen,etc.The theory unfolds a sense of western centralism,with its particular interest on judging or reconstructing failed states according to the western experience of modern nation-state building.For a long time,the western experience of state building,or the western road,has been regarded as a universal guide for all other countries in non-western regions.However,different states do have their endogenous particularity in state building and it is inappropriate to examine why a state fails to function,or to restore its peace and order within a western framework of universalism.It is especially the case of Somalia.Somalia has been in a state of political and socio-economic crises since 1991,typically known as a failed or collapsed state.For a long time,the international community,at both global and regional level,has devoted a lot of efforts to reconstructing a central government and to restoring peace in Somalia,however,the world has only witnessed slow and little progress there.In this dissertation,it is hypothesized that the state particularity of Somalia,namely the “ethnopolitics”,matters a lot in explaining “why it failed” and “why the repeated attempts to reconstruct a sovereign authority were fruitless”.For this,the dissertation tries to explore various reasons for Somali state failure in all-inclusive aspects,with an emphasis on the special and specific roles of Somali ethnopolitics.With the qualitative method of data collecting,and on the basis of a thorough analysis of Somali state failure during the period from 1991 to 2017,the dissertation reveals that the state failure of Somalia has bee strongly associated with the interplay of five level-actors and four permanent forces.In detail,three domestic actors,including the national government,various sub-national actors,political strongmen,and two external actors,namely the international organizations and western powers,the regional international organizations and regional countries,just interact to explain reasons of Somali state failure.On the other hand,four permanent forces such as realistic interests,geographical links,history memories and identity politics perpetually exert a push-pull interaction between all five level-actors.Moreover,the five level-actors and four permanent forces performs dynamically by three mechanisms to manifest Somali state failure: firstly,Somali ethnopolitics plays a decisive role in its state failure and state reconstruction;secondly,various sub-national actors act as a kind of pivot in the interplay of all five level-actors;thirdly,four permanent forces function differently with different level-actors and under different situations.By this way,there comes into being an analysis framework or model for Somali state failure,which consist of five level-actors,four permanent forces,and three dynamic mechanisms.The analysis model demonstrates that Somali ethnopolitics plays a decisive role in explaining its state failure.The assumption that Somali ethnic groups are mainly responsible for its state failure is rooted in the Somali culture of a nomad-agrarian society,with a lot of tribes and clans and relative lineages.During the state failure process,various traditional ethno-identities outweigh the notions of Somali nation and Somali state.All sub-national actors,such as ethnic groups,federal member states,warlords and armed groups,religious militants and etc.,are organized and mobilized on the ethno-identity basis.These are main parties in armed clashes,main competitors in power struggles,and main obstacles in persevering Somali social order.Moreover,external powers,especially some regional rivalries in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East,intervene or even fight proxy wars by supporting separate sub-national actors for their own purposes.Both domestic and external actors manipulate the ethnopolitics to obtain their realistic interests,making it harder for various ethnic groups to respect a higher national sovereign/authority encompassing all tribes,clans,and local authorities.This ultimately results in the breakdown of the state and the predication to reconstruct a central government.The findings of the study reveal that modern interpretations of statehood have long ignored the state particularity of non-western countries,and a western state building path cannot be a universal guide any more.In those failed states characteristic of ethnopolitics,a nation-wide ethnic reconciliation might be the first step to enforce peace and order,otherwise,efforts to reconstruct a central government would be in vain,just as being verified in the Somali case.From this dissertation,the analysis model for Somali state failure is expected to be applied to similar case studies,where ethnopolitics plays a decisive role,such as in Afghanistan,Syria,Yemen,etc.By examining the systematic factors at multiple levels of both international and domestic politics,the study on Somali state failure is expected to enrich and refine the international system theory and paradigms of structural realism and neoclassical realism,in methodology and relative aspects.With a special attention to Somali ethnopolitics,this study is also expected to present an introspective view of dominant western nation-state doctrine and a new direction to future theory construction for state-and nation-building.