What Does the Somali Experience Teach Us about the Social Contract and the State?

Abstract

Since 1991 the international system has struggled and failed to recreate a state on the territory of the former Somalia. Proto-state systems have been formed by Somalis themselves in Somaliland and Puntland and alternative forms of governance and order exist in other parts of Somalia, but none enjoys international recognition. The polities of Somalia offer important lessons concerning our general theories about social contract, the role that states play in creating wealth, indigenous systems of governance, and the failure of existing international approaches to state reconstruction. Contemporary Somali politics is re-explored here to extract these lessons. The article explores the assumptions embedded in the works of the classic Western social contract theorists in the light of Somali experience in order to show that the underlying conceptual structure of international state reconstruction work needs to be rethought. We conclude that it frequently is better to allow for bottom-up, organic, disjointed negotiation of indigenous governance solutions (even though they probably will not conform to Western ideas of liberal democracy) than for the international system to impose top-down answers. The former more closely tracks the history of state formation in Europe and the latter is troubled by the inconsistent and not necessarily benign interests of the international actors involved. Indigenous, local political systems are changed by the stresses of violent conflict, so prompt action to employ them in a post-conflict situation is indicated.