eprintid: 1472013 rev_number: 24 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/01/47/20/13 datestamp: 2016-01-26 15:13:15 lastmod: 2021-10-14 22:55:39 status_changed: 2016-01-26 15:13:15 type: report metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Walls, M title: State building in the Somali Horn: compromise, competition and representation ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C04 divisions: F32 keywords: Somaliland, Somalia, state formation, politics, development abstract: The achievements of successive Somaliland governments in building legitimacy and conducting elections have attracted widespread praise. While the near future will present substantial challenges to the durability of past successes, a close analysis shows that Somaliland offers a great many useful lessons about how to build a Somali nation state. An established, discursive system of consensus-based political participation is as important as democratisation through elections. This system is inevitably imperfect, but it has played a key role in securing broad, though qualified, acceptance of state institutions. A resurgence of optimism in southern Somalia has diverted attention from more sustained, if less spectacular, political accommodations negotiated in Somaliland and elsewhere in the Somali Horn of Africa. Mundane lessons learned in these territories have once again been relegated to the margins. International participants and elite partners in Mogadishu, Nairobi, Washington and London are absorbed by Somali realpolitik and the apparent progress of a grand technocratic exercise in state-building. It is imperative that those wishing to support continued political development in Somaliland and the region pay greater heed to the historical and cultural context in which it is occurring. date: 2014-12-04 date_type: published publisher: Africa Research Institute official_url: http://www.africaresearchinstitute.org/publications/counterpoints/statebuilding-somali-horn/ oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green article_type_text: Article commissioning_body: Africa Research Institute verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1062222 lyricists_name: Walls, Michael lyricists_id: MJWAL06 actors_name: Walls, Michael actors_id: MJWAL06 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public series: Counterpoints publication: Africa Research Institute Counterpoints place_of_pub: London, UK pages: 13 event_location: UK citation: Walls, M; (2014) State building in the Somali Horn: compromise, competition and representation. (Counterpoints ). Africa Research Institute: London, UK. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1472013/1/Statebuilding-in-the-Somali-Horn.pdf