Institutional Base:

I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) and a research associate at the Crisis States Research Centre (CSRC), both based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

In my efforts of undertaking research I am being supervised by Prof. Dr. James Putzel (Director of the CSRC and Professor at DESTIN, LSE, United Kingdom) as well as Prof. Dr. Tobias Debiel (Director of the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) and Managing Director of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany).

For my research, I am funded by the Cusanuswerk as well as the German National Academic Foundation. For their continuous support I am extremely grateful, as I am for the support of otther institutions.

PhD Working Title: Warfare, Administration and State Fragility in Somalia & Somaliland

Abstract

'State fragility', and its implications for national development and international security, has taken centre stage among today's most pressing global public policy challenges. Whereas policy makers are primarily concerned with questions of how to respond to the challenges arising in and from these 'fragile states', the scholarly community has revived a long-standing conundrum: what is the function of warfare in the process of state formation and does the historic proposition that 'war makes states and states make war' still hold in the context of contemporary developing countries?

Besides developing an original theoretical framework to analytically grasp variations of state trajectories over space and time, the research project empirically explores the diverse developments in Somalia and Somaliland in detail. Thereby, the overarching research objective is not only to contribute to an improved understanding of the question under what conditions war can be constitutive of state making today, but also to explain why and how Somaliland has managed to establish structures of governance, while south-central Somalia is still haunted by conflict and instability.

Conceptually, the project is located at the intersection of political-economy and historical and institutional approaches to state making, and undertakes qualitative research framed as a structured, focused comparison of a controllable number of case studies.

 Some Theoretical Considerations

Having taken off from the proposition that state making was a function of warfare, my doctoral research project re-unites the largely unconnected strands of state-building and nation-building. Against this backdrop, I suggest conceptualizing the overall process of state making as a process of increasing institutional and socio-cognitive standardization. Insti­tutional standardization underlies state-building and is understood as a process whereby a single set of 'rules of the game' gains dominance within a given territory – a condition in which all major role relationships are regularized by a preponderant organization. Similarly, socio-cognitive standardiza­tion underlies nation-building and is defined as a process whereby one common set of 'rules of the mind' – i.e. socio-cognitive elements such as language or mental maps – becomes domi­nant within a given society. Based on such theoretical considerations I modify certain claims made by 'bellicose historians'.

While challenging those advocating that civil conflict was a 'daemon of decay', the project similarly distances itself from those propagating it to be an 'angel of order'. Rather, I aim at disaggregating the 'black box' of war(fare), arguing that it were particular aspects of conflict that may have fostered and catalysed processes of state making. Yet, the theoretical argument expands well beyond the incidence of war. While the establishment of a 'monopoly over the legitimate use of force' and the extraction of resources from the territory and population under control are central preoccupations in the process of state making, I postulate that their central importance for state making largely hinges on their ability to enhance levels of institutional and socio-cognitive standardization. Equally, the research project focuses on central state administra­tion, media and communication, as well as other indicators to assess the varying degrees of institutional and socio-cognitive standardization and their implications for state (un)making.

 Some Empirical Findings

Scrutinizing numerous of the prevailing narratives of Somaliland, which propose that the self-styled republic constituted a 'unique case' and 'success story' of 'autonomous recovery', in which 'traditional' and 'modern' forms of governance have complemented each other in a 'peaceful' and 'bottom-up' manner to form a 'hybrid political order' and 'vivid democracy', I provide an alternative reading of its state making trajectory.

First, my research finds that warfare has been a central component of Somaliland's state trajectory, and that it was a divergent bellicose history of north-west and south-central Somalia that partly explains their different outcomes regarding state development. While showing that the civil war against Siyad Barre carried elements constitutive of state making for Somaliland, I also suggest that the civil wars that occurred within the Somaliland territory during the mid-1990s contributed to, rather than deviated from, state making. In fact, the civil wars importantly contributed to laying the basis for institutional and socio-cognitive standardization in subsequent years.

Second, and in light of the above, empirical findings lead me to argue that the Somaliland state was built less by the 'grassroots' in a 'bottom-up' process, but rather featured an elitist, 'top-down' approach, which was largely characterized by shrewd and authoritarian politics. Furthermore, the thesis provides evidence for the proposition that both processes of democratization and decentra­lization not only took place prematurely in Somaliland, but even endangered and retarded the overall state making process.

Third, I contest the allegations that Somaliland pulled itself up on its own bootstraps in the absence of any meaningful international support, and that the revenue generation system it established fostered accountable structures of governance. For one, even though Somaliland has received below average internatio­nal aid on a per capita basis, the polity has seen significant international support (e.g. in the sphere of security gover­nance) without which it would have hardly been able to observe the same successes regarding state making. For another, the resource mobilization system established by successive governments saw state reliance on customs, rather than domestic taxation, for over 85 per cent of its revenue, defying the argu­ment that the state's ability to mobilize its own resources has come in tandem with increased political accountability.

For the full, yet somewhat outdated version of my research proposal (version of 2008), please click here.

Current research interests concentrate on the following:

• state formation, state fragility and resilience, and state failure

• war and warfare, civil conflict and post-conflict reconstruction

• state building, administrative reform, bureaucratisation and taxation

• nation building & nationalism

• the international aid regime, donor assistance in post-war societies

• my regional insterest is on Sub-Saharan Africa, with changing sub-regional interests over the past years. Currently, the regional focus lies on the Horn of Africa, with a particular interest in Somaliland, as well as Somalia, Eritrea and (South) Sudan.