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Order beyond the state: explaining Somaliland's avoidance of maritime piracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2018

Justin V. Hastings  and
Sarah G. Phillips
Justin V. Hastings*
Affiliation:
Department of Government and International Relations, Merewether (H04), University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Sarah G. Phillips*
Affiliation:
Centre for International Security Studies, Merewether (H04), University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
*
Email: justin.hastings@sydney.edu.au
Email: sarah.phillips@sydney.edu.au
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Abstract

How do some places with weak institutional capacity avoid being caught in the cycles of violence and criminality so often associated with African institutions in the ‘failed states’ literature? This paper exploits in-country variation in piracy incidence across different regions of Somalia to investigate how some territories with low state capacity can nonetheless deter piracy and provide relative order. We find that the usual explanation – state ‘failure’ in Somalia, compared with a reasonably functional government in Somaliland – does not withstand scrutiny. Somaliland's lack of piracy was not due to ‘strong’ state institutions, but can be attributed to the strength of a discourse that emphasises Somaliland's ‘inherent’ capacity for order against the disorder supposedly endemic to the rest of Somalia. The exploration of the discursive underpinnings of Somaliland's supposed ‘piratelessness’ has implications for understanding the relationship between state institutions, political order and violence, particularly where the state does not exercise a monopoly on force.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 5 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

Thanks to Maxamed Axmed Ali and Sean Whipple for research support. This paper was previously presented at a panel at the 2016 International Studies Association annual meeting in Atlanta, where Omar McDoom and other participants provided helpful comments. The research for this paper was funded by the Australian Research Council through grants DP130103966 and DE130101468.

References

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