Hybrid political orders in the Horn : comparative analysis between Somaliland and Puntland

Somaliland offers important lessons concerning theories about security governance in Africa, the role that political elites play in conflict resolution, indigenous systems of governance such as clan elders, and the failure of existing international approaches to state reconstruction. The article provides a comparative analysis regarding Somaliland and its neighbor Puntland, to shed light on the nature of hybrid security which highlights multiple non-state providers of “security, welfare and representation.” Hybrid also refers to the fact that informal systems are not well understood in the literature. Unlike most parts of Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland followed bottom-up approaches to reconstruction