Tag Archives: islamism

Somalia: Police Development as State Building?

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International and local power brokers see police as indicators of legitimacy and international recognition, but the international community’s vision of police development as state building is undermined by Somali politicians, officers, and businessmen sharing a political and entrepreneurial under- standing of the police role. The picture is further nuanced by influential Somalis who regard many of the structures and skills associated with Western policing as desirable, even as they manipulate the values and procedures promoted in its name.

The propensity of donors to see police development as a tool for not only state building, but also social engineering is marked. But so is the pragmatic response of Somalis. Officers in Somaliland and Puntland take what they value, manipulate what they can use, and subvert approaches that offend the sensibilities of their conservative society. Meanwhile, the SPF’s primary concern is to acquire the heavy weapons, vehicles, fuel, and communications equipment it needs to survive today.

Somalia’s experience shows that formality is not required for the governance associated with state building, but relative security and stability are, and there are limits to the role police can play in facilitating this: Somalia remains dangerously insecure. That the three forces are subject to the un- predictability that dependence on local power brokers and international funding introduces suggests that success depends on balancing local security levels and politics against international imperatives in a way that goes beyond current conceptions of state-based governance.

That is Alice Hills in a paper on policing in Somalia in the current issue of African Affairs.

discussing egypt

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I just attended a discussion session with Stanford scholars Lisa Blaydes (Political Scientist) and Joel Beinin (Historian) on the recent uprising in Egypt.

The structural factors leading to the revolt (According to Prof. Beinin) include: High unemployment among the youth, who constitute a big percentage of the working population and neo-liberal economics, embodied in the “government of businessmen” with friends and cronies of Gamal Mubarak at the helm.

The other point highlighted by Prof. Beinin is that the revolt has its roots in the liberal autocratic equilibrium that had emerged in Egypt over the last decade or so. Groups were allowed to protest, strike or engage in other collective action activities.

Prof. Bienin also took issue with American portrayal of Mubarak as a “moderate authoritarian,” the idea that Suleiman (Vice President of Egypt) should lead the transition and the perception of the Muslim Brotherhood as radical Islamist movement with a stranglehold on Egyptian politics – there are other opposition movements that would force the group to moderate its politics.

Prof. Blaydes’ talk aimed at answering three questions: who is protesting and why, what should we expect from free elections in Egypt and what does this all mean for Egyptian-American relations?

The protesters are likely to be mostly upper middle class men. A survey (rep. sample of 3000) before the protest indicated that only 8% of the total; 12% of men; 50% of the engaged upper middle class would go out and protest. The revolt is not a movement of the poor wanting redistribution. It is a middle class affair.

Egyptian politics is not a programmatic issue-based enterprise. Patronage politics predominate. Prof. Blaydes presented findings form survey data to estimate the strength of political Islamist movements in Egypt. The possible upper-bound of these movements was estimated to be 60%. Egypt has one of the largest concentrations of right-wing Islamists in the Arab world. The key point here is that there are a lot of unknowns. Since patronage politics predominates it is unclear if the high religiosity of Egyptians will necessarily translate into political gains for the Muslim brotherhood.

Public opinion in Egypt is already highly anti-American. US actions are unlikely to change that in the short-run, especially given the apparent American support for the Mubarak regime in the last few days.

Overall it appears that the uprising will not meet the needs of most pro-democracy groups. The ancien regime has dug in and appears to be regrouping.