The Horn of Africa: State Formation and Decay

Description

Why is the Horn such a distinctive part of Africa? This book, by one of the foremost scholars of the region, traces this question through its exceptional history and also probes the wildly divergent fates of the Horn's contemporary nation-states, despite the striking regional particularity inherited from the colonial past. Christopher Clapham explores how the Horn's peculiar topography gave rise to the Ethiopian empire, the sole African state not only to survive European colonialism, but also to participate in a colonial enterprise of its own. Its impact on its neighbours, present-day Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Somaliland, created a region very different from that of post-colonial Africa. This dynamic has become all the more distinct since 1991, when Eritrea and Somaliland emerged from the break-up of both Ethiopia and Somalia. Yet this evolution has produced highly varied outcomes in the region's constituent countries, from state collapse (and deeply flawed reconstruction) in Somalia, through militarised isolation in Eritrea, to a still fragile 'developmental state' in Ethiopia. The tensions implicit in the process of state formation now drive the relationships between the once historically close nations of the Horn. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of Acronyms and Indigenous Words Maps Introduction: An African Anomaly 1. The Power of Landscape Introduction The Highland Core The Lowland Periphery The Highland Periphery The Population Dynamics of the Horn 2. Histories of State Creation and Collapse Structures of Partition Empire, Revolution and State Failure in Ethiopia and Eritrea The Death of the Somali Dream 1991: Year Zero in the Horn 3. State Reconstruction in Ethiopia A New Kind of Ethiopia? Creating a Managed Political Order The Impact of War Elections, Participation and the Crisis of 2005 Building a Developmental State Managing the Succession The Ethiopian Experiment 4. Eritrea: The Tragedy of the Post-Insurgent State The Creation of an Eritrean State The 1998–2000 War and its Aftermath Post-War Eritrea: The Traumas of Regime Survival A New Kind of Eritrea? 5. Managing Somali States Introduction: The Problems of Somali Governance South-Central Somalia: The Contradictions of External State-Building The Somaliland Option The Djibouti Anomaly 6. The Horn, the Continent and the World Structures of Regional Hegemony and Contestation Continental and Global Agendas Notes Bibliography Index