The relations of the 'International Community' with the three current state-forms in Somalia - Somaliland, the Federal Government and Al Shabaab – suggest that the first goal of statebuilding is to strengthen the international order. Efforts by the international community to resurrect the Somali State or support Somaliland's self-initiated state formation ignore and disrupt functioning local governance practices. Self-governance resumed, bringing peace and some economic growth. The state connects Somali society to the international order and its resources in a dynamic, two-way manner, but when state power brought social power out of balance, the State collapsed in civil war. The history of Somalia is then analysed through the dual power lens. I develop a theory of self-governance that interacts with state governance, which I call the dual power theory: underlying state power is social power, which generates self-governance. There is thus no theory to explain how stateless Somali society produces political order through self-governance. This is reflected within political science by the assumption that the Law-based State is the only legitimate source of political order. The State and the international state order are first analysed as transient social constructs that have rooted themselves deeply in our minds. My thesis is that state-building interventions in Somalia strengthen the international order, while they disrupt the informal socio-political order and generate conflict within Somali society.
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