State Building in De Facto States: Somaliland and Puntland Compared

Since the collapse of the Somali state, regional governments in Somaliland and Puntland have engaged in local state building. Studies often compare Somaliland and southern Somalia, but the comparison of Somaliland and Puntland receives less attention. We help fill this gap by comparing the state-building impact of Somaliland’s pursuit of internationally recognized statehood with that of Puntland’s decision to pursue a federalist Somalia. Engaging literature on de facto and unrecognized states, we argue that Somaliland and Puntland share key similarities with regard to security imperatives, revenue scarcity, and democratic challenges, but the quest for international statehood has unified the population and business community behind the Somaliland state and created incentives for its leaders to democratize; in Puntland, by contrast, the government’s continuing relationship with Somalia has complicated local state building.