Where All Politics Is Local

__"Somalia: Political Order in a Stateless Society" by Ken Menkhaus, and "Somaliland Goes It Alone" by Gerard Prunier, in Current History (May 1998), 4225 Main St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19127.__

Ever since the outside world gave up its efforts to re-establish a central government in Somalia three years ago, it has been widely assumed that this country in the Horn of Africa fell back into chaos and violence. This is not the case, writes Menkhaus, a political scientist at Davidson College. "While Somalia today is stateless, it is not anarchic."

Local communities have moved to take up the slack. In most of Somalia today, he says, the basic political functions "are carried out at the village, town, or (in Mogadishu, the only large city) neighborhood level. Law and order is ensured either by clan elders, by sharia [Islamic law] courts springing up in urban neighborhoods, or in a few instances, by local police forces."

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