Somalia’s Federalism Dilemma: Decentralization Without Escaping Authoritarian Legacy

Decentralization Without Detachment: How Somalia’s Federal Experiment Risks Repackaging Authoritarian Rule

Somalia’s embrace of federalism was meant to end the abuses of centralized power, redistribute authority closer to citizens, and lower the stakes of political competition. Three decades on, the core problem is not the federal model itself but decentralization without cultural detachment from the authoritarian habits entrenched under military rule. Power has been dispersed in form yet reproduced in practice—personalized, coercive, and mediated by patronage—leaving citizens with fragmented governance rather than genuine democracy.

After the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, federalism emerged as a political compromise and a safeguard. It promised to acknowledge clan diversity, reduce zero-sum fighting over Mogadishu, and prevent the reemergence of dictatorship by dividing authority across federal member states. The logic was sound: constitutions codify the balance of power, and decentralization can foster participation, accountability, and locally responsive service delivery.

But structures do not operate in a vacuum. Somalia’s inherited political culture—formed by decades of centralized rule, repression, and surveillance, then hardened through civil war—has outlived the old regime. Authority remains widely understood as something to be controlled rather than regulated, personalized rather than institutionalized. Too often, federalism has devolved not practices but only responsibilities, moving the same coercive logics to subnational arenas where the checks are weaker and the stakes more localized.

At federal and state levels alike, leaders frequently govern through clan loyalty, patronage networks, and security leverage. Formal oversight bodies are underpowered. Rules are selectively applied. Elections and power-sharing are framed as contests among elites, not as civic processes that expand people’s rights and responsibilities. This aligns with what political theorists call “delegative democracy,” where leaders claim broad discretion through majoritarian or communal mandates while resisting meaningful constraint by institutions and citizens.

The public’s lived experience reinforces the cycle. Years of conflict and precarity have conditioned many to view politics as an elite market for access, protection, and short-term advantage. Youth—who make up a majority of the population—have had little engagement with functional public institutions. In such an environment, strongman behavior can be tolerated if it delivers security or resources, even when it undermines the spirit of federalism.

Memory and trauma complicate this further. While Somalis overwhelmingly reject a return to dictatorship, nostalgia for the “order” of the past can surface in moments of instability. When societies do not systematically confront past abuses—through truth-telling, public dialogue, or official accountability—unexamined memory can legitimize illiberal instincts. In Somalia, that nostalgia competes with aspirations for participatory governance, often to the detriment of reform.

The result is a paradox that many citizens recognize: authority has been spread out but not meaningfully opened up. Federal structures are visible, but everyday governance can feel distant, transactional, or coercive. In too many places, decentralization has amplified local competition for territory and rents without creating durable channels for citizen voice or oversight. It is a reconfiguration of control, not a redistribution of power.

None of this means federalism has failed or that decentralization is misguided. Rather, it underscores a larger truth about democratization in post-authoritarian contexts: institutions and culture must change together. Laws can be written and agencies formed, but if political norms remain anchored in obedience, secrecy, and winner-take-all thinking, the new structure will simply host the old politics.

For federalism to deliver what it promised—legitimate authority, accountable leadership, and local problem-solving—Somalia’s reformers need to pair structural change with a deliberate cultural shift. That requires patient investment and clear priorities:

• Build strong, predictable institutions. Clarify mandates, professionalize civil services, and insulate key functions—budgeting, audits, public procurement, electoral administration—from partisan capture. Consistency and transparency reduce arbitrariness and build public trust.

• Cultivate civic awareness and participation. Expand civic education in schools, mosques, and community centers; support local councils and participatory budgeting; and normalize citizen monitoring of services. Democratic habits grow when people routinely use them.

• Confront authoritarian memory and legacies. Establish structured national and regional dialogues on the past, support community-led truth-telling, and preserve public archives. Healing and accountability—formal or informal—help inoculate against nostalgia for coercive rule.

• Empower civil society, independent media, women, and youth. Provide legal protections and sustainable funding channels for watchdog groups, professional associations, and local NGOs. Diversifying leadership beyond traditional power brokers strengthens pluralism and oversight.

• Adopt adaptive, context-sensitive federalism. Treat decentralization as iterative: pilot reforms, learn from local practice, and adjust frameworks to realities on the ground. Balance autonomy with enforceable national standards for rights, elections, and fiscal responsibility.

• Create safe channels for feedback and dissent. Codify whistleblower protections, community grievance mechanisms, and public expenditure tracking, and ensure recourse when authorities overreach. Accountability must be feasible, not theoretical.

Somalia’s security challenges, fiscal constraints, and political rivalries are real. Yet these are precisely the pressures that can tempt leaders to centralize informally while preaching decentralization formally. Guarding against that drift demands more than technical fixes; it calls for a shared social contract about how power should be acquired, exercised, and limited. Elite bargains alone cannot deliver that change. It must be built outward, through institutions that function and a citizenry that expects—and enforces—rule-bound governance.

Federalism is not an endpoint. It is a framework within which Somalia can renegotiate authority and rebuild the state from the ground up. To work, it must be animated by a civic culture that values rights and responsibilities over loyalty and fear. Decentralization without detachment risks entrenching the very practices it set out to dismantle. Decentralization with democratic discipline—and a clear reckoning with the past—offers a path to a more legitimate, resilient Somali state.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.