detachment

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,…