In a country still experiencing localised conflict, massive chronic poverty, widespread food insecurity, and the recurrent risk of famine, with a fragile government competing for legitimacy and highly dependent on donor finance, is it reasonable to expect social assistance to contribute to social contract formation? This article explores political economy analyses of what other contracts or bargains might be more important to the government and asks whether particular features or elements of social assistance programmes might contribute to improved state–society relations.
Somalia, social assistance, social contract, social protection, humanitarian, elite bargains, clans, Al-Shabaab, corruption, cash or voucher assistance (CVA).
This article investigates the claim that in Somalia, large-scale safety nets, (nominally) delivered by the federal and state governments, can contribute to a stronger social contract.5 Such claims are made by those promoting the move from humanitarian safety nets towards ‘government-owned’ social assistance programmes. A World Bank report, for example, states that the Baxnaano programme contributes to ‘Somalia state-building and renewed social contract’ (Al-Ahmadi and Zampaglione 2022: 54). Similarly, a European Parliament report on the Social Transfers for Vulnerable People (SAGAL) says,
SAGAL, by strengthening social protection institutions and policies, reinforces the social contract between Somali institutions and Somali citizens, eroding support for non-state armed groups.
(European Parliament 2019)
What might be the rationale for such claims? Social contract theory posits that individuals consent to surrender certain freedoms, pay taxes, and abide by societal rules in exchange for the protection of rights and provision of benefits by a governing authority. This implicit agreement is the ‘social contract’ which forms the basis for a government’s legitimacy. The nature of the contract varies in maturity, scope, and content depending on context and historical pathways. While there are a range of critiques of social contract theory – whether as lacking historicity, too limited in scope, too teleological, too Eurocentric – this article engages with the statements at face value because this is what is asked of development and humanitarian actors.
Social protection offers instruments for addressing poverty and vulnerability and is increasingly counted among the rights and benefits to be provided by a government (and frequently funded by citizens’ taxes).6 The logic is that if a government is struggling to establish its legitimacy, providing critical support via social assistance to poor and vulnerable citizens is to deliver on an element of the social contract and should improve state–citizen relations (Kidd et al. 2020).
Notably, more weight is placed on social protection in fragile and conflict-affected contexts (FCAC) where it is argued that social assistance, along with services, straddles economic development, governance, and peace-building (Rehman Mayar 2018). In Somalia, evidence suggests that social assistance, when visibly coming from government, may shift ‘the loyalties of citizens from reliance on security provided by their clans towards the benefits provided by a functional Somali state’ (Dahir and Sheikh Ali 2021).
This article contends that, in Somalia, assuming an uncomplicated route from social assistance to the renewal of the social contract is mistaken for several reasons including the questions of whether the ‘state’: ‘has the capacity for a social contract; has any interest in a social contract; or actually exists at all.’7 To consider these questions, we explore the fragile foundations for social assistance in this fractured context and suggest that rather than a contract between ‘state and citizen’, a different set of bargains prevail, including bargaining between elites for economic and political power, the presence of Al‑Shabaab, and the relationship between elites and international aid. The article concludes that there is no easy route from social assistance to a social contract, but in a context with limited room for manoeuvre, some choices might offer a better way forward than others.
Section 2 provides a summary of fragility and conflict in Somalia over the past 40 years. Section 3 discusses the political and infrastructural factors that have encouraged a degree of progress from humanitarian aid to nascent government-led social protection. Section 4 dives more deeply into the transition to structured social protection at the Baxnaano and SAGAL programmes. The limitations of these positive changes are explored in Section 5, which highlights how Somalia’s fragmented political landscape, elite bargains, and clan dynamics prevent a cohesive social contract and how Al-Shabaab’s role in governance and international aid complicate state-building efforts. Section 6 offers some ideas to align international response and programme design more closely with contextual challenges. Section 7 concludes the discussion and argues that disruptive political forces in Somalia hinder the renewal of the social contract, and that well-designed, inclusive, and sustained efforts are needed for long-term stability.
Somalia faces a wide set of challenges. Much of the country has been mired in continuous but fluctuating degrees of conflict and instability since before the start of the civil war in 1991, accompanied by a series of extensive and recurrent disasters – drought, famine, flood, locust infestations, and persistent food insecurity (Maxwell et al. 2014). Consequently, in 2023, nearly seven out of ten Somalis were living in poverty (HLPF 2022). Al-Shabaab still holds large areas of territory, and recent government military success is fragile, driven mostly by the securitisation agenda of international actors via the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) (Mubarak and Jackson 2023; Majid and McDowell 2012).
As a result, Somalia is heavily reliant on, and influenced by, external assistance – from actors supporting development, humanitarian assistance, and peace-building – to those prioritising their own national and regional agendas. Aid is problematic because of exceptionally high levels of corruption:
Corruption and aid diversion in Somalia… is systemic; it pervades the entire aid system and has become part of the wider political economy of the country.
(Majid, Abdirahman and Adan 2023, para 5)
Although there has been a federal government since 2011, this ‘state’ is limited, contested in control of territory and institutional development, does not raise taxes, monopolise violence, protect its citizens, or provide services (all key elements of the social contract). Symbolically, the constitution remains in draft form, with critical elements of state formation, including federal–regional allocations of authority, resources, and revenue raising, unresolved as too contentious (ISS 2009). The socio-political vacuum created by the absence of a strong central government has seen dominant clans emerge into stronger political and economic roles (de Waal 2020; Dahir and Sheikh Ali 2021; Elmi 2014).8 In 20–30 per cent of rural southcentral Somalia, Al-Shabaab remains the most effective government. Rural communities, long lacking a connection to ‘the state’, view Al-Shabaab as the proximate authorities and provide a base for the group. Most services and basic needs for the poor and vulnerable are delivered with donor funds via outside implementing agencies.
Positive trends have emerged in Somalia regarding governance, funding, financial infrastructure, and humanitarian and development thinking and practice; these are used to justify the transition from humanitarian response towards government-owned social assistance (Manuel et al. 2017).9
Politically, the Somali ‘Compact’ peace agreement of 2011 created a framework for negotiations and established the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu in 2012 (Harmer and Grünewald 2017). There have since been three successful elections (albeit via Somali members of parliament, i.e. clans, rather than by individuals). Greater stability has led to governance and funding gains. Financially, while humanitarian funding still dominates, development and humanitarian actors supported a move from medium- to long-term development funding and planning processes with the government. The overall portfolio of long-term development assistance more than doubled from US$409m to US$1,047m per annum in the nine years from 2012 to 2020.10
Programmatically, from 2011 onwards, humanitarians pivoted from in-kind aid to cash or voucher assistance (CVA), stimulated by increasing global praxis in humanitarian CVA and by recognition of the systematic corruption of in-kind support and CVA as a less easily divertible modality.11 The use of CVA helped overcome access issues at district and community levels and in restricted areas. The parallel rise of cash-based social protection in many low- and middle-income countries stimulated experimentation in linking humanitarian CVA to national social protection programming.12
What enabled large-scale cash-based social safety nets was the emergence of a digital financial infrastructure driven by increasing volumes of remittances from the 1970s (by 2016, remittances to Somalia were estimated at US$1.4bn per year, constituting 23 per cent of Somalia’s gross domestic product (Majid, Abdirahman and Hassan 2018)). Digitisation expanded with mobile phone digital platforms filling the vacuum left by collapsed banking systems, and mobile money becoming the chosen modality for remittances and humanitarian assistance.
Government capacity also grew. The establishment of federal government structures – the Federal Member States – and the growing development budget strengthened government social protection capacity. In 2017, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management was established to coordinate disaster response and oversee donor-funded and UN and (I)NGO-implemented programmes (including social protection). The Ministry of Labour and Social Assistance (MOLSA) assumed responsibility for social protection later that year. In 2019, the Cabinet endorsed the Somalia Social Protection Policy (Federal Government of Somalia 2019) (still without finalised mechanisms for local decision-making and administration at federal member level (Manuel et al. 2017)). The policy, with support from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), focused on vulnerability through the life cycle as well as social cohesion.
This evolution had practical import: in 2017, the government led the response to the worst attack in Somalia’s history, the 14 October twin truck bombing in Mogadishu, which killed 587 people and injured over 300. The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management coordinated medical treatment and managed donations (from Somalia, the diaspora, and from INGOs, UN agencies, and bilateral donors), disbursing support to affected families, representing the first time in many decades that the government had fully led and coordinated a crisis response effort.13
Building on such progress, the last four years have seen two large-scale and shock-responsive safety nets emerge: the European Union’s SAGAL and the World Bank-funded Baxnaano programme. These initiatives draw on strong, often clan-based traditions of mutual support, the heritage of 1960s government public works, and long-running humanitarian cash for work, school feeding, and cash transfer programmes. Both programmes aim to transition slowly from humanitarian safety nets to government social protection. Each currently remains top-down, donor funded, and only nominally government owned. Key design features have been heavily donor influenced (see Table 1) with both aiming to build government capacity while retaining flexibility ‘shock proofing’ via UN and I/NGO delivery.
| Name | Baxnaano | SAGAL |
|---|---|---|
| Funding | World Bank | European Union Trust Fund, Royal Danish Embassy, and Swedish Embassy |
| Implementation support | World Bank, WFP, UNICEF, local partners | Somali Cash Consortium of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and local partners |
| Target group | Targeting is layered. Current situation: Percentage allocation to each member state; each select three districts based on poverty criteria and accessibility; then via nutrition centres to reach under-fives plus community review. Planned action: Proxy means test |
‘Categorical model’ People living with disabilities Elderly people The first 1,000 days Youth |
| Geographical focus | Current situation: Rural Planned action: Expansion to urban areas |
Urban areas (internally displaced people (IDPs) are an entry point); the ‘corridors’ of Juba, Shabelle, Central North, and Somaliland |
| Coverage | 220,000 households | 46,483 households |
| Crisis modifier | Yes – up to 95,00021 | Yes |
| Technical capacity-building objective | Yes | Yes |
| Project Management Unit in MOLSA | Yes | Yes |
| Registry | Current situation: Unified social registry Planned action: To link to future unified single registry (USR) |
Dedicated registry |
Source: Birch (2023). Copyright © Institute of Development Studies, CC BY-NC 4.0.
Evidence for how these projects fare in terms of improving the social contract is still limited. The better resourced Baxnaano is becoming the de facto national programme, although a 2020 evaluation by Development Pathways identified challenges around messaging to communities and beneficiaries, resulting in a lack of clarity regarding targeting, payment frequency, transfer values, and other key processes (Kidd et al. 2020). Grievance mechanisms – a way to enfranchise participants and contribute to enhanced state–society relations – were reported as limited (ibid.). Preliminary results from a recent (draft) evaluation for SAGAL suggest targeting was better understood by recipients. However, more robust evidence is required for assessment.14
If Baxnaano aims to contribute remotely to rebuilding a social contract, its design is critical and should be easily understood by recipients as well as politically acceptable (Birch 2023). It is rumoured that the World Bank plans to shift to a proxy means test (PMT), broadening eligibility beyond households with under‑fives and expanding into urban areas. However, a PMT approach would contradict the Federal Government of Somalia’s own social protection policy’s stress on categorical targeting (albeit heavily donor influenced). Problematically, global experience (Kidd et al. 2020; Brown, Ravallion and van de Walle 2016) suggests that a PMT in the context of Somalia would obscure targeting criteria for recipients. This is because recipients must understand and accept the targeting criteria as fair and know the source of the benefit for it to have any implications for renewing the social contract and improving state–society relations.
This summary of the state of play in Somalia shows that government and authority remain fragile and moves towards social assistance/protection, driven by donors, miss key outcomes around transparency and accountability. Yet, to fully understand barriers to improving state–society relations requires a deeper dive into the political economy of Somalia.
Political economists argue that the fractured national context in Somalia undermines the meaning of ‘citizen’ and ‘state’ or a relationship between the two (Cloutier et al. 2022). De Waal’s (2020) framework of the ‘disassembled state’, with its implications of uneven and obscure connections to citizens, suggests that the very notion of a social contract at national level is questionable. Alik-Lagrange et al. argue that the ‘realities and constraints of weak or uneven state capacity mediate the anticipated effects of social protection programs’ on the social contract (2021: 153) and reject any ‘expectations of a linear exchange relationship between the distribution of benefits and citizens’ delegation of authority’.15 Cloutier et al. (2022) find that in contexts such as Somalia, social contracts exist mostly at a local level.
How is the state disassembled or the national context fractured? Drawing on de Waal (2020), Cloutier et al. (2022), and Menkhaus (2018), there appear to be three ‘bargains’ dominating the Somali context which disrupt both the perception and reality of the citizen–state relationship (Cloutier et al. 2021). These bargains are between (1) predatory elites; (2) Al-Shabaab and the people;16 and (3) international actors and the government.17 In the following discussion, we explore these three ‘bargains’.
Somali elites (i.e. the groupings which hold most power) are based on mercurial alliances (1) rooted in and drawing on clan and kin identity; (2) located in a regional and political base; (3) supported by the sharing and seeking of federal funds generated from rentseeking (including aid); (4) enforced through coercion and the ownership of militias (sometimes allied with international/regional actors (Menkhaus 2018)). Although these existing elite bargains are maintained by the threat of violence, they have constrained larger scale political violence.
The major clans have reacted and adapted to years of crisis, taking on different roles and opportunistically incorporating a range of military, economic, and political resources (de Waal 2020). Politically, the formation of the Somali federal state reinforced majority clan dominance: the ‘4:5 ratio’ emerging from peace negotiations assigned full share of power to the four major clans and a half-share to a consortium of other smaller and weaker clans and non-clan groups. Clans also gained official territorial control when, between 2014 and 2017, the interim regional administrations of the South-West, Jubaland, Galmuduug, Hirshabelle, and Banadir became member states; critics argued that ‘this governance system federalizes clans instead of citizens’ (Dahir and Sheikh Ali 2021).
For many, clans are a guarantor of some level of security and services. However, clans’ involvement in aid processes, especially the targeting and distribution of benefits, obscures any citizen–state relationship but creates something of a ‘local’ social contract. If power in Somalia derives from a military basis combined with business wealth, interwoven with clan identity, reinforced by access to political resources, where indeed is the ‘citizen’ and their rights or access to services? The notion of the state is similarly undermined. Clan limitations in providing governance, however, are demonstrated by the low-level conflict between clans and subclans over resources, from community level upwards, which still characterises much of Somalia.
Critically, clans exclude and not all Somalis belong to clans. The flipside of elite dominance is that minority and marginalised groups have become poorer and more vulnerable. Somalis unable to call on clan resources face political and economic exclusion regionally and nationally, while federalism has, for them, undermined any aspirations to be part of a unified nation. This exclusion can be fatal, as illustrated by the high death toll during the 2011 famine which came mostly from Bantu18 groups.
A second bargain disrupting a potential agreement between ‘state and society’ concerns Al-Shabaab. Although the situation fluctuates, Al-Shabaab controls areas of rural southwest and central Somalia, maintaining a countrywide network of sympathisers, often linked by clan and kinship. Embracing a blend of quasi-Sharia and Somali customary kinship norms, Al-Shabaab rejects engagement with non-Islamic political processes, contributing to continuous low-level violence and insecurity through attacks on government and ATMIS. Al‑Shabaab’s presence means that security actors remain engaged, maintaining a flow of rents through aid and securitisation activities (Center for Preventive Action 2024). Al-Shabaab obliges other actors to cooperate with each other and is also reputed to engage in clandestine opportunistic political agreements with different political actors or groupings (Menkhaus 2018; Jaspars, Adan and Majid 2019; de Waal 2020).
Nonetheless, Al-Shabaab’s role is more nuanced than most narratives suggest. Mubarak and Jackson (2023) refer to Al‑Shabaab’s relationship with populations in areas under its control as an ‘informal social contract’, explaining that Al‑Shabaab ‘uses services and governance to incentivise civilians to comply with its rule and buy into its ideological project, but also to enforce its will and consolidate control’. This ‘social contract’ plays out in various ways; coercion underwrites it, but services such as health care and justice support Al-Shabaab’s narrative of providing for the population (ibid.). Although claiming to be ‘above’ the clan system, Al-Shabaab increasingly engages with clan leaders to control and expand its territory (ibid.). Al‑Shabaab also competes in delivering justice, with claimants coming from outside Al-Shabaab areas to avoid corrupt and backlogged government courts and to seek dispute resolution in Al-Shabaab courts (ibid.). Al-Shabaab also collects taxes more successfully than the federal government or any member state (Hiraal Institute 2020). Though onerous, Al-Shabaab taxes are viewed as predictable, justified in terms of Al-Shabaab’s interpretation of Sharia principles and are also redistributed to the needy. Overall, Al-Shabaab scores well in contrast to the corruption-heavy government (Mubarak and Jackson 2023).
Elite bargains partly depend on rents from aid, which leads commentators such as Cloutier et al. (2022) or de Waal (2015, 2020) to argue that international aid disrupts efforts to find a route to more consolidated governance as its rents fuel competition and conflict, increasing social and political divisions. Dependence on rents means too that the ‘state’ focuses on donors to maintain its power rather than on being accountable to citizens.
Aid actors may create policies and protocols for their programmes, yet the bargains described – elite influence, clan, custom, and gatekeeping – determine distribution and, more importantly, for social contract purposes, are understood as the source of assistance. The egregious extent of rent-seeking is largely possible because insecurity limits access for external actors, removing oversight and verification in all key processes and making building relationships with local actors difficult (Majid and Abdirahman 2023). Insecurity also limits Somali actors who might wish to act differently. Ordinary people cannot therefore look to the state but are forced to negotiate with the most proximate authority, thus eradicating any notion of a bargain between citizens and state. Existing power dynamics lead to greater inequality with increasing displacement and exploitation of the poorest.19 Thus, we should treat with scepticism the claim that social assistance programmes, designed and funded by international actors and delivered through local political (power) economy can renew the social contract.
Nonetheless, practitioners in fragile and conflict-affected states are often urged to:
Find the right balance between short-term imperatives, such as the restoration of services and state authority, and long‑term state-building objectives in a context of limited revenue generation and with unstable political settlements.
(Raballand et al. 2021: 1)
Cash-based social assistance seems to offer just the right opportunities for balancing short- and long-term objectives: systems exist, it meets basic needs, and it is relatively easily delivered in Somalia. Even authors (Cloutier et al. 2022; Alik‑Lagrange et al. 2021) highly critical of exaggerated claims concerning the impact of social assistance on the social contract note that programme design may positively influence feedback loops. This section considers a few design choices that might facilitate the transition, while noting that improvement will need to come over a multiplicity of areas, not just one.
Trust increases when citizens understand not only what is being delivered but also the reason someone qualifies for support. Transparent targeting of social assistance, well messaged, implemented, and understood, might help tweak perceptions of the state. Such clarity also enables functioning feedback and grievance mechanisms, building further accountability and trust. Any targeting that is not well understood by recipients should be challenged.
As noted above, ever strengthening clan/elite structures perpetuate exclusion, as is evidenced by current risk mitigation practices which focus on improving inclusion. One approach is to hire more staff from diverse backgrounds to dilute major clan influence and increase the ability of excluded groups to navigate the local political economy. Other opportunities to engage with marginalised groups might be through social media and other platforms where minorities increasingly meet.20 More visible representation of excluded groups at all levels of government and delivery could send a strong, symbolic message that the state is not just for the major clans.
How well a programme is implemented often determines its success. This suggests that it is necessary to invest further in functioning bureaucracy, including at regional member-state level, and within government ministries other than MOLSA. Having capacity to deliver is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite to begin a gradual shift away from solely elite and clan-based allocation of resources.
Other programming – standalone or complementary – could also improve state–society relations. An example is the registration and issuance of national identity documents in 2023. ID documents are multifunctional: critical for financial inclusion; a basis for accessing future social protection benefits and essential services; and needed for eventual participation in direct elections (World Bank 2016). This is an example of a pivotal and, ideally universal, government service which augments the ability to access other services but also makes visible citizen–state relations. However, ID documents are not a silver bullet but just one small, important step forward.
By ignoring the political economy, international aid actors risk undermining their own efforts. Jaspars et al. argue that:
Donors need to provide incentives for aid organisations and the government to be open about [the reality]. Rather than rewarding… the rhetoric of resilience… they should be rewarded for analysing and reporting the actual problems… how power is maintained, the ongoing diversion of aid, and the wider political and economic effects of their interventions.
(2019: 55)
Domestic political constraints make this challenging for donors. There are, however, easier actions; for example, being less competitive. Contradictory, competing designs (SAGAL and Baxnaano) undermine longer-term change, and policy and capacity-building progress. For instance, the SAGAL and Baxnaano project teams barely interact due to divergent funding streams, targeting, and programme design (Birch 2023).
Donors also need consistent commitment to the various government technical working groups and institutions of which they are a part (ibid.). A loss of momentum and a lack of coordination and communication characterise inter-donor relations (ibid.). Finally, aid agencies and donors might consider whether their desire for short-term programmatic visibility might be rupturing the very social contract they hope to renew.
This article challenges assertions that externally funded and designed social assistance programming in Somalia might help renew the social contract between the government and citizens. The discussion has focused on whether the current ‘state’ has the capacity for a social contract (not yet); has any interest in a social contract (not much); or actually exists at all (to some extent but not nearly enough).
We found that the disruptive influence of the ‘three bargains’ leaves scant room for a relationship between ordinary Somalis and ‘their’ government(s). As a result, for many outside Mogadishu, the federal government is irrelevant or predatory, and other local forms of authority are more important, with existing elite bargains likely to reinforce existing societal fractures.
Thus, it seems that social assistance – valuable in its own right – has only the potential to play a minor role in creating a stronger relationship between state and society in Somalia. However, given the progress to date on social safety net/social assistance programming, and because needs remain worryingly and persistently high, and because social assistance can be clearly branded, it has the potential to make a small contribution, all things being equal. This contribution, however, cannot happen without acknowledgement of the disruptive effect of the political economy forces at work. Consequently, thoughtful design, greater inclusion, and a high level of long-term donor commitment are all needed to continue delivering large-scale social assistance and to chart a route to more meaningful government ownership. What will not do is to continue to deliver programmes through structures rooted in rent-seeking, whilst simultaneously claiming that these programmes renew the social contract.
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Copyright © 2024 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2024.124
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited, any modifications or adaptations are indicated, and the work is not used for commercial purposes.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 55 No. 2 October 2024 ‘Reimagining Social Protection’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.