Citizen participation in Somalia’s hybrid governance system: the case of democratization in Puntland State

In the aftermath of Somalia's state collapse in the late 1990s, people in the northeastern regions came together in a tribal conference and formed “PUNTLAND STATE,” a semi-autonomous polity in northeastern Somalia. They opted for a bottom-up state-building approach, instrumentalizing the existing tribal and communal informal institutions and integrating them with formal institutions. This combination of formal and informal successfully worked for them and created relative stability, development, and, most importantly, legitimacy for the state. However, unintentionally, the hybridity empowered tribal institutions as it granted tribal leaders very huge political powers of selecting and endorsing candidates at local and state levels. And that halted the “citizen participation”, which was the aim of the establishment of the Puntland State. Thus, to boost citizen participation, Puntland has decided to abolish its tribal/clan-based hybrid electoral system. And transform it into a fully democratic state. This study explores the processes of democratization in the Puntland State of Somalia, and how various pro-democratic social groups collaborated during the transition period.