The Horn of Africa by Kidane Mengisteab (review)

Kidane Mengisteab’s 2013 book expands on several of the core themes that emerged within the 2012 essay collection Regional Integration, Identity & Citizenship in the Great Horn of Africa, a volume that he co-edited with Redie Bereketeab. As with his previous scholarship, Mengisteab’s current attempts to develop a cohesive framework that helps explain the nature of conflict and persistent instability across the Horn remains the primary objective. Now, writing in the context of a more narrowly focused study, Mengisteab is able to develop a deeper articulation of these concepts. Arguing that essentially “the factors for most of the region’s conflicts are rooted in the failure of structures and institutions of domestic and regional governance” (p. 3), Mengisteab lays out his thesis in eight concise, readable chapters, each of which serves to further the argument that ultimately a new framework of “regional integration” holds very real promise to help address many of the region’s structural and institutional crises.

One of the more subtle yet important aspects of Mengisteab’s approach is his inclusion of Uganda, Kenya, and South Sudan as part of his analysis of the Greater Horn of Africa. Although most scholars have not traditionally incorporated these countries into the general social, political, and economic trends of the region and its history, Mengisteab’s decision to do so works remarkably well by helping elaborate on the shared legacy of the region’s various challenges, including interstate wars, intrastate conflicts, civil wars, intercommunal conflicts, and other developments. This is especially important in how it allows the author to better articulate the possible benefits and strengths of regional integration as a viable concept. Indeed, in laying out the numerous shared experiences of states across the Greater Horn of Africa, the development of greater economic and institutional coordination between them, according to Mengisteab, has real potential to help mitigate longstanding patterns of political instability, resource-based conflicts, and especially the growing trend of government-based atrocities aimed at civilian populations within such situations (p. 201).

Such an integrated approach, Mengisteab argues, will allow for “reconciling the dichotomous economic and institutional spaces” that will then help create new institutions of diversity management and thereby transform the state by fostering “substantive democratization” (p. 194). That said, the author acknowledges that such a substantive, reform-minded framework has yet to be entertained by both existing governments as well as by the major opposition parties across the region. He also notes the substantial challenges of achieving such reforms at all levels of society and among the various state and civil society actors involved. Yet what gives Mengisteab’s argument added weight is his attempt to contextualize regional history in explaining how such instability and conflicts in the modern era progressed in the first place.

Chapter three, entitled “The Legacy of Empires,” represents a key component of Mengisteab’s attempt to frame the connection between the political legacy of various regional empires, societies, as well as “traditional institutions of governance” (p. 48) with how such structures have continued to impact ongoing conflicts and crises across the region. Providing such a concise but essential section helps explain how processes such as the Scramble for Africa and the expansion of several empires influenced later regional challenges, especially the development of conflicts regarding interstate boundaries and the imposed divisions of particular ethnic groups across multiple national borders. Such historical processes, while seemingly self-evident to historians of the region, have generally not been widely framed for the general public in terms of helping address ongoing political, social, and economic conflicts across the region. Consequently, Mengisteab’s discussion and emphasis on historical context allows his argument to proceed with a direct line to the later core section (chapters four through seven), which addresses how the legacies of regional and international history have continued to impact many of the inherent deficiencies of the “state” as applied to the region as...