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đŸȘ” The Threshold

The UN's hierarchical structure prevented it from applying a bottom-up Somali approach

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tagsja-picks, define, xref, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@lewis_modern_1980, loc. 898

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The UN’s hierarchical structure prevented it from applying a bottom-up Somali approach

Evidence

The importance of re-empowering traditional community leaders in the country at large was strongly urged on U.N.O.S.O.M. by the Swedish-based ‘Reference Group’ (which the author, at the U.N.’s request, helped to establish at the beginning of the operation). This small international group of social scientists with Somali expertise met from time to time with Muhammad Sahnoun and subsequently other U.N. officials. We tried to emphasize the uncentralized character of the Somali segmentary politcal system. In our view this necessitated a ‘bottom-up’ rather than a top-down, hierarchical approach to understanding the Somali situation. U.N. officials, with their cumbersome, extremely hierarchical system, found this very hard to understand, far less apply. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation
, 898

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Defines the ‘segmentary political system’ in contrast to centralized bureaucracy, and the bottom-up vs top-down methodological distinction Lewis advocates.
  • XREF: This is Lewis’s core theory of Somali social organization applied prescriptively — the segmentary lineage system running throughout the book now offered as a policy key. — connects to: Somalis and international forces held mutually incompatible expectations of the intervention; UN diplomats’ ignorance and indirect diplomacy deepened their isolation from Somalis; UN successors abandoned direct diplomacy, deepening mutual mistrust with Somali factions. (+2 more)
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