Violent conflict and the struggle for security in a new global politics: explaining contemporary processes of Somali security assemblage

This project aims to provide new theoretical contributions on how the control of security forces evolves in places affected by violent conflict under current global political conditions. It argues that the mainstream literature on peace and conflict studies remains fixated on normative notions of "state failure" and "state fragility" to explain the evolution of security in conflict. Instead, this project argues that new forms of security assemblage have emerged in such contexts that cannot be explained using an analytical framework rooted in the state. These processes of security assemblage are much more spatially-diffused and decentered processes by which different actors negotiate and contest who controls the means of security and for what purpose.

By applying this assemblage framework to a single case study of Somali security, this thesis makes its core argument in two parts. First it conducts a within-case comparison of three periods in recent Somali history to demonstrate how processes of security assemblage have evolved since the early 1990s, highlighting a shift to new processes of assemblage, such as volatile alignment, and decentred mediation. It does this by conducting a process tracing of each period through in-depth interviews with actors involved in these processes. Second, it provides a partial explanation for this change in security assemblage by demonstrating how the evolution of these process has been enabled by a confluence with a wider global political transition away from a liberal international order.

Through this empirical research this project seeks to make several original contributions to peace and conflict studies. First it seeks to provide new explanations for the evolution of security dynamics in contemporary violent conflict, outside of the statebuilding paradigm, which can be applied and refined in other cases. Second, it seeks to highlight and identify the impact of changing global politics on security in areas affected by violence.