While the cases presented in this book are Arab Gulf states, the underlying mechanisms of the model extend beyond these countries. Two examples in particular – Somaliland and Iran – provide empirical grounding to the model. They also illustrate the analytical leverage of the model in a realworld context, and one which extends beyond the Arab Gulf states.

Somaliland: Governing Salience after State Building

Somalia is a state outside the Gulf region, but one which meets the scope conditions of the analysis. In particular, the protectorate of British Somaliland fell under British colonial authority and eventually used infrastructure construction and the extension of bureaucracy as part of the state-building process. Furthermore, the protectorate was characterised by the imposition of impersonal governance, resulting from colonial establishment of a centralised government. Finally, kinship groups in British Somaliland were, albeit at the lower levels of organisation, based on common descent from real ancestors. These ties remained salient after the state-building process. The ‘state-building’ period in Somaliland, for the purposes of this shadow case, refers to the period between British colonialism in the 1930s through the disbandment of Siad Barre's Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party in 1976.

In Somaliland, access to water resources before state building was competitive. During state building, both the British and Somaliland governments attempted to impose bureaucratic initiatives, but kinship authority instrumentalised this bureaucracy. As a result, kinship authority after state building had governing salience.

Somaliland before State Building

Somaliland was ruled in the nineteenth century by a series of Sultans but eventually fell under the colonial control of Britain and Italy. British Somaliland was established in 1888 in the northern part of the territory. Throughout the 1880s, Italy signed a series of treaties with the Sultans in central and southern Somaliland, creating the protectorate of Italian Somaliland. In the Second World War, Britain occupied Italian Somaliland and, following the war, it fell under British military administration. In 1949, the United Nations granted Italy a trusteeship of Italian Somaliland under which Italy would prepare Somaliland for independence by 1960. On 1 July 1960, this trusteeship merged with British Somaliland to form an independent Somalia.