Ideologies of Governance in the Horn of Africa

Abstract

The underlying conflicts in the Horn of Africa, within states as well as between them, are driven not least by differences in the ways in which their governments and peoples think about themselves. Different conceptions of the ‘nation’ derive from different cultural origins and formative histories, and define nations in different and competing ways, while the inadequacies of all of the region’s nationalisms have driven a search for alternative ideologies of governance, most prominent among which has been Marxism-Leninism. Religion, by contrast, has played a surprisingly small role at least in official ideologies of governance in the region.