ABSTRACT

Ethiopia has a long history of economic relations in its borderlands. Since the early 1990s, the Ethiopian state began to earnestly entrench its authority in the Ethiopia-Somaliland borderlands. This study examined the governmentalization of the Ethio-Somaliland borderlands in the post-1991 period. Drawing on official data and key informant interviews, the study identifies several techniques of governance that the Ethiopian state instituted to govern and control economic activities in these borderlands. The analysis reveals that the manner in which economic relations are governed is directly shaped by the exceptional nature and logic of borderlands in general and the Ethiopia-Somaliland borderlands in particular. The Ethiopian state has sometimes used ‘informal’ mechanisms and this particular way of governing economic activities in the border region is analyzed in this paper, which highlights five prominent techniques, but also looks at how people in the region circumvent some of these government techniques. There is a mutation of governance in which the distinction between what is formal and informal is often blurred.

摘要

埃塞俄比亚在其边境地区有着悠久的经济关系历史。自1990年代初以来，埃塞俄比亚国家开始认真地巩固其在埃塞俄比亚与索马里兰边界地区的权威。这项研究审查了1991年后时期埃塞俄比亚-索马里兰边界地区的政府化情况。这项研究利用官方数据和主要的信息提供者访谈，确定了埃塞俄比亚国家为治理和控制这些边境地区的经济活动而建立的几种治理技术。分析表明，治理经济关系的方式直接受到一般边境地区特别是埃塞俄比亚-索马里兰边境地区的特殊性质和逻辑的影响。埃塞俄比亚国家有时使用了“非正式”机制，本文分析了这种管理边境地区经济活动的特殊方式，重点介绍了五种突出的技术，但同时也探讨了该地区的人们如何规避其中一些政府技术。在治理的一种变体中，正式与非正式之间的区别常常模糊不清。