Abstract

In 2016, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) announced plans to re-launch the Somali shilling (SoSh), which had its last official printing before the state collapsed in 1991. The article takes this pivotal moment to address the following three questions: (i) Why has the stateless SoSh persisted? (ii) Why is Somalia considering re-introducing an official currency at this point? (iii) What do Somalia’s monetary experiences tell us about relationships among ordinary citizens, elites, and the state in Africa? The article offers an explanation based on a theory of social trust to account for the persistence of the SoSh. Unlike other studies that mainly emphasize a risk aversion attribute to explain the reliance on the trusted and familiar under conditions of precarity, this approach shows how trust can be scaled to explain important macro-level phenomena, such as export trade and nationalism. It proposes that the Somalia story is relevant to other African cases where public trust, state sovereignty, and monetary systems are weak and contested. Finally, the paper concludes that a lack of trust in the FGS and its ability to ensure the value of a new SoSh means that many Somalis are better off with their fragmented currency system rather than a monetary experiment likely to further destabilize an already volatile environment.

中文翻译：

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相信索马里的无国籍金钱：索马里先令的持续存在

摘要

2016年，索马里联邦政府（FGS）宣布了重新启动索马里先令（SoSh）的计划，该先令在1991年瓦解国家之前就已正式印制。这篇文章利用这一关键时刻来解决以下三个问题： （i）为什么无状态SoSh持续存在？（ii）为什么索马里此时考虑重新引入官方货币？iii索马里的货币经验告诉我们关于普通公民，精英和非洲国家之间的关系？本文提供了一种基于社会信任理论的解释，以解释SoSh的持久性。与其他主要强调风险规避属性以解释在不稳定状态下对信任和熟悉的依赖的其他研究不同，这种方法说明了如何扩展信任度以解释重要的宏观现象，例如出口贸易和民族主义。它提出，索马里的故事与其他非洲公众信任，国家主权和货币体系薄弱且存在争议的案件有关。最后，论文得出结论，对FGS缺乏信任，无法确保新的SoSh的价值，这意味着许多索马里人的货币体系零散，而不是可能会进一步破坏已经动荡的环境的货币实验，从而使他们更加富裕。