Abstract
This chapter examines historical and contemporary factors that have contributed to underdevelopment, poverty, powerlessness and disaster in the Horn. Since the region’s incorporation into the European-dominated capitalist world economy in the second half of the last century, except for successive ruling classes, its peoples have lost control of their lives and resources. Alliances that emerged through incorporation of successive ruling classes and their states with the imperial interstate system undermined autonomous development initiatives and perpetuated powerlessness, poverty, conflict, war and disaster by excluding dominated classes, groups and ethnonations from decision making processes. Successive dictatorial Horn regimes and the imperial interstate system have failed to advance meaningful development measures to eliminate war, poverty and disaster. Expropriation of productive resources by elites and expenditure of substantial resources on social control agencies to enforce politics of order denied necessary resources for developing the local initiatives, participatory development strategies and multicultural democracy that are prerequisites for sustainable social and economic development.
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Notes
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© 1995 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Jalata, A. (1995). Poverty, Powerlessness and the Imperial Interstate System in the Horn of Africa. In: Sorenson, J. (eds) Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24257-3_2
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