Negotiating sovereignty in the Horn of Africa: how states balance national interests and regional integration

This study examines expert interpretations of how states in the Horn of Africa negotiate sovereignty while participating in regional integration frameworks. The apparent contest between sovereignty and integration arises because shared security, economic, migration, infrastructure, and diplomatic problems require cooperation, while governments remain reluctant to delegate authority over territory, recognition, maritime access, military presence, and domestic legitimacy. Guided by Intergovernmentalism, the study uses a qualitative multiple-case design based on 24 key informant interviews and documentary analysis focused on Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya, with Eritrea, Sudan, and South Sudan used as contextual cases. The findings indicate that sovereignty and integration are neither uniformly opposing nor automatically complementary. They are complementary where cooperation advances shared interests without transferring final authority, parallel where coordination remains consultative, and conflictual where commitments touch core state powers. Governments form preferences through domestic security, economic, territorial, and legitimacy concerns; bargain under unequal regional conditions; and support, delay, reinterpret, or resist commitments accordingly. IGAD and the African Union therefore function more effectively as platforms for bargaining, dialogue, and mediation than as supranational enforcement authorities. The article develops guarded regionalism as a state-led form of differentiated cooperation in which participation is conditional, issue-specific, and bounded by sovereignty safeguards.