Collective action for subnational public goods provision amid limited state capacity in Somalia

This study investigates the role of collective action in generating public goods in environments where formal state capacity is limited. While the existing literature extensively analyzes the descriptive features of hybrid governance in Somalia, it frequently overlooks how localized community-led initiatives systematically interact with formal macro-fiscal frameworks and international aid architectures over extended multi-year lifecycles. This study addresses this empirical gap by employing a qualitative document analysis (QDA) methodology to systematically evaluate 15 unique institutional source documents across eight distinct institutional source families published or implemented between 2008 and 2025. The findings reveal that collective action enables communities, local authorities, business actors, and transnational diaspora networks to successfully mobilize resources, finance public works, and support infrastructure delivery through matching grants, co-financing, and participatory planning. However, the study identified severe long-term sustainability deficits, including lifecycle maintenance constraints, land tenure insecurity, elite capture, and structural governance fragmentation. The study’s original contribution is the identification of the “state-cooptation paradox,” which demonstrates that although subnational collective action effectively addresses immediate public finance gaps, it simultaneously perpetuates long-term institutional mandates and significant spatial inequities, which are exacerbated by transnational capital flows. These development outcomes are notably shaped by hybrid governance and cross-border financial flows, which allocate resources based on ancestral clan geography and inadvertently exacerbate regional spatial inequalities. The study concludes that while collective action effectively generates essential public utilities beyond state boundaries, its long-term sustainability relies entirely on supportive formal institutional frameworks, legal protections, and coordinated governance systems.