Somalia’s Weimar moment

The great German historian Golo Mann once described the Weimar Republic as a “sprawling and unwieldy empire without an emperor.” Born from the ashes of world war one and the collapse of the German monarchy, Weimar was an ambitious experiment in democracy—a republic crafted to replace autocracy with the rule of law and civic participation. Yet, despite its noble aspirations, it buckled under the weight of structural weaknesses, elite betrayal, and street-level violence. What followed was not reform or the recovery of the German state, but the rise of Hitler and one of the darkest chapters in human history.

Today, Somalia stands at a strikingly similar crossroads.

Like Weimar, Somalia today is an “empire without an emperor”—a hollowed state where legitimacy is perpetually contested and power often lies outside the formal structures of government.

More than three decades after the collapse of its central government in 1991, Somalia remains trapped in a liminal state—neither fully failed nor fully functional. A federal constitution was drafted in 2012, with four pillars, according to Afyare Elmi: “democratic governance through periodic elections, the clan-based 4.5 power-sharing formula, a parliamentary system, and regional autonomy.” 

Yet, in practice, it has birthed a fragmented state where the central government struggles to exert authority, and federal states act more like independent entities than constituents of a united republic. Like Weimar, Somalia today is an “empire without an emperor”—a hollowed state where legitimacy is perpetually contested and power often lies outside the formal structures of government.

The parallels are both sobering and instructive.

In Weimar Germany, disbanded soldiers and embittered youth formed the Freikorps—paramilitary groups that became breeding grounds for right-wing extremism. In Somalia, we have our own generation of young men raised amid war, unemployment, and disillusionment. Lacking opportunity and trust in formal authority, many have gravitated towards militias, clan factions, and violent extremism. This militarisation of everyday life—of politics, identity, and grievance—undermines the state’s monopoly on force and weakens its very foundation.

Weimar’s democracy was also tormented by perpetual cabinet crises. Governments formed and collapsed in quick succession, and technocrats were often thrust into power with little political backing. In Somalia, the story is eerily familiar. Prime ministers are dismissed with disturbing regularity. Cabinet reshuffles serve elite interests rather than a national agenda. Elections—when they are held—are marred by accusations of fraud, foreign interference, and clan manipulation. Just as Weimar failed to resolve its internal contradictions, Somalia’s federal experiment remains incomplete and contested, with no shared vision of the state. There are “various competing localised visions of Somali statehood”, and the aggregate doesn’t add up to a cohesive nation.

But perhaps the most alarming parallel lies in the normalisation of chaos.

History teaches us that weak democracies do not automatically mature into strong ones. They can falter.

In Weimar’s waning days, law and order had become performative. Street battles between Communists and Nazis were commonplace. Political violence was an accepted feature of public life. In Somalia today, assassinations, clan-based skirmishes, and terrorist attacks have become routine. We no longer react with horror to news of a bombing or the killing of a public official—we expect it. When clans clash people rally to the flag. The state, in both its German and Somali incarnations, becomes a spectator rather than an enforcer of stability.

History teaches us that weak democracies do not automatically mature into strong ones. They can falter. They can collapse. And when they do, the vacuum is not benign—it invites extremism, authoritarianism, or foreign domination.

The purpose of invoking Weimar is not to suggest that Mogadishu will fall to a Somali Hitler. Al-Shabaab not the Nazis. Rather, it is to underline how political dysfunction—when left unaddressed—can invite forces far more destructive than the problems they aim to solve.

The fall of the Weimar Republic was not an inevitability. There were also external factors including the reparations which doomed the project from the start. But there was also a huge failure of domestic leadership, vision, and institutional courage. If anything, it was a warning to future generations: that democracy without protection is merely an invitation for tyranny.

So where does that leave Somalia?

It would be a mistake to treat Somalia as doomed to repeat Germany’s tragic 20th-century descent. History never repeats itself in the same way, but it often rhymes. The purpose of invoking Weimar is not to suggest that Mogadishu will fall to a Somali Hitler. Al-Shabaab not the Nazis. Rather, it is to underline how political dysfunction—when left unaddressed—can invite forces far more destructive than the problems they aim to solve.

Weimar was undone by more than just bad policy—it was undone by a loss of faith in democracy itself. That same risk looms over Somalia. Public trust is extremely low in the country’s official representatives who it should be added the Somali public haven’t chosen in close to half a century. For too long, governance has been reduced to elite bargains negotiated in foreign capitals, far from the concerns of ordinary citizens. Clan identity has been weaponised. Corruption is pervasive. The federal constitution, instead of binding the nation, has become a battlefield of interpretations.

Somalia is not without its Stresemanns. Across the country and its diaspora, there are public servants, civil society leaders, reform-minded politicians, and resilient citizens committed to the idea of a functioning Somali state.

Yet even within Weimar’s tragic arc, there were moments of hope. The mid-1920s, under the leadership of Gustav Stresemann, saw real progress—economic recovery, international reintegration, and a spirit of compromise. The lesson here is crucial: even fragile democracies can pivot. Even flawed systems can be repaired—if the right leadership emerges at the right time. History is not fate.

Somalia is not without its Stresemanns. Across the country and its diaspora, there are public servants, civil society leaders, reform-minded politicians, and resilient citizens committed to the idea of a functioning Somali state. The Somali people have shown remarkable endurance in the face of unrelenting hardship. But endurance is not a strategy, it is about your ability to cope. It is a virtue which is better untested if we can avoid it. The future must be intentionally shaped.

The stakes could not be higher. The more abject the disorder, the more seductive the extreme solutions become. But if there is anything more dangerous than fear, it is fatalism. Weimar reminds us that democratic collapse is not always swift. It often unfolds in slow motion—eroding norms, hollowing institutions, numbing the public. Somalia is not yet beyond saving. It still has time to rewrite the ending.

Let us not be spectators to our own undoing. Let us seize this moment—not from a place of nostalgia for what could have been, but from a place of urgency for what must be. The path forward is difficult, yes—but not impossible. Somali intellectuals are now questioning whether the third republic can “be saved?” as the country looks into the abyss. But Somalia’s Weimar moment can still become a turning point.

If Weimar was a warning, Somalia can be the counterexample. The choice, in the end, remains ours to make.