Interconnected moments and actions that formed the current image of Somaliland’s social contract

A social contract is the process by which everyone in a political community, either explicitly or tacitly, consents to state authority, thereby limiting some of her or his freedoms, in exchange for the state’s protection of their human rights and security and for the adequate provision of public goods and services. From the wider literature, social contract authors ask whether people would cede authority (i.e., the obligation to obey) to a governing body in exchange for social order. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant did not see such an agreement as a historical act; rather, they saw it as a philosophical device.