Review by Kieren Pender, Times Literary Supplement: "When There Was No Aid is the result of extensive fieldwork. Phillips interviewed hundreds of people across a range of fields to understand how Somaliland secured stability while its southern neighbour remained mired in violence. She has drawn on this impressive research alongside other scholarly literature to produce a compelling account of Somaliland’s path to peace. While it is evidently written with an academic audience in mind – the book is grounded in theory and has an exhaustive reference list – When There Was No Aid is lively and accessible...
Phillips’s most original contribution comes through her observation that stability has been maintained largely through words rather than actions... The country’s experience may have been idiosyncratic, but 'this does not mean the underlying drivers of its trajectory do not have broader relevance'. In her eyes, Somaliland indicates that development institutions have been asking the 'wrong question' when it comes to external intervention. 'Aid matters less than we think it does because it does not alter the asymmetries that make it difficult for countries in the Global South to extract themselves from violence and poverty.'"
Review: "Phillips’s nuanced and provocative study is the most compelling account yet of Somaliland’s recent history. Her explanation for the country’s success weaves together domestic and international dynamics. At the domestic level, she shows that a fear of violence and instability encouraged cohesion and a sense of shared civic purpose among social elites. Phillips also argues that the lack of international attention provided space for elites to work out their differences without the often disastrous distraction of courting donors."
Judging panel comments: Sarah Phillips’s book is a remarkable study that is an example of some of the very finest research and scholarship to emerge from political science and international relations in recent years. Theoretically sophisticated, beautifully written and drawing on in-depth and sustained fieldwork conducted over many years, Phillips draws on an impressive array of literature to challenge longstanding presumptions about violence and poverty in the global South. Crafted around a central case study of war and peace in Somaliland, Phillips draws important comparative insights that convincingly debunk longstanding notions that intervention by actors in the global North is self-evidently useful in ending violence and poverty, and that the quality of a country’s governance institutions necessarily determines the level of peace and civil order that the country experiences. Her argument shows how Somaliland’s post-conflict peace is grounded less in the constraining power of its institutions than in a powerful discourse about the country’s structural, temporal, and physical proximity to war to such a degree that even the inability of institutions to provide reliable security can stabilize a prolonged period of peace. Phillip’s argument is marshalled into an extremely readable and accessible text, making this book appealing to both experts and non-experts alike. Already receiving well justified praise and a wide readership, When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland, is destined to become a landmark text in the fields of development, international affairs, peace, conflict and security studies.
The 2016 Stephen Ellis prize was awarded to Justin V. Hastings and Sarah G. Phillips for their article "Maritime piracy business networks and institutions in Africa".
The inaugural awarding committee was Tim Kelsall, Pierre Englebert, Nic Cheeseman, Lindsay Whitfield and Carl Death. After much deliberation, and recognising that there are many articles in the journal worthy of consideration for this award, the committee decided that the article by Hastings and Philips deserved the prize because of the way in which it shows shows how political institutions in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea shape and constrain sophisticated maritime piracy syndicates and their behaviour.
In the Horn of Africa, pirates tend to employ kidnappings for ransom, but they also mimic, and take structural and ideational cues from the licit economy. In West Africa, sophisticated piracy networks engage in shipping and cargo seizures, but also mirror and draw from institutions which regulate and protect oil production, and those engaged in oil production, processing, distribution, and transportation. The article casts light on a murky area of huge importance, and in the words of one of the judges: “It is not only highly original and well researched but it makes a very important theoretical contribution about the constraining effects of formal institutions on informal and illicit activities."
