This chapter is comprised of two parts and establishes the theoretical perspective from which the two cases of Somalia/Somaliland and Afghanistan will be examined. The first part discusses a series of premises derived from the theories used in order to establish the theoretical foundations for this chapter. The second part is the development of the framework of analysis that will be applied in relation to interaction and intervention in a social context. The underlying notion is that contemporary strands of strategy and literature tend to take one of four directions:

1 overly ideological and based on wishful thinking of the normative as objective facts;

2 unconstructively critical, seeking only to tear down but presenting no constructive alternative;

3 generalizing, oversimplifying and technical, reducing complex social interaction to easily graspable models that fit nicely with strategy thinking but lack in reality; or

4 simply too unfocused, rejecting analytical separations and prioritizing of factors, thus becoming impractical and inapplicable.