Diplomatic Visits as Epistemic Positioning: Horn of Africa Leaders and the Politics of Recognition, 1990–2025

ISA Midyear Conference 2026, Pretoria, South Africa, 29 June - 01 July 2026, (Unpublished)

Publication Type: Conference Paper / Unpublished
City: Pretoria
Country: South Africa
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Within whose framework of legitimacy do African states operate at the level of diplomatic practice, and has this changed over time? This paper addresses these questions by examining the foreign policy choices of Horn of Africa states, drawing on a novel dataset that tracks the frequency and destinations of leader visits from Ethiopia and Somalia over 35 years. We argue that visit patterns are not merely strategic transactions but reflect deeper structures of epistemic orientation. In international politics, recognition is not only material but constitutive — to seek legitimacy from a particular actor means operating within that actor's framework of what a legitimate state looks like, what norms it follows, and whose knowledge counts. Visit destinations, especially under conditions of crisis, are therefore significant indicators of where leaders locate authoritative sources of recognition and order. The paper focuses on visits clustering around critical junctures: the 1998–2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war, the 2011 Somalia crisis, the GERD dispute, and the Tigray conflict. Combining quantitative pattern analysis with qualitative process tracing, it traces how epistemic orientations have shifted across three decades. In doing so, it illuminates a tension between rhetorical sovereignty and practiced epistemic dependence made visible through the record of leader visits.