Political Systems and Governance in Ethiopian

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Different societies throughout the world attained their present political economic and social
forms under the framework of the modern state after going through different historical
experiences. Apart from sharing comparably broad trajectories not all of these societies
experience similar historical patterns and process. However, at conceptual level, there are some
common features shared among the otherwise unique historical experiences throughout the
world.

State formation is not a once-and-for-all process nor did a state develop in just one place and
then spread elsewhere. In addition, state formation can hardly be considered as over. It has been
invented many times, had its ups and downs, and seen recurrent cycles of centralization and
decentralization, territorialization and deterritorialization. This is mainly because the process of
state formation, as it has been happening throughout the world, is characterized often by
contradictory process of conflicts, negotiations and compromises between different groups in a
way of achieving an integrated existence as a national unit on the basis of certain political project
around a power center which is an instrument of hegemony and constituted by one or several
dominant classes occupying the heart of the process and drive it as a whole.

The end goal of the process is to build a centralized state organization accompanied by effective
control of territories and communities by eliminating or subordinating number of semi-
autonomous authorities to a centralizing political project which is championed by the hegemonic
center.

The end goal of achieving integrated existence by the process of state formation or the challenge
or inability to do so is dependent on the two interrelated elements: nation-building and state-
building.

The notion of state building is related to the question of how to organize political power around a
power center either by restructuring old institutions or introducing new political institutions and
legal frameworks. It focuses primarily on public institutions-the machinery

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of the state, from courts and legislatures to laws and bureaucrats. Historically, state-building
proceed from an initial deployment of force and coercion to achieve centralization. Once a
structure for centralization is put in place state-building would require an institutional buildup to
enhance state capacity. Incapacity to maintain effective centralization of power over society and
stalled institutional capacity would constitute state fragility and/or state failure. The success or
failure of a state-building process, which combines force and institutions, is measured by the
degree of the effectiveness of political power in state-society relation. This is, however, one
component of the problematic of political power.

The other component of the problematic of political power revolves around the question of what
to do with that power. The achievements of political power in this sense are measured against
better performance in terms of economic development, national unity, democracy, poverty
reduction and security promotion etc. Success or failure in this regard is dependent on multiple
sets of factors. One such factor is the process of nation-building.

The concept of nation-building looks into the political processes that aim at bringing social
solidarity and loyalty around the state institutions, territory and common interests. The success or
failure of nation-building is measured in terms of the degree of legitimacy the government has in
the eye of the society. It implies the strengthening of a national population’s collective identity,
including its sense of national distinctiveness and unity. As such it involves a great number of
processes – social, institutional, intellectual, ideological, and political. As a result the issues at
stake are somewhat greater and more complex than state-building.

However, the concept of national-building is far more contested than state-building. From a
conceptual and normative point of view nation-building is considered to be important to the
extent that it facilitate broad based inclusion and social cohesion. A political power uncontested
by crippling social, mainly identity based, cleavages would theoretically free the state to pursue
the goals of societal transformation and betterment. Yet, for students of political science the
practise of nation-building process are far less consistent with the ideal mentioned above.

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Nation-building as deliberate efforts to construct an over-reaching collective identity based on a
assumed common national sentiment, culture and heritage would not necessarily create an
unencumbered foundation for political power.

In reality especially in the context of a diversified society state power tend to be dominated by a
hegemonic group or groups. This group has particularized social ethnic religious and class
compositions. In this context nation-building projects could still be pursued to keep the
advantages of the hegemonic group in power. In this context the question of what to do with
political power would be less about societal transformation and betterment.

Modern Ethiopian State Formation and the Politics of “History”

The process of modern Ethiopian state formation begins since the second half of in the 19th
century. Yet it is important to briefly look at the patterns of history and interaction before the
19th century. The pattern of history and interaction in and among the different components of the
peoples and societies that constitute the present day Ethiopia before the unfolding of the modern
state in Ethiopia could give us a sense of the general historical background that led to the 19th
century modern state formation.

Modern political historians assert that Ethiopia attained its contemporary form in a strict
territorial sense out of the background of two roughly broad and distinguishable ‘socio-political’
categories. It is usually an accepted fact that the process of state formation that drove the two
categories into more or less unified political unit begun in 19th century. However, interperating
what had been accomplished since the 19th century in light of the pre 19th century background is
in fact a matter of huge political controversy. In fact the issue of state formation is one of the
major issues of the political fault line among the country’s elites since the 1960s on.
Academicians and politicians alike have never settled the question of “the politics of history” in
Ethiopia. The history of state formation in Ethiopia is a source of profound, even bitter
contention.

There are disagreements among historians and others as to what should be the appropriate
framework of analyzing the modern Ethiopian state in connection to the extent of the pre 19th
century interaction between these categories. The Aksumite Paradigm (aka Pan-

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Ethiopian Nationalist) and the Colonial Thesis (aka radical ethno nationalist) represent the two
extremes. Greater Ethiopia School of Thought and its variant: Nation building perspectives
represent the middle ground.

The Aksumite Paradigm (Pan-Ethiopian nationalists)

Pan-Ethiopian nationalists contend that the Ethiopian state maintained a continuous political
existence for 3,000 years. According to this perspective the Ethiopian state has existed for
millennia, building a distinct national identity.

Ethiopian nationalism is a historically verifiable reality, not a myth. It has successfully countered
ethnic and regional challenges. The state had its core in the northern part of the country radiating
southwards to sufficiently assimilate different cultures which made the creation of the Ethiopian
nation possible. For this perspective, Ethiopia is the melting pot par excellence.

Its image is one of Ethiopia as a nation-state. According to one proponent of this view “the
Ethiopian ruling classes cannot be identified with a particular ethnic group. They are a multi-
ethnic group whose only common factors are that they are Christians, Amharic speakers, and
claim lineage to the Solomonic line”. The central theme of Ethiopian history according to this
paradigm has been the maintenance of a culture core which has adapted itself to the exigencies of
time and place, assimilating diverse people.

The Colonial Thesis (Radical ethno nationalist)

At the other extreme, radical ethno nationalists advance a ‘colonial thesis’ claiming that
Abyssinia (central and northern Ethiopia, the historic core of Ethiopian polity) ‘colonized’
roughly half the territories and peoples to form a colonial empire-state in the last quarter of the
19th century.

Radical ethno nationalist maintain that “the modern empire was created only during the last 100
years as a result of the rapid southward military expansion of the Amhara rulers of Showa. From
the radical ethno nationalist vantage point, Ethiopia is a colonial empire that

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needs to undergo decolonization where "ethno national" colonies become independent states.
Its image is one of Ethiopia as a colonial-state.

The ‘colonial thesis contends that modern Ethiopia is an ‘invention’ of the ‘Abyssinian core’ or
specifically ‘the Amhara-Tigre coalition’, and that the ‘northern’ and other ‘southern’ peoples
have always been separate historically, politically, and culturally. It follows that these two
entities must be treated distinctly.

For the radical ethno-nationalists Ethiopia as a colonizer is no more different than Europeans as
colonizers of Africa. Proponents of such a thesis, however, make a distinction that “Ethiopian
colonial rule differs from a Western colonial power in that Ethiopian colonial power was
centered in the country itself and not in some distant metropole. The rulers were also ‘natives’,
and did not have immense technological superiority over the ruled nor enjoyed vastly superior
standard of living.

The Greater Ethiopia School of Thought (GEST)

The above two perspectives differ in so fundamental ways. One such glaring difference is over
the relevance of “history”. For the pan-Ethiopian school the so called ‘south’ and ‘north’
distinction is an exception to the rule. Ethiopia maintained long unified existence as a nation-
state. The colonial school for its part dismiss any kind of relation let alone political between the
so called ‘south’ and ‘north’ categories in pre 19th century hence making the empire state
created after the 19th century as the colonizer of alien people by an alien force.

The Greater Ethiopia Perspective advances the idea that the 19th century process of modern
Ethiopian state formation was preceded by long process of socio-cultural developments that
contradict both a nation-state interpretation and a colonial interpretation of the 19th century state
formation. It claims that all peoples of Greater Ethiopia shared similar cultural elements through
long persisting and complex web of inter-relationships. However, these inter-relationships were
not thoroughly complete to characterize Greater Ethiopia as a full-blown nation-state.

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Similarly, the degree of interaction among the different people of Greater Ethiopia was too
multifaceted and too strong to accept the emergence of modern Ethiopia as a colonial empire-
state.

Accordingly, modern Ethiopian state formation should be seen as a process of bringing together
different peoples of Greater Ethiopia who share deep seated historical relations in the context of
loose political framework under strong political and territorial centralization. Even before the
peoples of greater Ethiopia came under a strong political center strong interactions were made
possible by long distance trade that traversed different areas, war, migration, marriage, the
expansion of Christianity and Islam and the Oromo expansion.

Ethiopia’s essential ‘national unity’ is founded on three interconnected factors. Firstly, the
continuous process of interaction among the different people of Ethiopia. Secondly, the existence
of commonly shared distinct pan-Ethiopian cultures that cut-across the different peoples of
Greater Ethiopia. Finally, the different people of Greater Ethiopia have stood together to resist
and defend any foreign interference.

For the Greater Ethiopia School of thought modern Ethiopia is a continuation of Greater Ethiopia
which existed for a very long time as a cultural zone among the different peoples who share pan-
Ethiopian cultures and traditions above and beyond the differences of particular and localized
cultural expressions connected by a network of loose interaction. In general, it views Ethiopia as
a historically evolving multi-ethnic society. The 19th century modern state formation was the
commencement of a non-colonial empire state-building process awaiting a nation-building
procces.

Its image of Ethiopia is a non-colonial empire-state. For this school of thought the ancient
Ethiopian state, short-term contractions in size notwithstanding, expanded, over a long historical
period, through the conquest and incorporation of adjoining kingdoms, principalities, sultanates,
etc., as indeed most states in the world were formed.

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The Nation-building School of thought

Like Greater Ethiopia school it accepts the image of modern Ethiopia as a non-colonial empire-
state. However, it argues that a discussion on the 19th century modern Ethiopian state formation
should take into consideration a distinction between two broad and distinct socio-political
categories with relatively semi-autonomous existence in the northern part of present day Ethiopia
on the one hand and southern, south western and south eastern Ethiopia on the other. For the
sake of connivance Baharu Zewde, a prominent modern Ethiopian historian, categorized these as
“northern principalities” and “states and peoples of southern Ethiopia” respectively.

The nation-building school does not accept pre-19th century Greater Ethiopia as a cultural zone
that achieved essential ‘unity’ as is often claimed by GEST. Nevertheless it maintained that there
were linkages between the so called ‘north’ and ‘south’ sustained by the existence of long-
distance trade that created a unity of interest between ancient ‘Northern’ state of two or three
millennia and the different peoples and societies that later in the second half of the 19th century
constitute the modern state of Ethiopia.

The nation-building school of thought tries to balance the historical interactions that broadly
unite the ‘north’ and ‘south’ with the distinct patterns of their history that characterised their
political and cultural heterogeneity. The proponents of the nation-building school categories
those who directly engage in the imperial politics of zemene mesafint as “northern
principalities”. Conversely, those who did not participate, at least politically, or were relatively
peripheral to the imperial politics of zemene mesafint are designated as “states and peoples of
southern Ethiopia”.

In summary, the disagreements among academicians and/or politicians over the place of ‘history’
run in a continuum where the Pan-Ethiopian view and the Colonial thesis taking diametrically
opposing views. In between are the Greater-Ethiopia and the Nation-building Schools of
thoughts that incline to but moderate the take of the Pan-Ethiopian School and the Colonial
Thesis respectively.

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PATTERNS OF POLITICAL HISTORY IN THE NORTH

The Traditional Northern Polity and Society

What for the sake of convince is labeled as the ‘north’ in Ethiopia represented a distinct form of
society and culture commonly (though not necessarily accurately) known as ‘Abyssinia’.
Geographically, it included those territories and societies which over centuries trace their
political existence from the Aksum civilization (in Tigray, Eritrea Wollo, Gojjam, Gonder and
Shewa,) and the Christian religion which the society inherited from the Aksumite period. Here
the Amharic-Tigre languages have been the dominant cultural elements that long give degree of
homogeneity to the northern category.

Through many centuries of experience the northern society institutionalized Christianity by

incorporating into it a wide variety of indigenous elements giving it a peculiar form that has long
been different from the world Christianity. In fact, Teshale Tibebu in his comparison of
Ethiopian Christianity with other versions of the world Christendom calls the former Tabbot
Christianity which incorporates aspects of Judaism as well. Tabbot Christianity as practiced in
Ethiopia gives emphasis to the observation of Saturday as Sabbath, the symbolization of the
Tabbot as representative of the church and distinction of clean and unclean food. These three
aspects are to be found nowhere in any of the other world Christianity versions.

In the traditional Northern society the place of Christianity was mainly profound in the political
fabric of the society as well. The Christian church assumed a prominent political position. The
Christian church and the state formed a union and a national ideology. This union served
important goals. The church articulated a traditional basis for legitimizing the authority of the
state. This can be observed from the Kebre Negest (Glory of Kings). The document was
originally prepared by the church and traced the origin of the Ethiopia state from King Solomon
of the Biblical Israel by depicting the first Ethiopian king in the name of Menilke I who was,
according to the document, the son of King Solomon. As king Solomon, according to the Bible is
a God chosen king, the document dictates that the Ethiopian rule system is an extension of God’s
will. Practically, what the document established was a system of legitimacy that was religiously
conceived for benefit of rulers. To the northern

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society, what the document did was to unit Christianity, the Ethiopian nation and the so called
‘Solomonic dynasty’ beyond human challenge.

NB. The ‘Solomonic dynasty’ as the legitimate dynastic line for Ethiopian kings was so strong
that Ethiopian kings until 1974 had to establish a blood tie with it to assume the kingship. The
idea of the ‘Solomonic dynasty’ also served as an ideological justification for expansionist
tendencies of traditional Abyssinia ruling groups by putting Christianity as ‘divinely’ placed
‘mission’ and ‘criteria’ for assimilation of non–Northern groups.

Church and state

In the traditional northern society, the Christian church and state linked in an interdependent and
reinforcing manner.

Firstly, at least theoretically, the legitimacy of a particular candidate for the throne requires the
existence of some ‘blood’ connection with the so called Solomonic’ line. As this was formulated
in the religions terms, it gave the church an authority over the throne. For instance, the church
codified the Feta Negest (Law of king) which stipulates acceptable ways of conduct by
emperors. Accordingly, the church can challenge the legitimacy of the emperors’ on charges of
religious heresy to the extent of excommunicating the emperors and weaken their legitimacy on
the eyes of the Christian society. Secondly, and practically, however, the church was subservient
to the state or the emperors and in fact for long period it served as an appendage of the state.
One reason was the fact that the church was dependent on the state for its economic wellbeing.
Another was for centuries the church was known for lacking central administration and had been
caught in by doctrinal differences. This made it divided and dependent on the support of the state
power.

For its part, the church legitimatizes the authority of rulers for the economic support they
provided. By drawing the emperors as extensions of God’s ultimate power, it gave the kings
unlimited power over every subordinate level of political authority and to exercise exclusive
prerogative over appointment and dismissal of individuals.

The regional nobility

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However, Ethiopian emperors had not always been practically absolute as their relationship with
the church seemed to imply. Their quest for absolute power has been constrained by different
issues. Firstly, the ruler had not all the means and structure to control the day to day
administration of the state. Much more than the kings, the regional nobility had been better
placed for this task. The nobility, by calming blood relationship or hereditary rights over a
territory did exercise control over their locality.

Traditionally, the nobilities’ authority in their domain included traditional rights to collect tribute
and possess own army which they could use to strengthen their local power base. Although the
emperor had a theoretical right to revoke the status, power and privilege of the nobility, it had
never been easy to do so. In fact, the relationship between the king and the different regional
nobilities in the traditional Northern society had been a struggle for ascendancy over one
another.

In the traditional Northern society administrative structures were traditionally divided on

historically based geographical constituents. Although higher official to this units were appointed
by the king the lower but numerous official were appointed by the regional nobility. In facts
those higher official were hardly the emperor’s own choices. The king practically was forced to
choose official from among the leading regional nobility who had a traditional source of
authority (such as hereditary claims) which the king could not totally ignore.

The position of the regional nobility was further strengthened by its traditionally conferred
responsibility on its regional domain to maintain law and order, collect tribute and maintain their
own soldiers. Although the nobility was expected to pass a portion of tax collected to the king,
they practically maintained it for themselves and distributed it among their local dependents
(such as soldiers) to buy their loyalty. In fact, the nobility had an immediate and effective power
over the peasantry than the relatively distant king.

However, the emperors had always tried to expend their power over the nobility in different
ways. The frequent use of shum-shir to prevent the strengthening of particular nobility for longer
period over a particular area was one method. Through shum-shur the emperors tried

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to instill inter-nobility rivalry. The kings also alternatively arranged dynastic marriages to secure
the loyalty of powerful nobilities. In fact, Ethiopian kings used roving capitals to effectively
assert imperial authority throughout the country militarily wherever imperial authority was
challenged by provincial (regional nobility).

However, before the emergence of the modern bureaucratic state in the early 20th centuy for
much of the historical period in the Northern society the regional nobility’s power was relatively
unconstrained by the king. Geography had its role. The internal geography of northern Ethiopia,
marked for its rough mountainous setting, least navigable rivers and extended rainy seasons
compounded by technological limitations, made provisional districts (and their regional rulers)
relatively inaccessible for effective imperial control.

Even if generically called ‘northern principalities’ historically the northern society was
characterized as having developed strong tendencies of provincialism with host of parochial
identities, sectional loyalties and locally vested interests. The Northern society has been
inhabited by specific groups occupying specific regions nurturing a passionate attachment and a
desire to defend self-rule with particular economic and political interest collectively under the
leadership of the local nobility. However, this kind of provincialism did not eliminate the
tradition to accept the general over lordship of the king at the top. This tradition supported a
higher integration among the major northern provincial units (which included Tigriay, Gojjam,
Shewa, Gonder, Wollo). Higher integration was kept desirable in the Northern society in spite of
the prevalence of narrower provincialism for two main reasons. First, stronger nobilities wanted
to achieve integration of their small units to become stronger and resist an encroachment from
the monarchy. Secondly, and as a result of the first reason local nobilities wanted to compete for
the throne themselves.

In spite of the prevalence of provincialism in the northern society it was those main factors that
condense the Northern society into its broadest designation as Amhara-Tigray pair. The former
was divided along defined provincial units as Shewa, Gojam, Gonder, Wollo where language
similarity could not cut across narrower provincial inclination with each of these so called
Amhara groups. For instance Shewa lacked a distinct identity and provincial

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consciousness and its self-image dissolved into smaller components such as Tugulet, Menz, and
the like accounting for its heterogeneous composition. In addition, the region Shewa has been
predominantly a home to non-Amhara groups like Oromos and Gurages.

Distinctiveness of Tigray provincialism was reinforced by the preservation of distinct language

and a belief that it represents the ‘purity’ and continuity of the Aksumite culture and society than
the admixture Amhara.

In general, until the 19th century the northern society had undergone through the struggle
between centrifugal tendencies (represented by regional nobility) and the drive towards
centralization (represented by the monarchy). The role of the Orthodox Church in these
competitions had been to side with the relatively stronger side which could secure to the church
institution and its functionaries (the clergy) a constant provision of wellbeing and support to its
existence and privileged position in the society. The upper hand of the former was seen in its
pick during the Zemene Mesafint which delayed the process of integration in Northern society
until the coming of Tewodros II who brought to an end the ascendancy of provincial nobility and
initiated the process of the ascendancy of the monarchical centralization.

PATTERNS OF POLITICAL HISTORY IN THE ‘SOUTH’

The States and Peoples of Southern Ethiopia

Politically speaking and in comparison to the northern society the so called ‘south’ was far from
a homogeneous category itself. There were different category of principalities which attained
varying degrees of social political organization and a comparatively distinct course of history
ranging from communal societies to quasi-states with power full kings and elaborated
mechanisms of exercising authority. The Oromos with their own distinct political and social
organization were significant among this ‘southern’ category to unleash the initial phase of
interaction with the north before the 19th century modern state formation. With the phenomenal
expansion in the 16th century the Oromos reached as far as the borders of Tigray and Gojjam
and settled in huge numbers in southern part of Showa. This increased admixture of Oromos with
the Amhara–Tigre society brought the social and economic

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transformation of the Oromos themselves, the northern society and the other southern societies.
Some sections of the Oromos in fact abandoned their rather egalitarian socio-political
organization of Gada to a more hierarchical system like that of the north. However, closer
presence of Oromos in the north did not make them dominate the northern politics except for the
brief period during the Zemene Mesafint where Oromos from Wollo dominated the Gonder
politics under their Yejju dynasty. Until their incorporation into the Ethiopia empire state in mid-
19th century there were some Oromo principalities in such areas as present day Wellega,
Ilubabor retaining their tradition and institutions before abandoning them gradually. In south
western Ethiopia the Oromo expansion brought them in contact with different peoples which
they influence and influenced by. Due to these interactions Oromos adopted a system of
government which unlike the ethos of the Gada system relied on monarchical systems. The five
Oromo Gibbe states of Limmu-Enarya, Jimma, Gera, Goma and Gumma were evidence of such
cultural interactions and assimilations.

The Borena Oromos represented another relatively distinct historical pattern within the larger
Oromo. The Borena, unlike others, preserved their long tradition intact. Neither Christianity non
Islam affected the Borenas’ pastoral way of life or their Geda organization for long even to the
present day. In general, it can be maintained that even before the Meneilik’s expansion, Oromo’s
socio-cultural interaction with different peoples gradually transformed their socio- economic
structure. However, these processes of transformation were slow and uneven affecting some
more than others.

What is now called the southern part of Ethiopia also witnessed a relatively distinct pattern of
history relatively prior to Oromo expansion and prior to the modern Ethiopian empire state. Such
principalities and kingdoms like Kaffa, Wolayeta, Hadya etc enjoyed elaborated mechanisms for
exercising autonomy and political control. In fact, to a certain extent some of these principalities
maintained some historical ties and trade relations with medieval kings of northern Ethiopia.

In the south eastern, eastern and north eastern part of Ethiopia different peoples with distinct
socio-political and geographical settings existed. The Somalis and Afars are among

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those which have been known for espousing Islam. Common to both Somalis and Afars has long
been their system of political organization which was based on a highly segmented clan
structure, a pastoralist way of socio economic organization and a strong attachment to Islam and
inhabitation of rather inhospitable desert areas in the lowland section of modern day Ethiopia.

Another category of people that formed into modern Ethiopian from the so generically called
south have been those communities in the western and south western part of Ethiopia. These
communities have been for long constituted the peripheral section in the Ethiopian state system
and historically known for developing less social differentiation and loose form of organized
socio political organization in comparison to other communities in the country. The Berta, Gumz
in present day Beni-Shangul, Anuwas and Nuers in present day Gambella together with a
number of other numerous small groups are instances.

A Brief Account of the Role of Islam in Ethiopia

Islam’s firs introduction was in the northern part of ancient Ethiopia and dates back to the time
of the prophet. Initial contact was in fact cordial as Aksum gave the safe haven for Muslim
refugees in the 8th century A.D. In subsequent centuries Islam sat roots in Ethiopia precipitating
intermittent conflicts. Islam’s gradual expansion into the north first came through Muslim traders
who dominated the Red Sea Port and the long distance trade. These traders formed the first
Muslim communities within the Christian domain and in fact enjoyed the protection of the kings
and the regional nobilities for their trading activities which the traditional Christian society
avoided for some cultural reasons. Such cordial relations came to an end following the expansion
of Islam into the northern hinterland by the Ahmed Gragn wars. These wars had many
consequences. It proved a mutual destruction for both sides easing the way for the expansion of
some groups (Oromo’s in particular) into the center of the northern principalities.

The role of Islam was much more critical in shaping the relationship between the different
people who later formed the Ethiopian state. As significant groups from the non-Northern side
espoused it, Islam began giving an alternative prime symbol of nationalism different from

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Christianity which was long equated with ‘Abyssinian nationalism’. In fact many non-
northerners espoused Islam as a bulwark against northern nationalism. But Islam had not
provided an ideological and a politically unifying framework for its followers lacking
institutional expression like Christianity that would have helped it transcend over the ethnic and
cultural barrier of its diverse and widely geographically distributed followers.

In general, the essence of the above discussion is that although to varying degrees, peoples that
constituted the modern Ethiopian state have had historical interaction of one sort or another even
before they came under a highly centralizing state at the end of the 19th century. In this regard it
can be said that whereas the northern section of the state experienced a relatively homogeneous
existence due to mainly the Christianity religion the so called the southern part experienced huge
level of heterogeneity in terms of culture and degree of socio-political organizations. In the next
section we will discuss how these patterns of history and interaction unfolded in the making of
‘modern’ Ethiopia during and following the second half of the 19th century’.

CHAPTER TWO
The Problematic of Political Power

Political science approaches state formation in the context of the problematic of political power
in the subsequent state-society relations. In political science the problematic of political power is
seen in the interconnected sense of first organizing and/or creating effective political power and
second in the sense of what to do with political power measured against better performance in
terms of economic development, national unity, democracy, poverty reduction and security
promotion etc.

Analyzing the problematic of power in Ethiopia should start with the assumptions that like other
comparable process elsewhere in the world historically the process of modern state formation in
Ethiopia is characterized often by contradictory process of conflicts, negotiations and
compromises between different groups.

State formation aims at achieving an integrated existence as a national unit on the basis of certain
political project around a power center which is an instrument of hegemony and constituted by
one or several dominant classes occupying the heart of the process and drive it

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as a whole. In other words state formation is combination of two related yet distinguishable
process of state-building and nation-building.

The problematic of political power has been the reflection of Ethiopia’s emergence in the second
half of the 19th century that ultimately brought together diversified people over a vast territory
under centralized control and its continuance as a political system since then characterised by
regimes that adopt state and nation building projects that would deal with the problematic of
political power in the state-society relation in ways that facilitate the maintenance of a tradition
of exercising hegemonic (and as a result narrow) political power under a centralized state
structure over the society.

Since the 19th century the elements of exercising hegemonic power involves four interrelated
structures and process. These are (a) creating and maintaining a structure of administrative and
bureaucratic control, through which the power of the central government is maintained and
enforced over the people within its jurisdiction; (b) institutionalizing a system of extraction and
distribution, through which resources are extracted from the economy and distributed according
to the priority of the government-mostly of course for the maintenance of the state itself; (c)
adopting a strategy of extraversion of external resources to utilise technical, financial, military
international assistance to legitimate and reinforce the central government; and (d) establishing
an ideological apparatus to legitimise these practices and encourage adhesion and support by the
population.

Comparing and contrasting the ways the different state-building and nation-building projects
pursued by successive regimes served and failed to serve the goal of maintaining hegemonic
power over society would help us understand the problematic of political power in Ethiopia.

Historical Prelude to Modern Ethiopian State Formation

As discussed, historically traditional power in northern society has always been contested
between the centralizing monarchy and regional nobilities. These set in the first drive towards
modern state formation. In this connection we may say that the modern state formation in
Ethiopian proceeds by the victory of a centralized polity (historically represented by monarchy)
over parcelized (or divided) polities (historically represented by

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regional nobility) in the northern part of Ethiopia. That process began in the mid-19th century
following the end of Zemene Mesafint by Tewodros II who initiated the drive towards the
hegemony of a centralized polity.

The Zemene Mesafint was a period where the northern society was dissolved into its quasi-
independent provincial polities (Tigray, Gonder, Gojam, Wollo, Shewa) which engaged in an
endless and inconclusive struggle for supremacy. The Zemene Mesafint was the period in which
the provincial entities exercised their divided sovereignty which was an extension of the
declining powers of the monarchy which the regional nobilities competed to fill.

Different factors accounted for these developments beginning from the 16th century. The blow
suffered by the northern kings by the protracted war with Ahmed Grgan was one. The
subsequent ascendancy of Oromos who overrun the territories of the Muslim sultanates and their
advance and increasing involvement in northern politics in Gonder was another. The rather weak
Gonderian Kings relied on strong Oromo support to compensate for their losing control over the
powerful regional nobilities. As a result, the Northern monarchy fall prey to powerful provincial
lords.

However, the Zemene Mesafint was also the result of a failure by any one of the provincial
nobilities to assume the kingship in Gonder. Rather, the relative power of regional rulers was
measured by the capability to become a king maker and un-maker in Gonder from their
respective regional domains. But these trends came to an end with the coming of Tewodros II
who defeated powerful regional lords one after another and restored the authority of the
monarchy.

Phase one: the Period of Initiation with the end of Zemene Mesafint

The modern Ethiopian state formation followed a historical pattern where the northern part gave
rise to a hegemonic center that took on the process into the other areas. Tewodros II’s rise into
power as an unchallenged ruler of Abyssinia was the first response given to the challenge of
political disintegration in the Northern domain. As such Tewodros’s period was characterized as
the period of initiation in the making of modern Ethiopia. His period was

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important for it laid the background than actually accomplishing the process of establishing a
centralized state.

Before realizing a centralized state, Tewodros II had to deal with potent political forces in the
north to bring integration and then proceed with territorial expansion into other areas. A least
initially he achieved military victory over established regional dynasties. To give the military
victory political meaning the king, attempted to break major traditional provincial entities into
smaller administrative units governed by his own appointed officials. This was to deprive a
power base to the regional nobilities and to reduce the monarchy’s traditional reliance on the
military force raised by regional nobilities,

Tewodros II introduced the idea of a national standing army under his direct control and with
salary paid by the central monarchy. Tewodros II had also to deal with the church establishment
and the clergy as well and compete with them for resources to maintain his large army. These
demanded him to curtail the church’s long standing privilege over tax exemption. Although
external threat in the form of Egyptian expansion formed Tewodros’s initial worries, the external
challenge was more of apparent than real danger to his rule.

The end of Tewodros II was a combined outcome of a fundamentally internal causation and a
relatively contingent external factor. The former had to do with the resumption of provincial
rebellion that forced him to adopt brutal campaigns. This provoked increasing resistance and also
his frustration. Undermined by the king and deprived of their economic interest, the church and
the clergy also undermined the power of the king.

In its modern history Ethiopia faced external challenges that threatened its territorial integrity
motivated by expansionist and colonialist derives. These had been true during the period of
Tewodros II as well although their implications were far greater in subsequent periods. During
the period of Tewodros, the external challenges were apparent than real and mainly facilitated
his personal down fall. The British, which later colonized much of Africa since 1870, had no
plans for a permanent occupation of Ethiopia after their Napier military expedition to Ethiopia
fulfilled the rather minimal mission of freeing the British hostages of Tewodros II in 1867.

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In general, Tewodros II’s initial experiment with modern state formation had incontestably laid
down the major orientations that subsequent kings built on. Since his time, the need for a highly
centralized authority remained the hallmark of Ethiopia politics and government. Subsequent
kings attempted to elaborate, consolidate and complete the grand modern state formation project
the foundations of which were initiated by Tewodros II.

Phase Two: Expansion of the Project of Modern State Formation

The period of Yohannis IV can be considered as one of elaboration of the ideas of emperor
Tewodros II. In fact modern Ethiopia as a political entity with a well-defined territorial boundary
was ‘imagined’ during the period of Yohannis IV; ‘imagined’ because real accomplishments had
to wait for the coming of Menelik II and after.

Preexisting internal challenges continued during the period of Yohannis IV as well. The
challenge of regional nobilities merging with a claim for the Ethiopian kingship came strongly.
Yohannis of Tigray needed to assert his claim for the throne in the face of two important rivals
form Gojjam and Showa. His (Yohannis IV) approach was a mixture of force and diplomacy
based on his assessment of the relative strength of his rivals.

In the former sense, Yohannis managed to have the recognitions of the two rivals for his
emperorship by recognizing their claims for regional lordship. In the later sense, Yohannis also
used force to subdue one of his rival in Gojjam (Negus Tekle-Himanot) due to the latter’s
relative weakness. Encouraged by his cautious assessment of the forces of regionalism and
forced by Menilike’s relative strength in Showa, Yohannis followed a policy of toleration
towards Menilik. For Menilik, this delicate balance gave an opportunity to continue strengthen
his power base in Showa and engage in extensive arms trade and expansion into territories to the
east, west and south of Showa. For Yohannis, the balance created with Menelik of Showa created
a breathing space to deal with a more urgent and forceful external challenges of his time.

The first external challenge was from Egyptian expansion and was dealt militarily and
effectively at the two different and decisive battles of Gudent and Gura. But these were followed
by three simultaneous external challenges which in the end brought his end.

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With the opening of the Suez Canal, Ethiopia faced imperialist challenges from Italy. Although
to endure much longer, this first imperialist challenge in the form of Italy, which occupied the
Ethiopia’s outlet to the sea, was repelled at the Battle of Dogali. However, Yohannis’s quest for
access to the sea which British helped Italy occupy made him fell pray to British diplomatic
upper hand. Expecting British diplomatic support, he gave into the demands of the British for his
support in their confrontation with the Mahadists (in the Sudan) which buy him hatred by the
later.

Disappointed by the British diplomatic betrayal of the terms of agreement and confronted by the
hostility of the Mehadists, Yohannis lost his life in war of revenge by the Mehadists in 1889 at
the Battle of Metema. Ethiopia with a much more intensified external challenge and with an
already elaborated drive towards internal territorial expansion passed on to the period of Menelik
II.

Phase Three: Consolidation of Ethiopia’s Modern State Formation

MenelikII’s rise to power was notable for demonstrating the predominant role of the military in
the process of state formation consolidation. The military power helped the expansion of a
relatively cohesive and centralized authority in the Northern core into the south and this was the
hall mark of the consolidation of Ethiopian state formation during the period of Menelik
II. With his successful response to the external challenge, Menilik created the Ethiopian state
with a more or less defined boundary that roughly matches with modern day Ethiopia.

The period of Menelik II witnessed the culmination and consolidation of vast territorial
expansion turning Ethiopia into an empire state. The process brought the southern part of the
country under the domain of the ‘Solomonic’ line presiding over large number of people of
diverse origin and culture. As compared to the north, the incorporation of the south came in a
relatively shorter period of time. This was made possible by the superiority of arms Menilik II
enjoined over his target of incorporation. The expansion of Menelik II has been a matter of huge
political controversy that gave rise to contrasting interpretation on its effect on the contemporary
Ethiopia politics.

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What explains emperor Menelik II’s story? Both internal and external factors can be said to have
given a motivation to Menelik II’s phenomenally large scale expansion from Shewa into the
south, south east and west and lowland peripheries.

The need to build strong power base in his contest for the throne against Yohannis IV was the
first economic motive that directed Shewa’s expansion into the south and southwest where the
lucrative long-distance trade route was attractive. After defeating his Gojjam rival at the battle of
Embobo, Menelik dominated the trade route thereby assured himself a strong economic base to
succeed Yohannis IV to the throne.

External challenges in the form of Europeans’ ‘Scramble Africa’ also conditioned and shaped
Menelik’s drive towards the south by putting a survivalist rush to incorporate as many territories
as possible against Europeans. His expansion and effective control of these territories in the
south, south west and south east was one way to proof Ethiopia’s territorial claims against
European claimants. This competition reached climax when Italy attempt to colonize Ethiopian.

By defeating Italy at battle of Adowa in 1896 Menilik not only rescued Ethiopia’s territorial
integrity from the colonial expansion but also gave it its more or less defined and internationally
recognized boundary. The victory in turn gave Menilik extra motivation to go on with his
expansion drives towards the south.

The Menelik expansion took two distinct forms with different outcomes depending on the degree
of resistance from the local population. Where resistances were absent, the incorporated areas
were left with their pre-existing socio-economic arrangements. In such cases like Wellega,
Jimma and the like only tributary relations were established. Local rulers in these cases were
given the status of balabat serving as transmission belts connecting the local people with the
center. In other cases where there was local resistance military suppression was used followed by
stiff order, the crushing of local dynasties and the direct presence of Menelik II’s own appointed
officials. Western Gurage, Arsi Wolayta, Keffa, Harar were some examples.

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 The Economic Foundation of Modern Ethiopian State: Towards
Consolidating the State Formation

Immediately after completing the expansion process, the power center of Shewa embarked on
establishing its system of rule over the ‘new’ territories. This was mainly achieved through the
introduction of a new land holding system in the south by modifying the land holding system of
the northern part to make the system of control in the south effective and easy to the central
government in Addis Ababa. The change in the land holding system of the south was to enable
those wielding power to appropriate land as well as tribute and labor from the peasantry. In
effect the system created a new pattern of power distribution in the southern areas and
established a new hierarchy of authority within the expanded Ethiopia empire state.

The Gebbar System

There are two contexts to discuss the gebbar system of the land holding; first in the northern
Ethiopia as the basic form of social and political structure and second as it was applied in the
southern part immediately after Menilke’s expansion till early 1950s. Historians characterize this
period of modern Ethiopian history as the period of consolidation of the modern Ethiopian state
with the expansion of the gebbar system from its northern historical core areas into the southern
areas.

In the north Ethiopia social stratification in relation to political hierarchy attained well-
established form through centuries-long process of integration within the framework of the
Christian state. The system of political organization was based on the social structure founded on
the relationship between the state (the monarchy and the nobility) the church (the clergy) and the
peasantry. The relationship was defined by each groups’ relationship to the means of production
i.e land. In the north society, land holding rights were ordered according to the basic principles
of the society.

Each of the categories had a complex arrangement of rights and obligations in relation to land
and to those who claim rights over it. These arrangements include kinship, the state and the
church (religion).

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Box 1: The economic foundations of the modern Ethiopian State in the period of
Menelik and Hailesellassie were the gebbar system which was anchored in a
plow-based mixed or enset-based farming in the highlands, and taxes from
domestic long-distance and external trade.

The gebbar institution in its narrow form emerged in Shewa and Wollo, in the
latter part of the Gondarine period. This agrarian system was later extended in a
modifed and harsher form to the southern provinces. The concept of gebbar
system is often misunderstood. In its generic meaning, gebbar meant a landed
payer of obligatory state fees, taxes, and services. So, technically, all rist-holders
are gebbar (who pay gult, tithe, and perform service--gibir) to the Emperor or his
agents. In its narrow meaning, it refers to cultivators of land in militarily
administered districts who must meet both customary tribute obligations as well as
extra-ordinary labor obligations until the administrative system was normalized.
Only in labor-scarce regions and in the initial stages of conquest (since soldiers
and administrators cannot cultivate government-granted, in lieu of salary or
maderya, lands), do we observe people being compelled to cultivate the land and
hand the bulk of the produce to the soldiers. In this sense, the gebbar is neither a
chisegna (renter) or a serf (which, in addition to being tied to the land, has no
personal freedom).

Box 2: Land tenure (yemeret sireet) defines the producer-appropriator relationship

between the landowner and the socially-sanctioned residual claimant (usually the
producer or the entire community. The property right in land often includes the right
to income (from own cultivation or leasehold), the right of use (usufruct), the right of
transfer (by temporary gift or an encumbered mortgage), and the right of alienation by
gift or sale.

Tribute or gibir is an economic as well as a political relationship among a hierarchy of

classes or estates—the state elite (bete-mengist), the Church elite (bete kahnat), and
the tribute-paying clans or polities (bete-seb or bihere-seb). Internal tributarism is an
institution that defines the relations between the endogamous soldier-noble-priestly
overlords and the producer-plebian peasant, artisanal, or mercantile classes of the core
provinces. This mode of administration of the income and service rights of the state is
the defining feature of the much-maligned gebbar system

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Now let us see the dominant forms of land rights, each with a well-defined political role

The Rist Sireet

Rist (kinship-based): rights over land were claimed by the descent group (based on kinship). Rist
is a land held and transmitted hereditarily based on individual claims to descent and his/her
effective possession of land. All members of a kin group have rights to a share of land. This
means hereditary right cannot be lost through absence and that reallocation of land can be
practiced to accommodate all new claimants for the land. Rist land was also transmittable along
both parents. Rist in its traditional sense and as used in the northern Ethiopia can be defined as
the rights of Christians of both sexes to claim, posses, inherit and pass on to their children land
on the basis of belonging to the same cognatic descents (form both parents) of a kin group.

A person who exercises rist rights is called ristegna and the right was the most clearly defined
and nearly absolute right over land. Customary law dictated that rist rights cannot be forfeited
provided effective proof of descent is established and the right must be recognized by the state.
To the northern peasantry, rist rights guaranteed the security of tenure. Any attempt to force
change in the rist system was regarded as a threat to the security of traditional life and were
highly resisted. However, hereditary rist rights can be abrogated and confiscated by the state if
the ristegna failed to pay tax. That is to say, rist right gave practically all of the peasantry in the
northern society land right but rist holders were subjected to the Gebbar system. This system
required the peasantry to support the non-productive class of the society through taxation of the
surplus produced.

The taxation was comprehensive, multiple and very burdensome. Tax was levied on the
peasantry on everything they had. The peasantry also had to provide labor for groups on the
privileged positions. For instance, there were more than twelve forms of taxation and three
important local level tax appropriators which in their descending order of rank constituted
mislene (supervisor of tax collection) Malekegna (military enforces of order) and Cika Shum(the
one who deliberate upon judicial matters of local disputes). Each of these

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hierarchies of local tax officials passed on the tax they collected to the next hierarchy keeping
some portion for themselves until the tax reached the imperial center.

In the traditional northern society the peasantry exercised control over land through hereditary
claims and its relation with the political center was defined by the requirement of taxation and
tribute to the state. However, the state in general and the king in particular also exercised a more
direct control over land form politically derived rights. The nobility as the second-in-rank to the
monarchy also exercised control over land by the state-granted rights .The monarchy had
extensive rights over land. He claimed the right for tribute over all land except the church land.
The state also claimed rights on land by confiscating the land of rebellious personas a
punishment. The state also claimed rights over land which was unclaimed by a descent group or
unused land.

The Gult Sireet-Sir’at

The state by holding extensive rights over land exercised another system of land holding, which
was common in the northern part but later on expand into the southern part. This was the Gult
rights. Gult is the rights of tribute appropriation from peasants granted by the emperor to various
ranks of military class, the church and others in return for their military, administrative and
religious services rendered to the emperor. Gult grants were used as substitute for salaries and as
a means to rewarding loyal service.

The regional nobility being the main local functionary enjoyed gult grants by the state. Gult
rights can be of two types. It can be a right given to the gultegna to pay no or reduced tribute to
the state or it can be a right to collect tribute in behalf of the state and keep a portions or all of it.
Gult rights were temporary depending on the service provided to emperor. But in some instances
gult grants can be granted permanently for a recipient or can be vested hereditarily on his/her
family resulting in rist-gult claim. In practice gult rights are grants to a recipient not of the land
but only the peasantry working on the land. As a result, the gultegna can not dispose off the
peasantry his/her right to rist except on failure to pay tax. Because gult grants were not
permanent, they gave the emperors convenient and effective way of controlling the behavior of
local functionaries.

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Samon Land

In the northern traditional society the church as an institution and the clergy as its functionary
also exercised control over land. Traditionally the church claimed 1/4 of the land of the state.
This church land was called samon land in which the church enjoyed certain rights as a
compensation for the provision of religious services.

Samon land paid no tribute to the state and it only implied an obligation of anyone working on
the land to pay tribute to the church. The church also enjoyed gult grants called royal grants by
the state and it can also be granted rist-gult rights called church rist-gult. A peasant whose land
was given to the church as church rist-gult theoretically losses his/her rist right and become a
tenant of the church and the clergy using the advantage of being the main church functionary can
evict the peasant from the church rist-gult land and can work on it by itself. But the clergy can
not claim the church land as private property and transfer the land through sale or inheritance.
Land grants to the church were irrevocable and were not subjected to taxation to the state.

In general, social stratification in the traditional northern society based itself on each groups’
relation to land. The peasantry with rist right was at the bottom of the social and political
hierarchy being subjected to different taxation requirements to the different hierarchies (both
secular and religious) of power relationships. In general under the gebbar system the secular and
religious hierarchies functioned collectively to sustain a respect for authority which the state
viewed as a primary value. The state for its part compensated them by respecting their centuries-
long rights over land the ultimate benefit of which was the right to collect and appropriate
taxation and tribute. The heavy burdens of the arrangement fell on the peasantry beyond
imaginable proportions first in the northern areas and later on the southern part of the expanded
Ethiopian empire state. The Menelik expansion into the south was followed by similar
mechanisms of exercising authority and appropriating land and labor in the southern areas.

In what to follow we will discuss the particular features of exercising authority in the south in
relation to land relationships in terms of changes and continuities to the traditional form

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prevalent in the northern areas we discussed above. Following the Menelik’s expansion, social
stratification based on the relationship of individuals and groups to land was established in the
new areas. As a result, different social groups emerged. The need to impose authority and
effective collection of tribute from the land led to establishment of administrative structures to
maintain order and effective authority in the south. These determined the pattern of land
allocation and the nature of social and political stratification.

To compensate for the limitation of organization and resource of the state, and to transcend over
barrier of language and cultural difference and to facilitate collection of taxation, the new
authority from the north instrumentally used indigenous authorities called the southern balabats
as intermediary. Some of these local balabats were part of the local authority even before the
Menelik expansion. Based on their peaceful submission they were made to retain their position
and recognized and accorded status and economic privileges. In areas where traditional authority
was abolished by Menelik forces the balabats were drawn from the local population based on
their willingness to serve the ruling group loyally and as a result they were given similar
privileges. In any case both types of balabats were to serve in supervision and collection of
tribute for the state. The balabats were also beneficiaries in that they were privileged to keep a
portion of the tax they collected, or pay reduced tax or exempted. The arrangement transformed
the southern balabats into a privileged land holding class by their own standard. They assumed
similar authority like that of the northern local authorities in the northern areas such as the chika
shum, melkegna and/or meslegne.

Likewise, they (balabats) commanded labor and service of the southern peasantry. Even they
were different in that they possessed land as their personal property reducing the peasantry into
tenants. In this respect the peasantry in the south, as different from its northern counterpart
exercised no ownership of land (say in the form of rist). At one level, therefore, the Menelik
expansion in the south did affect the southern social setting by introducing new class of
indigenous landowning class (i.e.balabat) whose social privilege was different from the ordinary
population by their privileged access to land and produce of the land. The balabat land owning
class in the south was one of the new elements added on the traditional gebbar system along with
its expansion into the southern areas.

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At another level, the expansion of the gebbar system into the southern areas also drastically
transformed the relation of the southern peasantry to land by making all the southern land state
owned land. With this the peasantry as social classes were transformed into gebbar and became
subjected to multiple tribute exactions losing a considerable portion of their production and labor
immediately to their balabats and through them to the political center. As far as their gebbar
status, the southern peasants were similar to those of the northern peasants. But there were
substantial differences. In the north, the tribute paying peasant was also a ristegna and cannot,
under normal circumstances, be evicted from land or cannot be forced into tenancy. But in the
south, the peasantry’s position to land was ambiguous and insecure and remains on the land on
the wishes of the state and the local balabats. The Menelik expansion into south also brought
about the replication of the northern land holding system of course with new elements added to
it. The state like in the north, claimed all southern land calling it madeira land and distributed it
to its lower political-administrative units which were filled by either the local balabats or state
functionaries form the north. The state used such maderia lands as one form of state grants and
used as a payment for service rendered to it. These kinds of state grants were known as shum-
shir land and as such were not permanent grants. As a result these were different from rist-gult or
gult grants. In the southern context, rist-gult or gult grants were granted to Meneilk’s top war
leaders. Most of the time these recipients did not actually possessed their grants in the south for
most of them lived in their original areas in the north or in Addis Ababa. In effect the southern
rist-gult or gult holders were absentee landlords who left their grants to their representatives.

The Orthodox Church also enjoyed land rights in the southern area in similar fashion like in the
north. Another group form the north that gained land holding rights in the south was made out of
ordinary peasants form northern provinces who came along the Menelik military expeditions as
soldiers, messengers, prison guards and as tax-paying cultivators. These groups were differently
called netche lebashe or neftegna. From the above discussion we can say that the Menelik
expansion brought the spread the qebbar system from its historical and traditional origins in the
northern part to the southern part. In all of these contexts the essence of the system was the
establishment of tributary relationship the

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ultimate goal of which was to consolidate the political, economic and social position of the ruling
class at the expense of the ruled majority.

However, in the course of its expansion into the south with Menelek’s expansion, the gebbar
system evolved into two distinct features. First, the gebbar system in the north had centuries-long
existence and evolved over time and attained a level of legitimacy both in the eyes of the
appropriator and the appropriated. This gave the system in north customary appropriation
characteristics and was relatively peaceful where the state needed not to have a frequent use of
direct force to transfer wealth form the peasantry. At least, the tribute paying peasantry had
customarily evolved and as such strong basis to claim ownership rights over the land against the
state. Second, in the south the gebbar system can be referred to as predatory appropriation.
Tributary extraction was primarily based on the use of force and tributary appropriations were
chaotic and involved compulsory transfer of wealth. However, such distinctions between
customary appropriations versus customary appropriation were not exact in that even the
northern part the two forms of appropriation coexisted. During war time for instance, the
northern peasantry had to experience the predatory demands of the winner warrior class which
historically equate victory with looting and plundering of the peasantry.

The Political Economy of the Gebbar System

The political impacts of the gebbar system were also profound. By placing a political economic
form of a hierarchal arrangement among distinct social groups by their differing relation to land,
the system created social stratification within the society. In other words those social groups
which the gebbar system gave privileged position were also the same social groups which were
politically dominant. For many observers these conditions made class analysis of Ethiopia’s
state-society relation possible.

Class analysis assumes that asymmetric economic relationships among social groups in a society
where one group appropriate the surplus of another increases class antagonism between those
who make their own leisured existence possible by controlling the condition of production and
those at whose expense such a system relying on. On the Ethiopian

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context the above class analysis reflected itself in the relationship between the peasantry, whose
economic burden in the form of tribute and taxations sustained the political center, the nobility
and the church which collectively formed the dominant holders of authority. These groups
through the gebbar system controlled the condition of production by controlling land which has
been the only means of production.

In the northern context class differentiation was reflected in groups’ unequal position to the
means of production (land) and the appropriation of produce from it. Generally seen this had to
make class antagonism evident. But for long period of time the special features of the gebbar
system in the north militated against overt and sharp class antagonism in spite of the existence of
objective structure that would otherwise possibly led it to happen. The specific social process
contained with in the system in general obscured it. First, the degree of wealth accumulation
reflecting itself in life style, if high would sharpen class differentiation and antagonism.
However, accumulation in the north by the privileged class of the nobility and/ or the clergy was
so slow that the nobility and the clergy as a privileged class differed in their life style with the
peasantry very really. Low level of accumulation was the result of the subsistence agriculture
and the extravagant consumption pattern of the society. Second, cultural and social conditions
that linked the privileged class with the peasantry vertically were stronger than the horizontal
economic asymmetry. The peasantry, the nobility and the clergy linked in kinship, locality,
dependency and religion that reduced sharper class antagonisms. In the southern context, class
antagonism for all practical purposes was not the only important factor defining the relationship
between the different social groups in the south. First, class differentiation based on the
alienation of the peasantry from land and its subservient position as landless category was much
more vivid in the south. But this did not immediately give the class factor its explosive class
antagonism manifestations. In the southern context the class factor as a result of the gebbar
system appeared together with other dimensions of the patterns state-society relations. Class
difference was merged with ethnic and cultural differences. The landowning class in the south
was essentially two in its type making ethnic analysis both difficult and possible. Class
difference matching with ethnic

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difference tended to go higher if one looks at the majority of those groups who identify
themselves with the state.

The majority of the northerners who emerged as land owing class in the south following Menelik
expansion were Amara-Tigrie groups who share Christianity with the ruling power and the
related economic and political advantage over the local population. The southern peasantry, on
the other hand, can be clearly differentiated from this landowning class in the south who were
ethnically different from the majority of the peasantry. These appear to give the economic class
differentiation a clearer ethnic match. But the ethnically different land owning class did not make
integration impossible there by making class difference and ethnic difference not to
automatically and rigidly match.

This was because class difference was not sufficient reason for social distance between the local
population and the ruling groups. Integration was open as long as the local population accepted
Christianity and Amharic language. Another factor was that the land owing class in the south
also included indigenous balabats. This is to say that the degree of integration and the nature of
the rule itself muted or covered the much more obvious class antagonism in the southern context.
Furthermore similar factors account for the obscured class antagonism in the south like in the
northern areas. Like in the north, class antagonism in the south was minimal because the
standard of living by the most visible land owning class in the south(except the absentee
landlords) was not that much hugely different from the southern peasant.

The nature of the southern economy also imposed limitation on the economic exploitation
potential of the landowning class. Although the gebbar system in the south made it theoretically
possible to evict the peasant from the land, practically the southern peasant retained his land in
exchange for tribute and service for the landlord. For the landlord in the south evicting the
peasant was practically useless because the landlords did not work on the land themselves and
needed the peasantry to work on it and access economic benefits through tribute payment.

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Menelik’s military expansion into south, southeast and south west gave Ethiopia its present
shape. The victory of Adowa completed the process of modern Ethiopian state formation giving
it a more or less defined international boundary. Consolidations of authority reached significant
proportion as the political center expanded its traditional authority into the southern areas
through an elaborated system of giving, receiving and redistributing tribute through the gebbar
system.

In summary, the process of the formation of modern statehood in Ethiopia was one in which an
old polity was struggling to become a born-again modern state to find a place as a legitimate part
of the international system. This involved four processes.

1. The simultaneous process of creative destruction of the zemene mesafint and the
innovative introduction of state consolidation and centralization in the northern domain.

2. The destructive annihilation of states and proto-states in the southern regions.

3. The heroic resistance against Egyptian expansionism and European imperialism

4. The southern push of emperor Menelik II that brought him on collision course with
adjacent colonial powers, mainly Britain.

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 CHAPTER THREE
The Emergence of the Modern Bureaucratic State

Centralization of power and modernization had been the driving forces behind the very initiation
and consolidation of modern Ethiopian state formation. However, it was during the period of
Hailesselasse I that these processes reached their huge proportions to the extent of making the
gebbar system with its traditional features increasingly weaker and its eventual replacement by a
more bureaucratic state.

The gebbar system appeared to have reached its maximum limits in strengthening or elaborating
power centralization goals by the ruling groups. It was in response to the deficiencies of the
gebbar system that Hailesselasse I embarked on continuing the imperial based state and/nation-
building within a framework of a modern bureaucratic state system in Ethiopia to accomplish the
three main interrelated goals. These were centralization of power under the monarchy,
modernization of the state apparatus to strengthen royal powers and integration of the diverse
cultural groups under the state system the ethos of which were designed by the ruling powers.
During the period of Hailesselasse I, the gebbar system reached its maximum to enable the rulers
achieves these three goals.

The system lost it effectiveness due to the pressure exerted unto it by its increasing exposure to
modernization which made its way into the country following its integration in to the capitalist
world economy, the development of commodity production, rapid growth of urbanization,
modern institutions and modern means of communication etc.

Monarchical Centralization under the “Modern” Bureaucratic State

In a way to cope with the ‘modernization’ pressures placed on the gebbar system and to make
use of the same modernization to strengthening the central royal power, Hailesselasse I gradually
replaced the old gebbar system with a modern bureaucratic state and government. In effect the
new development made the emperor to centralize power in huge proportion in the country’s long
dynastic history.

Modernization was effectively used by the monarchy to weaken the political and economic
power of the nobility from its historically dominant position that came with the exercise of

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military and taxation functions. These leverages for long helped the nobility to seriously
compromise on and at times undermine the imperial rule. Under the gebbar system the central
government was relatively blocked from increasing its share of taxation collected from the
peasantry which was dominantly carried out by through agency of the nobility.

The landholding system gave the nobility an opportunity to appropriate part or all of the tribute
collected without adding much to the central government. Within a modern bureaucratic state
framework the Hailesselasse regime opted to abolish the intermediary levels between the tribute-
paying peasantry and the central government.

The regime accordingly, engaged in reforming the land taxation system by setting up uniform
regulation for provincial administration since 1940s through different proclamations. The
ultimate goal had been to take away from the nobility their traditionally vested and elaborated
taxation rights and direct the flow of the tribute into the central government in Addis Ababa.
Naturally, the nobility resisted these changes.

The Provincial Administration Proclamation of 1941, for instance, made all government
employees to be paid a monthly salary. This ended the ancient practice of granting officials a
tribute collection rights as a payment. It also fixed taxation and prohibited any other form of
tribute collection by other authority. For the peasantry the proclamation gave a sense of relief as
it freed them from the multiple taxation burden required by the nobility. The 1948 introduction
of a uniform rate of taxation ended any forms of tribute paying such as labor service other than
those payable by official currency.

These proclamations in addition to the 1944 education tax and the 1959 health tax together with
the traditional asrat taxation on land (which was levied on the 1/10 of taxation requirement
payable to the state from rist and rist-gult areas in the northern areas) resulted in shaping the
taxation mechanism of the bureaucratic state with its relatively uniform format. The implications
of these on the peasantry and the landowning class took the following general features.

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The mechanism of taxation did not relieve the peasantry from the burdens of taxation whether or
not he/she is a rist holder in the north or the tenant gebbar in the south. The land holding class,
on the other hand, escaped many of the taxation burdens implicated by the taxation reforms at
least for some time till the mid-1960s. The nobility was able to practically appropriate part of the
tax they collected by using their traditional political influence although in lesser proportions.
More than the nobility, the church continued to retain all of its traditional taxation rights and
remained exempted from taxation to the state.

The 1966 Tax Amendment Proclamation, however, significantly changed the taxation regime
established since 1940s. First, it abolished rist-gult rights and subjected both the gultegna and the
gebbar to pay taxes directly to the government. There by it abolished politically derived land
holding rights and weaken its main beneficiary i.e. the nobility. The nobility tried to escape the
loss of land holding rights by claiming the land as their private property especially in southern
areas. (incipient capitalism!?)

The 1967 Income Tax also abolished the asrat taxation collected by the landlord and replaced it
with agricultural income tax. Because the proclamation levied the tax on the income from the
land it for the first time proposed the landlord income to be taxed. However, practically the
landowning class managed to escape taxation on its income as most of the landowners were also
members of the ruling group as well.

In effect, therefore, it was the peasantry that shoulders the burden of a much more efficient and
elaborated taxation system that accompanied the modernization of the state and government
system.

The process of modernization which began with Ethiopia’s increasing integration into the global
capitalist economy transformed the predominantly agricultural based economy with adverse
implications on the conditions of the peasantry.

The international exchange economy increased the demand for commercial agricultural
production to which the subsistence farming of the old gebbar system was unable to support. The
new bureaucratic state opted to replace the subsistence farming with modern methods
and machinery to increase commercial productivity. The implications of these

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transformations were different in the different parts of the country. The southern part for its
ecological and geographical reasons created a huge potential to meet the regime’s demand for
increased production of market oriented agricultural products. To this end the regime tried to
replace subsistence farming with big commercial agriculture establishments. To the southern
tenant the process caused their eviction from their land and turned them into landless agricultural
labors (proletariatization of the peasantry!?).

In the northern areas, the move towards big commercial agriculture did not bring peasant
eviction and landlessness. The traditional rist right continued to secure them their land tenure.
But these did not make their life better off economically. Firstly, the land holding size here was
very small to serve as a viable economic base. Secondly, the regime’s orientation to commercial
agriculture leave the northern peasantry in marginal position as the area was not known for
producing a viable commercial product to the international market such as coffee, for instance.
The transformation with the introduction of commercial agriculture made the northern part suffer
economically by marginalizing it and the southern part by integrating it and scaling up its
‘exploitation’ by the regime.

The most important political implication of such capitalist transformation was the change in the
existing relationship between the state and society. With the position of the landless peasantry
(mostly in the south) and those who own economically less useful small units of land (mostly in
the north) became increasingly disadvantageous, the latent class antagonism of the gebbar
system came to surface.

In general, the period of Hailesselasse witnessed the replacement of the traditional gebbar system
with a modern bureaucratic state system in Ethiopia. The major objective that shaped the
transformation was to weaken the nobility and strengthening the royal powers of the emperor.

The above discussion illuminates how the regime effectively institutionalized governmental
functions in the economic sector to foster economic centralization and safeguard the position of
the throne within ‘modern’ bureaucratic state framework. The modernization process was also
effectively used to disintegrate the political foundations of the gebbar system especially

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those features which gave a political room to the nobility. This took the form of constraining the
provincial power wielded traditionally by administrative structures that concentrate effective
power in Addis Ababa.

The Italian brief occupation of Ethiopia between 1936 and 1941 assisted the new
institutionalization and concentration of power in Addis Ababa. The long system of roads built
by the Italians reduced the spatial distance and enabled easy movement of troops from Addis
Ababa to areas of regional rebellion and enabled the central government to undertake closer
surveillance over regional activities. The guerilla resistance against the Italians caused the death
of many prominent regional types of nobility and some of those survived lost prestige by their
collaboration with the Italians. The Italian occupation already ruined the dominant class of the
nobility so fast that upon his return from exile the emperor found his centralization policies
significantly accomplished.

Towards Royal Absolutism

The regime institutionalized modern instruments of administrative centralization and

enforcement in ways designed and made to co-exist with traditional methods that were also
relevant to the desire of centralization by making the modern institutions non-autonomous and
appendages to the emperor. On top of the façade of modernization was the rather unprecedented
and strong drive towards royal absolutism where effective governmental power remained
monopolized by the emperor.

The Council of Ministers, the Office of the Prime Minster and Individual Ministers

Members of the Council of Minster were individual ministers appointed by and responsible to
the emperor individually. The role of Council was mainly to co-ordinate its members only to
advise the emperor. The role of the prime Minster was to supervise and coordinate their
operations and to convey the king’s orders.

Effective governmental power was monopolized by the emperor. Firstly, the officials were
personally dependent on the emperor. Second, the emperor by letting individual ministers to
bypass the council of Ministers and the Prime Minster made coordinated activity and

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intuitional strength impossible. Third, every decision passed by the council was subjected to final
approval by the emperor. In addition, the council Ministers could not say anything in matters
relating to internal security, defense and foreign affairs. In effect the institutional design gave the
emperor huge personal political power. The political positions as a result, served the goal of
marginalizing its occupants (most of them were from the traditional nobility) from effective
power at the center of politics.

As institutions got stronger, the monarch continued to marginalize the traditional nobility by
selecting individuals from modern sources there by diminishing the nobility as the only source of
selection. The new sources of recruitment to ministerial posts were derived from the western
educated and relatively younger section of the society. These individuals had less or no noble
background and power base and were less conservative than the traditional nobility and a result
more less conforming to the emperor’s power. By inculcating a system of manipulating
individual competition between the two groups and among individuals within the two groups, the
emperor managed to secure more loyalty from individuals who fought to win his personal favor.

Restructuring of the Provincial (Local) Administration

The imperial regime restructured the traditional provincial administration which for long gave
the regional nobility a command over regional activities. For that end it imposed a uniform
administrative structure throughout the country. Fourteen provinces with great variation in area
and population size were set up. These were called provinces (Tekelay Ghizat) which were
divided into sub- provinces ( Awarjia Ghizat) which in turn were divided into districts (Worda
Ghizat) followed by sub- districts (Mikitle Woreda).

These local government units were formally sanctioned by administrative regulations that in
practice curtailed the power of their local governors and other officials. For instance, the units
were forbidden to impose taxes other than fixed by the central government. They were also
prohibited from recruiting a police force of their own with the creation of a standing army that
took over.

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The highest local authority (the governor of province) was appointed by the emperor and was
made directly responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The central government also filled the
lowest local government units by persons directly from the center in addition to and over those
appointed by the governors. At all levels of the local government structures the regime used one
permanent criterion for appointment: personal loyalty to the emperor.

Modern Constitutions

The first “modern’ constitution was proclaimed in 1931. Neither popular demand nor a need for
legitimatizing the authority of the ruling power motivated the regime to proclaim the
constitution. The emperor’s progressive inclination with a view to improve his international
image with a semblance of modernity was one motivation. Primarily, however, the constitution
was designed as a legal weapon in the process of centralization of power.

It established a legal framework to limit the exercise of personal arbitrary and ill-defined
traditional power of the nobility. First, the constitution declared the king ‘sacred’, his dignity
‘inviolable’ and his power ‘indisputable’. Second, the constitution created quasi-representative
institutions in the form of Senate (yaheg mewosegna meker bet) and Chamber of Deputies
(yeheg memberiy meker bet).

The members of the Senate were selected by the emperor from among the nobility and members
of the Chamber of Deputies were proposed by nobility and approved by the king. The 1931
constitution gave no substantial decision making powers to these bodies but made their
occupants only to communicate any idea which may be useful to the emperor. Such important
decisions like approving final decisions, deciding the length of duration of the terms of the
members, the size of the parliament were reserved for the king.

In fact the 1931 constitution did not allow the people to participate in electing the members of
the parliament. Therefore, the constitution was a mere formal restatement of the facts of political
life in Ethiopia in which the unlimited power of the emperor was not constrained at all both in
relation to the nobility and the people. This was because none of the constitutional provisions
curtailed the growing of governmental power. Because the

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institutions to which the nobility filled membership were established in Addis Ababa the
emperor could keep the nobility at closer surveillance.

The overarching goals of the constitution and the resulting formal institutions were to weaken the
powers of traditionally powerful regional nobilities and strengthening the legitimacy of the
regime among the newly emerging urban and modern sector for which traditional values lost
their appealing power. Similar considerations and out comes were also integral part of the 1955
revised constitution.

In general, we can say that the way the imperial regime attempted to centralize power took a
modernization aspect. But it was ‘modern’ not in its full sense. The ‘modern’ institutionalization
of governmental functions had been selectively designed to foster centralization and safeguard
the traditionally conceived position of the emperor. The state bureaucracy was a combination of
the traditional ways of rule (which effectively used inter-personal relations) and a modern way of
rule (legal-rational ways) that relied on modern structures and institutions without autonomous
existence but were entirely appendage to the monarchy.

The Process of Nation-building and the “Modern” Bureaucratic State

The process of state-building as different form nation building was a far more complicated
process even before the modern bureaucratic state. The effective centralization of power
discussed above had also consolidated the state building process. The difficult task of integrating
the many different ethnic and cultural groups that constituted modern Ethiopia under an inclusive
nation-state framework (which is the essential meaning of nation building process) was handed
over to the modern bureaucratic state from the gebbar system.

Change and Continuity in the Modern Bureaucratic System

Like its gebbar system predecessor, the modern bureaucratic state erected by Hailesselasse relied
on an assimilationist tendency of absorbing the diverse ethnic and cultural groups into the culture
of the dominant ruling groups which traditionally conceived the paramount value system in
terms of Christianity and the Amharic language. In these regard the regime

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pursed neither specific policy to bring national integration nor any desire to do so in a new
national framework for integration driven by the diverse composition of the state. These were not
matters of the regime’s public concerns.

In reality, however, religious and cultural problems went in with economic and political
differences in the society. For instance, Orthodox Christianity was the official religion. The
church (i.e. the clergy) was supported by state funds and was exempted from tax. The regime
also maintained the traditional pattern of promoting Amharic language as the only national
language. In fact the regime energetically gave institutionalized channels for Amharic language.
It was the language of instruction in the state school system and for much of the period had been
the language of media broadcasting. These orientations by the regime towards the integration
issue and the question of nation building were indicative of its crude form of cultural suppression
towards other cultural and ethnic groups in the country.

Contradictions of the Bureaucratic State System

Using economic, political, military institutional frameworks within a ‘modern’ bureaucratic state
framework, the regime severely weaken the traditional sources of challenge to royal powers
which was the regional nobility.

Behind the modernization-centralization process laid a strong economic agenda valued by the
regime to establish a system of economic distribution which would further maintain and
strengthen the government’s capacity to centralize economic resources to perpetuate the
privileged position of the ruling class. To this end the regime transformed economic relationships
in the country that centered on land relationships.

The ‘modernization’ process in this respect was designed to deflect any attempts that may seek
to change the existing pattern of economic distribution away from the ruling groups. The
modernization process to these end created not a modern state as the agency of socio-economic
change that would increase the production of social values (primarily material ones) through
mobilization of resources, massive investment and planned development beneficial to the mass
population.

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In these respects the regime’s social-economic attempts were formal than substantial. Whatever
economic development was there to talk about it was limited to some kind of primitive kind of
capitalism supplemented by the state investment in various sectors such as transportation,
communication, electric power etc. The regime’s relative focus on commercial agriculture,
especially on coffee, couldn’t help it pay for its raising expenditure leading the country into
economic crisis since 1950s.

Even the regime’s initial experiment with the economic planning, following the 1950s economic
crisis, by formulating three five year plans (from 1957-1972/13) did not produce meaningful
result. The first two plans paradoxically mistreated the agricultural sector without a meaningful
governmental provision to the agricultural sector. The third five year plan as well did not result
in fundamental transformation of the agricultural sector. Although it seemed to give an attention
to the sector its focus was on the large scale commercial agriculture whereas the basic structural
defects of the agricultural sector had been related to the neglect of the increasingly bankrupting,
as a result, of the dominantly small scale subsistence agriculture.

The third five year plan was a total failure in that the regime could not provide enough
investment to support its plan and it did not address the core structural defects of the agricultural
sector which was related to the small and fragmented nature of the vast majority of land
holdings, the large-scale incidence of absentee landlordism, the massive presence of landless
tenants (especially in the southern part of the country), the prevalence low productivity and
population pressure.

All of these demonstrate the fact that what was created as a modern bureaucratic state was not an
agency of social– economic change but only an apparatus of administration and control with a
tremendous capacity for repression at the disposal of the regime.

The proliferation of governmental functions and the agencies of the modern state facilitated the
demise of the traditional nobility as a social group. The same process as well made the rural mass
a subject of powerful and dominating state bureaucracy with a huge extractive and coercive
capacity. However, the same modernization process accompanied unavoidable

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but undesirable outcome of producing a new social group in the urban areas tracing its origin and
source of power from the modern sectors and its enhanced scope of action and position in the
state structure from the proliferation of governmental functions and agencies of the states.

The Problem of Effective Institutional Development

As we discussed above the monarchical driven bureaucratic state did not create a modern state as
an agency of social–economic change but only established an apparatus of administration and
control with a tremendous capacity for repression at the disposal of the regime. We also
discussed that in the process a new social group in the urban areas tracing its origin and source of
power from the modern sectors and its enhanced scope of action and position in the state
structure from the proliferation of governmental functions and agencies of the states emerged.

This urban group was essentially made out of the urban intelligentsia which came as a new
claimant for power within the society. This middle class sought to fashion a system of
government which it would dominate. Initially the educated class got a closer access to the
political process by winning the favor of the monarch against the traditional nobility as the group
proved indispensable for running the continued institutionalization and bureaucratization of the
governmental process. The imperial regime tried to make the emerging middle class dependent
on it by pursuing patterns of economic allocations that favored the urban areas where the middle
class dominantly found concentrated. The aim was to ensure that the middle class remained
satisfied and accept the subservient position assigned to it by the highly power centralizing and
personalizing emperor. From these excessive centralization drives emerged the initial
contradiction within the state system.

By its nature the young and the educated middle class could not accept a position less than
institution-based power unconstrained by external and arbitrary political interference by the
emperor. It was from this urban based social group that the idea that the household style of rule
by the emperor was not conducive to healthy development of institutionalized process of
government started to take roots. The emerging middle class soon realized the administrative

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structure was a major obstacle to development and characterized by slow pace and misdirection
of the process of modernization.

At the level of governance the rigidly centralized decision making powers reflected itself in
institutional paralysis as modern institutionalization could not flourish the in the midst of huge
personalization power by the emperor. For those groups who filled these rather defunct modern
institutions the implication was a denial of opportunities for institution based power. At higher
and political level the contradiction between the social changes promoted through modernization
(e.g. the emergence of an urban educated middle class by the modern education system) and the
determination by the region to disallow or minimize political change was to produce a sense of
political alienation.

The Challenge of Nation Building Process

The regime’s attempt to maintain a modern national identity using narrower and traditional
definitions that exclude a large part of the population was another of the system’s contradiction.
Crafting national identity around the Amharic language and Orthodox Christianity in a state as
multinational and multilingual as Ethiopia was the main challenge to the regime. It provoked
countervailing attitudes equally narrow and uncompromising. This problem of nation building
reflected itself at two levels.

In the northern part, Amharic language as a national language weakened the traditionally
powerful role of Orthodox Christianity as a common bondage among the two main linguistic
groups of the traditional northern society (Amhara and Tigre). For instance, opposition to the
regime from Eritrea later on demonstrated how groups began to define themselves in a narrower
sense based on language categories to distance from the ruling groups. Ethno-nationalists groups
began emphasizing their ethnic identity as the main factor for their underprivileged positions in
the distribution of power in the “hands of Amhara” ruling elites.

In the southern part the chances for harnessing ethnic sentiment was rather easier given the direct
correlation between unequal distribution of power, status and wealth and ethnic difference.
Given the narrower ethnic composition of the ruling class, actual or potential, the

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idea that the state favored or appeared to favor one ethnic group over others was rather easy to
make and to effectively use ethnicity as an instrument of mobilization against the regime.

Since 1960s and after emerge opportunities for different nationalist groups to give ethnicity its
shaper implications. The slow pace of economic development resulted in the production of
limited economic surplus which the ruling class had no intentions or capacity to share with those
who believe and/or actually were underprivileged. These objective economic gaps agitated the
emerging urban and educated middle class to call for a more equitable distribution of socio
economic values. The education system by producing unemployed urban intelligentsia had also
produced vibrant social group that could articulate effective opposition to the regime.
Furthermore, the regime failed to give appropriate institutional response and at times was
reactive and increasingly rigid.

In the long term the regime’s non reaction provided fertile grounds for the growth of parochial
ethnic based movements in which the increasingly frustrated urban and modern educated group
step in to articulate and mobilize ethnic based opposition to the state.

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 CHAPTER FOUR
The 1974 Ethiopian Revolution

What is a REVOLUTION: Before we discuss the structural causes of the 1974 Ethiopian
Revolution, its immediate causes, its course and dynamics, character and consequences we need
to conceptualize what it means by a revolution. All revolutions in the world have their own
unique characteristics in how they came about.

Defining Social Revolution

Scholars are also not in agreement as to how social revolution is defined. Table 1 shows how
different scholars have defined social revolution. One area of consensus in most of the
definitions provided in the following Table is that social revolution refers to the
transformation of political and socioeconomic systems. Unlike in political revolutions, where
only old political regimes are replaced by new ones, in social revolutions, both political and
economic systems of the old order have to be dismantled. However, one can still identify key
problems in other areas of the definitions provided in the Table.

Most of the definitions provided above refers to revolution as a “rapid” and “violent”
phenomenon. Most, if not all, of these definitions seem to imply that social revolutions are of the
same kind or exhibit the same pattern. This is not the case, however. Indeed, it was Huntington
(1968) who first noticed the difference in the pattern of revolutions. He identified two patterns,
which he referred to as “Western” and “Eastern.” He called the French

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Revolution of 1789, the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and the Russian Revolution of 1917 as
Western Pattern. He labeled the Chinese Revolution of 1949 as an example of the Eastern
pattern.

A key distinction between the two patterns, according to Huntington (1968), was that the
Western pattern occurred in traditional monarchial countries and the Eastern in modernizing
patrimonial states. In addition, in the Western pattern, the sequence in the unfolding of events
was as follows: First, traditional states collapsed; second, social mobilizations followed; and
third, new regimes were institutionalized. In the Eastern pattern, social mobilizations occurred
before the fall of the states, and institutionalization of new regimes came last.

One can also add another distinction between the two patterns: The Western revolutions had
occurred “rapidly,” whereas the Eastern had come “slowly.” For instance, it is clear that the
Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Cuban Revolution of 1959 did not occur over night. They
were slow in coming because insurgents in both countries had to wage protracted guerrilla
warfare against well-armed authoritarian regimes. However, the French Revolution of 1789 and
the Russian Revolution of 1917 occurred spontaneously and thus were rapid. In other words,
social revolutions can be either rapid or slow depending on their pattern. Interestingly, even
Huntington’s own definition of revolution did not account for the variation in the patterns that he
observed. His definition of revolution contains only the word “rapid.” In sum, few scholars seem
to take such a pattern into consideration when they define revolution.

Causes of Revolutions

Before discussing their causes, let us make a distinction between the onset and success of
revolutions, and between spontaneous and planned revolutions. While the success of
revolution heralds the transformation of the old political and economic orders, onset refers to the
initial popular uprisings; these uprisings have to be widespread across rural and/or urban areas
and a vast number of people (often in millions) have to be involved.

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The other point is that we need to pay attention to the two patterns that we have identified earlier:
the Western and Eastern pattern, which is renamed as spontaneous and planned revolutions,
respectively (Gizachew Tiruneh, 2014).

By spontaneous, it mean revolution occurring without deliberate planning but with rapid speed.
Some social revolutions had occurred involuntarily. This does not suggest, however, that leaders
and organizations did not emerge once revolutions were ignited. The point is that nobody would
be able to anticipate or predict, before the onset of a spontaneous revolutionary uprising, that
popular opposition and resentment against the state would be exploding and catching fire across
a given country. The French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the
Chinese Revolution of 1911 satisfy the “spontaneous” pattern.

On the other hand, the guerrilla-based revolutions such as the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and
the Cuban Revolution of 1959 will be referred to as “planned.” By “planned” it means these
types of revolutions were deliberately organized by a group of revolutionaries. Their success also
seems to take a longer time and treacherous roads, and this was especially true with the Chinese
Revolution of 1949.

It should be noted that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is probably one that does not fit neatly in
the “involuntary” or “planned” category. According to Skocpol (1982), “Indeed,

. . . if there has been a revolution deliberately ‘made’ by a mass-based social movement aiming
to overthrow the old order, the Iranian Revolution against the Shah surely is it”.

So, what variables can explain the onset of revolutions? According to Gizachew Tiruneh (2014),
the three most important variables that increase the probability of the onset of revolutions, both
for spontaneous and for planned ones, are economic development, regime type, and state
ineffectiveness.

Economic Development/ Socioeconomic Development

Economic development is believed to stand for the wealth, education, urbanization, and
industrialization of a given country. Economic development changes traditional societies to a

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modern way of life. This has been particularly true since the advent of the Industrial Revolution,
which started in Great Britain in the 18th century. With modern way of life, people tend to
become more educated and are more aware of their political, social, and economic conditions.
This means that the values that have sustained traditional societies for hundreds of years would
start to change. New and more secular values would emerge among the people. People start to
question the legitimacy of traditional regimes and their bureaucracies.

As more people get educated and become wealthy, they tend to demand the achievement of
political rights, such as the right to vote and run for office. They also tend to demand the
presence of civil liberties, such as equality before the law, freedom of speech, and organizational
rights. If such popular demands are not addressed, discontent will likely surface in the minds of
many people. Such discontent may not come into the open for a long time but could be suddenly
triggered by some other factors at any given moment. In sum, as de Tocqueville (1971) argued,
revolutions could come during economic progress.

Moreover, economic development tends to bring much more urban and industrialized ways of
life. As people migrate from rural areas to towns and cities, they may find themselves without
jobs or without sufficient incomes. Workers, a product of industrial life, may also feel exploited
or not getting paid fairly by capital owners. Thus, as Karl Marx argued, economic misery could
make workers revolutionaries.

Unless the government steps in to deal with economic issues, many people could find themselves
unhappy and resentful and could join others if and when a revolution is triggered. Moreover,
peasants who have been exploited by the landed interest or government bureaucracy could take
advantage of revolutionary situations to rise up and demand for land ownership, a fair share of
the crops they harvest, or a lower rate of taxation.

People also could resent if the economy is mismanaged by the government and the overall
quality of life in a society is declining or not improving as expected. For instance, the most
visible, though certainly not the only reason for the collapse of East European communism

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has been economic. However, it should be noted that it is a below mid-level of economic
development that tends to increase the chances for revolution. Once countries reach mid-level of
development, they transition to democratic rule, and democracy is least liable to revolution.

In sum, a variety of reasons including the absence of social equality, lack of political rights and
opportunities, and economic hardships could create discontent among many groups of people in
a given society. In other words, economic development seems to affect different groups of
people differently . Those who would be affected by economic development and be supportive
and participants of revolutions are likely to be the middle and working classes as well as the
peasantry. The upper class is less likely to involve itself in a radical revolutionary environment.
If we have, however, to pick one single class of citizens whose grievances would be most
important for the onset of revolution, it would be the middle class. Intellectuals,
professionals, artisans, small business owners, mid-size and independent farmers belong to the
middle class.

While the peasantry and the workers may be mainly interested in economic issues, the middle
class is likely to demand drastic political reforms and transformations. In addition, the demands
of the workers and the peasantry have often been sidestepped or given little attention by the state.
Moreover, it is a historical fact that neither the peasantry nor the working class is known to have
waged a successful revolution without the vital support and leadership of the middle class. Given
the constant nature of economic grievances among the lower and working classes throughout
history, we may argue that the most important factor in the onset of social revolutions is the role
of the middle class.

It is, thus, when its legitimacy is challenged by the middle class that the state completely or
nearly completely loses its legitimacy to rule and the fabric of its social support is shattered,
increasing the chances for the onset of revolution.

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Regime Type

Although regime type itself may, in large part, be a function of economic development, it seems
to have some independent impact on the onset of revolution. A case in point is that democratic
political systems or regimes have not so far experienced revolutions. Democracies, once
consolidated, tend to have a political culture that promotes negotiations, give-and-take
compromises, redistributive mechanisms, and institutions that deal with group demands; they
also tend to be legitimate. The foregoing suggests that if all countries establish democratic
regimes at some point in time, violent revolution will likely cease to exist.

Social revolutions have rather occurred in traditional autocracies such as in France, Russia,
and Ethiopia and in modern authoritarian regimes, such as Kuomintang’s China and Batista’s
Cuba. Many autocratic and authoritarian regimes may not adjust themselves with timely reforms
when faced with massive and rapid changes wrought by economic development. Communist
regimes do not often allow the presence of alternative parties and civil liberties. Such regimes
could lead to popular discontent and are more vulnerable to revolution.

State Ineffectiveness

The fact that not all autocratic and authoritarian regimes have faced revolution suggests that it is
not regime type per se that would lead to the onset of revolution. Autocratic or authoritarian
states that are quite ineffective may have a higher chance of facing revolutions.

State ineffectiveness refers to the weakness of the state or political leadership in satisfying the
needs and desires of the people. State ineffectiveness may occur when an autocratic or
authoritarian state mismanages an economy or fails to come up with appropriate and efficient
socioeconomic and political policies and reforms that would benefit the majority of the people.
The middle classes would be more willing to support the state if they have greater access to the
political system by having the right to vote, run for office, and freedom

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to speak and organize. The workers might be interested in

securing voting rights, but their main concern would be economic benefits such as wage hikes,
union rights, and good working conditions. The peasantry may be interested in avoiding
excessive taxation as well as securing land ownership. How the state handles the foregoing
issues would matter whether it is vulnerable to revolution or not. States that are ineffective and
tend to be vulnerable to revolution are those that consistently reject societal demands for
political reform and economic welfare and resort to violence to quell dissent.

Some ineffective states also tend to create patron–client relationship, which benefit only a
certain group or segment of a given society. For instance, the leaders of neo-patrimonial
regimes in Latin America, such as Batista in Cuba and Somoza in Nicaragua, created
individualized patronage politics that was susceptible to revolution. State ineffectiveness could
indirectly but empirically be measured by the level of support that the people have to the state.

Triggering Factors

The main conditions —economic development, regime type, and state ineffectiveness—would
need one or two triggering factors to produce the onset of revolution. The triggering factors tend
to ignite a long resentment that seems to have been boiling in the heads of the people. Examples
of triggering factors include war defeat, fiscal crisis, and rising prices. These are variables that
tend to occur suddenly and unexpectedly. Triggering factors are single events (not sets of
conditions) and serve as a catalyst or immediate causes of revolutionary uprisings.

In addition to military forces and some revolutionary individuals, the primary role of triggering
factors seems to be influencing the civilian population. Here, it is important to make a distinction
between the two patterns of revolution. In spontaneous revolutions, the triggering factors may be
war defeat (e.g., Russian in 1905 and 1917), fiscal crisis (e.g., France in 1789), rising prices
(e.g., high oil cost in Ethiopia in 1974. In planned revolutions, however, the triggering factors
seem to be those things that initially inspire the minds of revolutionary leaders. One of such
triggers may be when a leader or leaders is (are) influenced by a revolutionary movement (s).
Another trigger may be when a leader is exposed to an

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ideology. A promise for or getting initial armaments or financial assistance from external sources
could also trigger revolutionary leaders to start revolution. In other words, the

triggers of planned revolutions could be both events (e.g., revolutionary movements) and ideas
(e.g., exposure to ideology or being promised of support).

In sum, revolutionary situations seem to occur when massive and rapid social, economic, and
political factors reshape the people’s sociopolitical value systems and affect their economic
welfare. But for a revolutionary uprising to start, an ignition may have to be provided by a
triggering factor. However, it should be noted that because revolution is a rare phenomenon, a
combination and severity of the main variables as well as one or two triggering factors may
have to be present to increase the likelihood of its occurrence.

‘A revolutionary situation’ and ‘revolutionary outcomes’

For revolutions to be said to have occurred two basic conditions must be fulfilled. These are ‘a
revolutionary situation’ and ‘revolutionary outcomes’. A revolutionary situation basically refers
to the major causes and triggering factors of a revolution that has been discussed earlier.

First, what is called ‘a revolutionary situation’ must exist before the regime in power is
politically overthrown. This situation requires the existence of circumstances within the social
and political order that will inevitably bring about the collapse of the existing institutional order.
In other words, a revolutionary situation refers to the structural problems of the old order and
some of the immediate causes that trigger the political collapse of the regime in power.

Second, there must be some measures taken by the seceding power (rule) to construct a new
institutional order different from the previous one. These refer to as ‘revolutionary outcomes’
that combine the immediate result of revolutionary mobilization and their long term outcome that
would result in a fundamental social transformation of the society.

In the above sense the historical constitution of the modern multinational Ethiopian state and the
political economic dynamics between the state and society constituted the

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structural background that build a revolutionary situation in the country beginning more vividly
from late 1950s.

Causes of the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution

A) The contradictious within the monarchical modernization were the main origins of the
Ethiopian Revolution. The state system created was built on a cultural and on some degree ethnic
core around the identity of Amhara. This cultural core together with Orthodox Christianity had
made the issues important factors for anyone who sought any important part in the political
system. This made the system exclusionary as it hindered the creation of a nation state in
Ethiopia for the system was built around a singular cultural core whereas the state objectively
comprised of peoples of diverse languages and religions.

B) Another structural origin of the revolution had to do with the political economic
conditions of the imperial state. With Ethiopia’s incorporation to the world capitalist economy,
the predominantly peasant-based society and the absolutist monarchical order found themselves
confronted with a new context of rapidly changing situation. The global economy created a
market for commercial agriculture products. The regime responded with participation in the
foreign exchange economy. This was however, driven by the regime’s desire to earn a foreign
income to pay for the goods and services which it needed to maintain the privileged position of
the ruling groups. This was done through the dissolution and preservation of pre-capitalist social
relations in the different parts of the country.

In the northern part, preservation of the pre-capitalist relation especially over the control of land
was by and large left intact. The traditional social structure such as the rist system prevented the
regime from transforming the area’s predominantly subsistence farming
into commercial agriculture. In addition, the northern area was geographically and ecologically
unsuitable for the commercial cash crop production such as coffee. The net effect was that the
northern peasantry although saved from experiencing huge scale land alienation, faced economic
marginalization as the regime neglected their subsistence farming

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to the extent that the region suffered from drought, erosion and famine and large scale
dislocation.

In the southern part, the world commercial economy produced a new socio-economic structure
for its geo-ecological suitability for the commercial economy and for the relative absence of
social structure to give the pleasantry an opportunity to exercise control over land. The regime
embarked on large-scale commercial agriculture the implication of which on the peasantry was
large-scale land alienation.

In this regard it can be said that the advent of capitalism formed one of the structural origins of
the revolution. The capitalism was uneven in its development with a marked regional disparity
where the mass or the population suffered marginalization and exploitation whereas the
dominant ruling class kept on enlarging its wealth accumulation which brought the
differentiation on political economic and social terms between the ruling group and the agrarian
mass much more vivid and increasingly sharper.

C) The imperial system’s way of exercising governmental power and authority formed the
other of the structural causes of the Ethiopia revolution. The highly personalized style of rule
characterized by interpersonal lack of trust posed a considerable difficulty. In large part, the
system made it difficult if not impossible for independent institutional development in that
reliance on personal loyalties militated against dispersion and delegation of power and
establishment of effective administrative apparatus. The 1960 coup marked the growing rift
between the regime and the modern sector. These rifts took a radical shift when the students
expand the idea of change it advocated into huge magnitudes. To their growing radicalization
contributed their experiencing of economic alienation. As they came to realize the fact that the
state could no longer absorb them into its economic structure or create an alternative source of
employment, the prospect became very grim to the students. They went on with a manifest and
sustained opposition to the regime. The highest stage of their radicalization was reflected when
they began articulating what they called their ‘role in the
society’. Accordingly, the students took as their role in the society to make the masses conscious
of the suffering they were enduring which a long socialization process made the

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society respect the authority of the feudal hierarchy. The sense of alienation felt by the modern
sector although vivid with student was also prevalent in the armed force.

The 1960 coup was the first indication of the regime’s increasing incapability to continue to use
manipulation and factionalism to keep the military divided in its view of the emperor. From that
time onwards it had become clear that the imperial regime could no longer contain the
resentment developed against the regime by its differential treatment of high officials and junior
military rank and file.

Precipitating Causes of the Ethiopian Revolution

Dear student, the events that led to the collapse of the imperial regime that we discussed above
traced their structural causes from the contradictions inherent in that system. These were
reflected in increasing alienation of groups in the urban areas (students, urban unemployed, the
civil bureaucracy and the military) and worsening conditions of rural Ethiopia in terms of
increasing marginalization, exploitation and socio cultural subordination of different peoples in
the country.

Political Overthrow of the Imperial Regime

The Ethiopian revolution in its early stage i.e in the immediate political overthrow of the
emperor was largely an urban phenomenon where the rural oppositions we saw above played a
minor rule. Even as an urban phenomenon, the revolution was not made by an organized mass
movement. This characterized the Ethiopian revolution as spontaneous revolution in that the
imperial state prior to its fall in 1974 faced no formidable urban and/or rural organized mass
movement and did not experience organized armed resistance.

The inception of the revolution as a spontaneous and un-organized upheaval made it clear that
even before 1974 the imperial regime lacked the resources of political organization and
legitimacy to stave off the potential urban opposition and to withstand an uprising of urban
discontent from gaining intensity and inevitable expansion into rural areas where the regime’s
bankruptcy in many areas became much more obvious.

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The revolution was phenomenal for its spontaneity in that its opening phase was consisted in a
series of mutinies, strikes and demonstration which progressively helped mobilization of the
urban opposition to the regime. The first of the military mutinies was by soldiers and NCOs
(Non-Commission officers) in the small military garrison in Neghelle in Jan 1974. This was
initially ignited by the worsening living conditions by the soldiers but later on took political
overtones when the mutineers arrested their senior officers. It was important in that it indicated
the powerlessness of the regime to control the military dissent and it was followed by other
mutinies in Asmara and Addis Ababa. In fact, these military rebellions were isolated and were
not under any united command.

The teachers and students alarmed by the implication of the new education sector review, which
proposed an expansion of basic education in the country side and a relative restriction on
secondary and university education in towns, erupted into the first demonstration in Addis
Ababa. Tax drivers also went on strike against the government’s refusal to let them raise fares in
response to OPEC’s oil price increase.

As far as the urban mass was concerned, for the first time in the history of imperial absolutism in
Ethiopia, they were mobilized by the Central Ethiopian Labor Union (CELU) and staged the first
ever general strike and took on an active role in the upheavals of 1974.

From the above it can be said that as it was started the revolution was a mass based movement
concentrated in urban areas. The relative absence of the rural section in the initial phase showed
the fact of the lack of organized political or military movement prior to the revolution that could
link the urban and the rural oppositions to the regime. The urban groups could not mobilize the
rural sector which otherwise was cut off from the regime.

The imperial regime could not organize the rural community to mobilize it and use it to defend
the system. Well before the revolution the imperial regime already debased from its traditional
power base in rural Ethiopia and the regime proved incapable to construct effective rural linkage
with regional interests, due to failed socio economic endeavors and integration drives and weak
institutional and administrative structures. In general, it can be said that although initially
centered on the urban areas and lacked organized platform,

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events in 1974 showed that both civil society and forces within the coercive and non coercive
apparatus of the state were in different directions moved against the imperial absolutism.

The fact that the imperial regime was overthrown by relatively unorganized mass movement
showed how deeply weak already gone the regime either to deliver the society by its measures to
regain the support of the mass and /or to buy off the armed force and used it against the mass to
impede its rather inevitable collapse. For instance, liberalization measures or reforms by
appointing Endalkachew Mekonen as prime minister proved too little. His efforts to draw up a
constitution that would create a constitutional monarchy which would devolve power from the
monarchy gave no hope of sustaining the imperial regime. Such liberalization moves were seen
little more than an admission of the regime’s own loss of control in the state system.

Revolutionary Mobilizations in the Ethiopian Revolution

The important consequence resulted from the Ethiopian revolution’s spontaneous and
unorganized character was the creation of a power vacuum with which the question of who or
what would replace the imperial regime became important.

Post-Revolutionary Order: Different urban groups brought the political overthrow of the imperial
regime. All of those urban actors did not form an organized unit under a unified leadership or
agenda regarding what was to follow leaving open the most important question of who would
control the post-revolutionary order. It was in this power vacuum that the armed force which was
the sole available source of organized political power stepped in and eventually overthrew
Hailesselasse I and took control of the revolutionary process when Derg was established as a
centralizing group within the military.

In a way to absolute power Derg had to fight with groups with in or out and defined itself as an
actor in the revolutionary process defying others who hoped to use it for their own ends and it
emerged as one big contender alongside many others. But before Derg exercise full control of
events, following the down fall of the emperor, there emerged other groups within the Derg and
importantly outside of it that put forward their own version for the post-revolutionary order. The
Derg was constituted out of hundred men drawn from the different

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section of the military departments. The Derg initially lacked a coherent leadership or policy and
was caught by personal, factional and policy disputes. These later on gave way to the effective
dictatorship of groups within the Derg under the dictatorship of Mengistu Hailemariam through a
complex and extremely violent process.

In urban areas the most important power contenders included the Derg, civilian groups (students,
the urban proletariat and the urban unemployed). It was from these urban civilian groups that the
Ethiopian left radicals came out in the form of EPRP (the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary
Party) and Meisone (All Ethiopian Socialist Movement). By and large these groups fought over
the control of towns and thereby the control of power in the country.

Another level of power contestant in post-revolutionarily period was between the Derg and
groups which did not take a direct part in the urban upheaval in the initial phase of the
revolution. Groups that fought the Derg at this level were based on rural areas and they battle for
the control of the periphery. Included in this category were noblemen and landlords whose
political position was swept away by the overthrow of the monarchy. This kind of aristocratic
and anti-revolutionary opposition was formally organized into EDU (Ethiopian Democratic
Union) under the leadership of traditional noble men such as Ras Mengesha Seyum of Tigray.

Another category of peripheral contenders took on the form of secessionist movements such as
EPLF in Eritrea, TPLF in Tegray, OLF in Oromia, and WSLF in Somalia etc. The mobilization
process in post-revolutionary order deals with how the different contenders fought out for the
control of towns and urban center and how in the process Derg assumed effective control over
the revolutionary process. The Derg’s (an Amharic term for committee) participation in the
revolutionary process began as a parliament of the armed force with hundred and eight
representatives from each of the main units of the army (air force, navy, and police).Until the
Derg saw the imperial regime was powerless to prevent any of its activities (e.g. following
Derg’s arrest of imperial officials) it acted as semi-clandestine power co-existing with the highly
powerless imperial government. It was only after nationalizing

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the assets of the empower, abolishing of the imperial court and deposition of the emperor in
September 1974 that Derg formally began acting like a government taking the title of Provisional
Military Administration Council (PMAC) and began issuing proclamations on its name.

Derg’s increasing accession to effective power however, was not the result of Derg’s articulation
of any clear revolutionary agenda. Initially it was characterized by ideological confusion,
factional, personal and policy disputes. Derg, as a result, was very much the making of the
revolution itself as the framework for revolutionary change in the country was articulated by
groups outside the Derg. The lack of coherent program in the part of Derg was reflected in its
first proclamation of its ‘revolutionarily agenda’, with its slogan of Ethiopia tikdem. The slogan
can not be taken as revolutionary and only showed Derg’s initial confusion and represented more
of continuity than a radical change. The slogan confused a ‘revolutionary change’ with a
commitment to vague nationalism or national unity and a commitment to the monarchy only
attacking the corruption of imperial officials. The change it requested was the rather unclear
demand for ‘lasting change’.

For the civilian groups Derg could not realize any revolutionary change and considered it as an
illegitimate power usurper that only high jacked the Ethiopian revolution. Civilian groups
criticized Derg as having no idea of what a revolutionary change should look like and called for
the formation of a civilian government. It appeared that Derg lacked familiarly with Marxist-
Leninist ideas which most of Derg’s civilian opponents considered the only way to effect a
revolutionary change in the country. Rather than giving up power to the radical and Marxist
intellectuals who formed the civilian groups, Derg went on maintaining its hold on power by
adopting some of the radical measures demanded by the civilian Leftist groups and went on
considering the possibility of far deeper ‘Marxist’ changes under its auspices.

The principal ideas and programs carried on under Derg’s auspices did qualify for a socialist
revolutionary change. But they did not originate within the Derg but within the leftist civilian
groups. To the disgrace of these groups, Derg effectively plagiarized the fundamental tenants and
slogans of the left, robbed their major programs and effectively competed

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with them. If what was demanded by the leftist was a revolutionary change and leadership then
Derg by engaging itself in close imitation of the ideas of socialism which the left introduced and
by producing such great socialist reforms like the land reform made it practically difficult for the
left groups to alienate Derg as non-revolutionary.

With these, Derg even went to the extent of dividing the two important leftist groups in their
view of the Derg especially the two most important leftist civilian groups of EPRP and Mesion.
EPRP and Meison formed by Marxist intellectuals mostly 1975 after the upheaval of the 1974
revolution. By comparison with Derg these civilian leftist groups were late comers to the
revolutionary process. Even without their divergent views about the Derg, the two parties from
the very beginning were far more antagonistic to one another. Each of them regarded itself as the
only rightful Marxist-Leninist Party to eventually succeed to power. The two parties also differ
in their origin, leadership, ethnic balance, goals and tactics. Such divergences were so deep that
the two parties could not able to forge a common ideological front even by their acceptance of
the core values of national unity and strong central government.

Derg’s increasing stance towards radical socialism was reflected in its programs for
revolutionary change. It replaced its rather vague slogan of ‘Ethiopia tekidem’ first by the ten-
point program in December 1974 and later by a more radical program of PNDR(Program of the
National Democratic Revolution) in March 1975.The ten-point program although relatively clear
had still combined nationalism and socialism of some kind in what Derg called Ethiopian
Socialism. The first aspect can be seen from the assertion that Ethiopia would remain united
without ethnic, religious and the like differences. The socialist orientation can be seen from such
assertions that outline the state to control the entire economy and the prospect for the
government to nationalize some private enterprises.

The ten-point program cannot be considered as radical enough in the Marxist sense. By
restricting the right to own land to those who work on it only put on the initial blow to some
aspects of Ethiopian feudalism (most notably absentee landlordism) without explicitly
prohibiting private ownership of land.

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In a move to discredit its civilian Marxist opponents and establish its revolutionary credential in
the face of the world socialist state (especially USSR), Derg went on producing a much more
radical socialists measures. The PNDR was worth mentioning here.

In March 1975 proclamation on the nationalization of rural land, Derg abolished not only private
ownership of land granted by the ten-point program but also the different land tenure system of
feudal Ethiopia. The proclamation by declaring rural land the collective property of the Ethiopian
people and vesting formal ownership of land on the state and its actual management to the state
sponsored and controlled Peasant Association, showed Derg’s increasing radicalization.

These had important impacts on the civilian groups. Their main revolutionary agenda being
taken away by the Derg, they became preoccupied with the Derg no longer on fundamental ideal
of socialism but desperately preoccupied with taking political power away from the Derg.

On principle basis EPRP did not acknowledge Derg’s socialist credential criticizing it as
militarist with no substantial basis to claim Marxist- Leninist credential. EPRP went on
demanding the establishment of civilian government. Meison, on the other hand, acknowledged
Derg’s socialist credential and forged what it called ‘critical support’ to the Derg. This initially
gave Meison a political space to continue its mobilization and relative participation and
domination of the socialist reform together with the Derg.

In addition, Mesion used the coercive state apparatus to fight its main ideological rival, EPRP by
forming a common front with the Derg. For Meison, collaboration with the Derg was only
strategic in which it believed to adopt the Derg, educate it and finally took power over form it.
For the Derg, collaboration with Meison provided it with the intellectual and ideological sources
to purse radical transformation under its auspices. The collaboration between the two in terms of
destroying their common enemy i.e EPRP was successful.

What was infamously known as ‘red terror’ in Ethiopian history was the result of the relentless
killing pursed by each rival group in their pursuit for controlling of towns and urban centers and
ultimately political power.

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In the first phase of this urban terror (1975-1978) Derg in collaboration with Mesion effectively
destroyed EPRP from its urban base. By mid-1977 the regime in power control over major
towns. After dealing with EPRP’s challenge, Derg wanted to avoid its dependence on Meison.
The fact that Meison continued working on its own separate organization, continued to build up
its institutional position in the government by dominating such institutions like kebles, the Media
and Political School proved no longer tolerable for the Derg. This formed the second phase of
the ‘red terror’ in which Derg turned on Meision and drove it out of the government structure
and completed the last and significant of urban based oppositions to the Derg.

Key Aspects of the Revolutionary Outcome and Their Political Implications

Transformation of the Rural Land Relationships

In rural areas, the radical land nationalization proclamation in 1975 abolished the feudal aspects
of rural relation of production and thus abolished the entire economic basis of the landlord class.
The political implications of this radical measure, however, were not similar throughout the
country. The pre-existing pattern of land tenure systems in the different parts of the country sat
in differing contexts of the policy reception.

In the ‘southern’ areas where landlord class owned large areas of land and where the peasantry
were tenants, the proclamation did remove a major source of exploitation as it provided the
peasantry with access to land. This did win the Derg, at least for some time, support and loyalty
during the critical period in the revolution where Derg needed to consolidate its hold on to power
against its Leftist radical urban opponents.

In the ‘northern areas’, however, the land proclamation did not have the warmest of receptions. It
was not welcomed in the north because the northern peasantry did enjoy a customary tenure of
one sort or another that ‘secured’ them effective control over land. As such the proclamation was
seen as a threat. It was seen as a threat because of three reasons. Firstly, the land proclamation
entailed the nationalization of land. Secondly, it entailed land redistribution. Thirdly, it also in
principle removed the peasants’ traditional right to dispose of their land by making ownership of
land the legal right of the state.

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Politically speaking, therefore, the land proclamation was critical in defining who would be in
the favor of the new regime and who would be against it. The differential impacts of the land
proclamation can be seen from its impacts on the social stratification of the rural community, on
the change in the status of the majority of the peasants in relation to the actual size of their
holdings and as a result on the changes in the agricultural production.

The proclamation by abolishing landlordism redefined the peasantry’s unequal access to the
means of production by granting every peasant usufruct (user) rights over land. Here is the real
benefit and impact of the land proclamation.

However, the expectations from the land proclamation to result in increased agricultural
production proved difficult. It turned out that the policy assumption was by far too simplistic.

It was assumed that by freeing the peasantry form the landlord exploitation the proclamation
would gave extra incentive for farmers. But the land proclamation did not actually increase the
size of land holding to the peasants. It did actually distributed land that was already under
cultivation by the peasants exposing the land to a greater pressure leading to over cultivation and
further reductions in the size of plots, which with increasing agricultural and ecological
degradation culminated in 1984 famine. As a result, the land proclamation remained in actual
sense a transformation of the legal status in the pre-revolutionary landholding system.

The implementation of the land proclamation had also important political implications that
influenced and shaped the Derg. It was proclaimed in the early stage of the revolution where
Derg had to deal with the intensifying challenges in the urban areas and at the time where it
lacked administrative capacity to implement it. As a result, Derg’s insistence to carry on the
implementation of the proclamation marked a critical phase in the revolution. It represented the
expansion of the revolution throughout Ethiopia from its essentially urban context into the
otherwise ‘distant’ rural Ethiopia.

By establishing rural Peasant Associations (yegebere maheberat) as peasant self-administering

units with powers to confiscate and distribute land, Derg in practice left the

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implementation of the land proclamation to the peasants themselves. To this effect the regime
sought to mobilize 50,000 students and teachers from urban areas under the program commonly
known as the zemecha (National Development through Co-operation Campaign) to assist the
Peasant Association.

For the regime the mobilization helped it compensate for its weak administrative capacity. As the
participants in the zemecha were potential and actual opponents to the regime in urban areas, the
program helped the regime remove them from the urban centers where they could directly
threaten the regime. These were not, however, without risks. The mobilization often resulted in
the mobilization of the rural political force with and by the urban political forces against the
regime as the urban based opponents to the regime used the opportunity to infiltrate the zemecha
participants to establish link with the rural community and to recruit for their revolutionary
armies.

In general the basic institutional units and frameworks for further consolidation and organization
of the rural community were laid by the process of zemecha. Later on Derg maintain these
institutions as part of its local government structures a stable framework of political order and
institutionalized power. These institutional frameworks gave a relatively stable political order
until the Derg regime was challenged by more stronger and rural based oppositions which
brought its down fall in 1991.

The Ethiopian Revolution and the Question of Political Democracy

The institutionalizations of power by the Derg regime were aimed at designing the means of
control in the urban and rural areas. Derg’s structures of control were shaped by the
revolutionary dynamics that gave it unlimited power to regulate the life of citizens. Conceiving
state power in Marxist-Leninist terms, Derg institutionalized power by more brutal way.

New proclamations which created new offices were issued to increase the power of the
government and to bring the judicial process more closely under its control. The regime
enhanced its control over political power by prohibiting any independent political movements as
illegal and counter revolutionary.

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The regime’s basic means of control was the armed forces. The regime increased the size of
armed forces eight fold. It also organized local militia groups and adjoined a military branch in
every of its local administrative units such as Urban Dwellers Associations (kebeles) in urban
areas and peasant associations (yegebere maheberat) in rural areas. The Derg period saw huge
militarization of state and society. For instance, the regime proclaimed national military service
which demanded Ethiopians aged between 18 and 30 to provide a two year effective and
compulsory military service.

A second means of control was the Ministry of Public and National Security. This created an all
pervasive security network throughout the country to monitor at close range every activity of the
politically active section of the society.

Another means of control was the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE). The WPE was a disciplined
and centrally controlled party for implementing the policies of Derg. Because WPE maintained a
network of political organization over every other institutions in the country such as the military
and the various mass organizations and local government structures it provided Derg with a
common and effective administrative and control framework.

All of these institutional establishments showed Derg’s authoritarianism and its increasing
disinterest towards the demands of political democracy. The institutions were designed to
reinforce and legitimatize Derg’s desire to maintain its absolute control.

By creating the WPE, for instance, as the only legitimate political party and putting all other
aspects of mass organizations under its strict control, the regime curtailed political development
in the country. Until its downfall, Derg controlled and managed power through a centralized,
enlarged party-military apparatus which effectively denied a real power transfer to the Ethiopian
population.

Derg and the Crisis of the Rural Economy

The crisis of the rural based agricultural economy formed one of the structural sources of the
Ethiopian revolution. Derg’s ‘socialist’ approach to this was underpinned by the assumption

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that the peasantry once freed form landlord exploitation and given a security over land would get
incentive to scale up production.

The nationalization of the rural lands achieved the first aspect in that it destroyed the landlord
class and ‘restored’ the means of production (land) to the producers themselves. By this Derg
appeared to remove the main institutional obstacle to rural production in the ancien regime.

However, Derg pursed other policies that in practice created another structural or institutional
obstacle to agricultural transformation. Its ‘socialist’-informed commitment to a strong state
command economy together with the pressure on the land (due to frequent land redistribution)
and the creation of new governmental extractive mechanisms(state farms, agricultural producers
cooperatives, villagization, Agricultural Marketing Corporation and the like) imposed on the
peasantry brought sharp decline in agricultural production. In the economic sector Derg wanted
to exercise strong state control over production and distribution.

To control production and ultimately the producers the regime organized peasants into
Agricultural Producer’s Cooperatives (yegeberawoch yehebert sera maheberat). These
cooperatives were composed of peasant families under a peasant association pooling their
resources to produce in common. In spite of Derg’s commitment to encourage peasants to form
cooperatives, through such incentives as allocations of good land, access to credit and services,
majority of the peasants remained non-volunteer to form cooperatives.

As such the intention to raise rural production through cooperatives did not succeed. In fact the
cooperatives happened to create income gaps as those who benefited were mostly the leaders of
such cooperatives. Like every other of Derg’s rural policies and the resultant institutional setups,
the cooperatives ultimately end up being mechanisms of controlling the peasantry.

Derg’s desire to control distribution can be seen from its establishment of the Agricultural
Marketing Corporation (AMC) in 1976. The AMC was established to buy agricultural produce
from farmers for domestic consumption by compelling the peasantry to sell their produce to

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the government at substantially less than market price. Because the regime organized the
peasants under the state farms and producer cooperatives and because it brought those under its
direct control the government was able to transfer peasant’s produce through the AMC.

In general, the promise of the land proclamation to increase agricultural productivity under
Derg’s Marxist-Leninist political economic framework was a failure. Derg’s insistence for the
need of large scale production through state farms, producer cooperatives and villagization
together with government-controlled mechanisms of distribution proved to be more fundamental
structural detects.

The ‘question of nationalities’, the Revolution and Derg

The nature of the ‘question of Nationalities’ or political ethnicity in Ethiopia has been associated
with the pattern of the Ethiopian state formation. The pattern was based on the building of the
Ethiopian state around a central Ethiopian nationalism which subjected many different peoples to
a generalized Orthodox Christian and Amharized identity in a process that involved territorial
annexation, land alienation and great deal of exploitation of the people.

The ‘nationality question’ that the period of Derg saw in its critical status was the combined
outcome of three interrelated elements. These are the pattern of state formation, the pattern of
socio- economic change and the effects of the 1974 revolution.

The pattern of state formation eventually gave the Amharic language, culture and identity a
quintessential status. From time to time the definition of the so called Amharic culture as a
national and implicitly superior category defying the status of others became reinforced by the
imposition of central control and accompanied by substantial level of physical force and
economic exploitation.

The Showan core and its association with the creation of the modern state and the central statist
ideology progressively reinforced the idea of equating Ethiopian nationalism with an orthodox
Christian and generalized Amharic identity as the basis for an inclusive Ethiopian nationalism.
This aroused resentment not only from those newly incorporated areas but also

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from those who were historically part of the Ethiopian core (such as Tigray and Eritrea). The
pattern of state formation therefore set in motion the general background for ethnic politics.

Built-in the historical patterns the social challenges that accompanied the consolidation of the
modern state further gave ethnic politics its shaper manifestations. The social changes were
associated with the emergence of an export capacity with agricultural products such as coffee,
hides and skin with which the pre-revolutionary imperial regimes wanted to enhance the state’s
capacity and access to modern institution, technology and armaments.

For social-economic reasons, this export economy together with the evolving domestic cash
economy created by urbanization and spread of communication was heavily concentrated in the
center and south of the country. The export economy shifted the central position of dominantly
cereal producing subsistence farming of the northern areas into the cash crop producing southern
areas. As a result the new economic reality made the northern highland to be marginalized with
its dominantly subsistence economy.

It was, therefore, not primarily the nature of the state as a representative of a single ethnic group
or nationality that gives objective condition for the emergence of modern ethnicity in Ethiopia. It
was rather the uneven economic changes which tended to run counter to the pattern of political
exclusion and inclusion from the historically dominant role of the northern areas that accounted
for the politicization of ethnicity in Ethiopia.

The increasing politicization of ethnicity and the definition of the state an Amhara state were
reinforced by the political economic factors that accompanied the consolidation of the modern
state and central position assumed by the Showan groups from the northern area. Whereas the
economic changes at the country level led to the incorporation of the southern areas, the historic
north found itself economically neglected and its politically active elite politically alienated.

Regarding how to deal with the ‘question of nationalities’ in the Ethiopia revolution major
participants shared the idea that the national political culture in the pre-revolution period was
largely defined in terms of the language, religion and values of the northern area and the
Amharic core in general and in particular respectively.

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Derg’s position in this regard was both continuity and change from the pre-revolutionary period.
In a similar fashion to the old order, Derg continued to uphold the idea of national unity although
it determined to do so by divorcing Ethiopian nationalism of the earlier period from the religious,
social and cultural trappings of the past.

Derg only attempted to confront ethnicity as a cultural issue and sat about redressing the
‘wrongs’ of the past. Its cultural orientation included denouncing the ‘Abyssinian chauvinism’ of
the past regimes, allowing the printing, broadcasting and teaching of other languages, raising the
status of Islam by recognizing Muslim holidays, debasing Orthodox Christianity from its official
status, proclaiming the equality of all nationalities and cultures and promising regional autonomy
and self-government.

Derg, by overthrowing the economic basis of the feudal order and the social basis of economic
exploitation claimed to have ended the nationality and class oppression at the same time.
However, the nationality question during the Ethiopian revolution continued to became even
more politically sensitive.

First, Derg no longer wanted to give the political significance of ethnicity and the resultant
nationalism in Ethiopia by reducing the national contradiction to cultural
oppression which would only require cultural emancipation of formerly subordinate groups. By
its emphasis on cultural emancipation, Derg’s approach to Ethiopia’s ‘question of nationality’
can be categorised as one of ‘cultural nationalists’ who believe that the cultural life of the nation
must be allowed to flourish and develop. But ‘cultural nationalists’ do not necessarily view the
political demands of the ethnic or the national groups on the basis of a general will (often
understood as an historic purpose) that must be allowed to govern itself, to control the national
homeland, and if necessary to assert its rights against other nations.

Derg as cultural nationalist claimed to subject the political demand of nationalist groups to a
political environment that would only provide enough freedom for different ethnic groups a right
to local self-administration viewing a political demand for national self-determination including
secession by nationalities as a threat to the integrity of the Ethiopian state and was not tolerant of
those.

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Second, Derg’s approach to the question of nationality and its ways of institutionalizing it was
far from acceptable to its opponents. Derg’s formal recognition of the rights of ethnic groups to
national cultural emancipation rapidly became meaningless and unsatisfactory.

Derg’s promise to decentralize self-government and regional autonomy was practically less
substantial in that it monopolized and centralized power and did not tolerate any independent
expression of regional identity.

It was unsatisfactory because there were important ethnic based militant nationalist groups
(which can be differentiated from cultural nationalists and can be labeled as political nationalist)
which saw the right to self-determination to include the right to secession by claiming the
nationality question as the primary political contradiction in Ethiopia.

Derg’s nationalist opposition groups articulate what they believed should be the political
significance ethnicity form such an understanding that the key political character of ethnicity in
Ethiopian context must be seen in terms of each nations in Ethiopia as having its own character
that demanded the political freedom to develop in its own way to flourish and it cannot be made
subject to laws designed for another people.

For these nationalist and rural based groups (such as EPLF, TPLF, OLF etc) which brought
Derg’s down fall in May 1991, cultural emancipatory policies pursued by the Derg regime and
Derg’s attempt to depoliticize ethnicity could not deter them from claiming to a redrawing of
political boundaries in Ethiopia in a way that respects the national identities of the peoples in
question, whether these are claims for a harder boundaries between states ( as demanded by the
EPLF in Eritrea and OLF in Oromiya, or the softer boundaries that divide, for example, the
members of a federation( as later on preferred by TPLF and OLF) or a confederation.

The political economic conditions that gave ethnicity a sharper political manifestations during
the Derg period was the combined outcome of economic failure, institutional decay and effective
use of ethnicity for political mobilization against Derg’s centralizing approach and its huge
political and military repression.

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In the northern areas especially in Eritrea and Tigray the collapse of subsistence economy
together with population pressure, land degradation, uncertain rain fall, policy neglect, the lack
of producing a viable export commodity that would tie the areas with the international economy
contributed to its continued economic marginalization and the resultant political alienation and
the region’s huge vulnerability for politicization of ethnicity. Here, the land proclamation did not
win Derg any substantial support. If anything the nationalization of land was seen not so much of
liberating as the proclamation took away the peasants’ traditional control over their plot.

In southern areas, the regime could not capitalize on the initial political support provided to it by
the land proclamation. The intensified exactions of the government through increased tax on
export production which the area was the main source and the imposition of grain production
quotas cancel the initial gains of the southern peasantry.

At the country level, Derg’s increasing demand for military conscription was also economically
burdensome. The villagization campaign which herded the peasantry into centralized villages
had the negative outcome on reducing peasant work morale and reduced their productivity only
enhancing the regime’s control over the rural mass. The net effect of AMC was also disastrous
like that of the producer’s cooperatives. Derg’s multifaceted failures at different levels
contributed to the militarily mounting nationalist opposition to made use of ethnicity as the best
tool for political mobilization by the rural based nationalist groups and to further alienate the
Derg regime away from the people. Politicization of ethnicity at last become effective mobilizing
agenda for aggregating the resentment against the Derg regime which culminated in the victory
of ethnic based groups in Ethiopia in post 1991 period the chief architecture of which is EPRDF.

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 CHAPTER FIVE
Post Derg Ethiopia: EPRDF

A new dispensation in restructuring the Ethiopian state along ethnic federalism began to unfold
in 1991. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), under its umbrella organization, the
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), assumed state power in May
1991. Some of the measures undertaken by TPLF/EPRDF reflected the same pattern of
marginalizing prevalent in Ethiopian politics. The Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) of the
deposed Derg regime was immediately abolished, top-level former government officials were
dismissed and the army was disbanded. Largely, the fall of the military regime was not only seen
as the fall of a regime, but as the collapse of the modern state formation that had been in the
making since the late nineteenth century.

The July 1991 “Peace and Democracy Conference”

The National Conference on Peace and Democracy in July 1991 was organized as the foundation
for a transitional period after the regime change. However, the conference had excluded many of
the political groups from participation. The conference largely included selected individuals and
over 20 political organisations handpicked by TPLF/ EPRDF. Those who were encouraged to
participate were predominately ethnic-based groups, which were either already in existence or
organised immediately prior to the conference.4 Multi-national organisations or other ethnic-
based organisations that might pose a threat to the new status quo were systematically excluded
from the process. The remnants of the student movement, the Ethiopian Revolutionary
Democratic Party (EPRP) and the All Ethiopian Socialist Movement (Meison) were not invited
to attend the conference.

A major setback of the conference was a firm control and domination of the process by
TPLF/EPRDF. The TPLF/EPRDF managed the conference and kept participation and the
eventual outcome firmly under its control. In light of this, the outcome of the transitional
conference, the transitional charter, is therefore more a result of an agenda predetermined by
the EPRDF and partly by the Oromo Liberation Front(OLF), rather than a pact between all the
organisations that participated at the conference.

The Transitional Charter

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The transitional charter served as interim-constitution that governed the Transitional Government
of Ethiopia(TGE) until 1994. The principles incorporated in the charter largely reflected the
political programme that had been advocated by TPLF/EPRDF. The charter accepted the rights
of all of Ethiopia’s nationalities to self-determination, including secession and established local
and regional councils based on nationality. Accordingly, the country was divided into 14
administrative regions called kilil. The conference had also established ‘an 87-member Council
of Representatives (COR), in which the largest number of seats was held by the TPLF/EPRDF.

The most serious shortcoming of the conference was its disregard of

multinational organisations in general and pan-Ethiopian nationalism in particular.
A crucial aspect of decentralist and balanced federalist ideologies is that the
federal bargain should be based on a covenant, where the various political forces
in the country voluntarily agree to make arrangements for power-sharing and the devolution of
power. In light of this principle of federalism, there are two major political forces that need be
considered in the Ethiopian context, namely pan-Ethiopian nationalism versus ethnic
nationalism. Disregarding this fundamental reality, the transitional charter was devoted solely to
the ‘right of nationalities’ and overlooked pan-Ethiopian nationalism that had been in the process
of crystallization in previous decades.

Ethnic Federalism in Post 1991 Ethiopia: Theoretical Arguments for and Against

Justifications/Arguments for Ethnic Federalism

What moral or instrumental reasons justify granting an ethnic group the right to form its own
political community-that is, what is it about ethnic community that justifies its use as a basis for
redesigning states?

The Ethno-nationalist Argument

Ethno-nationalism is the belief that the distinctiveness of a particular people and their right to
self-rule in their homeland. The right to self-rule can be satisfied through a variety of
institutional arrangements. These are the right to secede and establish an independent state

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and regional autonomy within a federal. In either case, the ethno-nationalist principle requires
political communities to be defined in such a way that political and cultural (or ethnic)
boundaries must, as a matter of right, coincide. To ethno-nationalists, such a framework is
essential because it allows ethnic communities to live in accordance with their customs and
traditions and to use their own languages.

Promoting the Value of Community

Proponents tend to cast ethno-nationalism as a force for the good in an instrumental role, and
suggest that possession by ethnic groups of their own state-or a greater degree of political
autonomy than is possible under a unitary state-is essential to preserve or promote certain values
individuals need.

A useful way to appreciate this claim is to focus on the needs ethnic community satisfies. While
individuals have many identities, membership in an ethnic community provides them with a
primary form of belonging. This membership serves as an anchor for people's self-identification
and the safety of effortless secure belonging. Membership in an ethnic community provides
individuals with a cultural context in which they are able to make meaningful choices about how
to lead their lives, set their goals, and establish relationships. It also shapes the individual's
opportunities and his or her ability to engage with relative ease in the kinds of relationships and
goals marked by a culture.

Proponents argue that by devolving power to territorially concentrated ethnic groups federalism
provides a framework in which the more overt manifestations of ethnic distinctiveness,
especially culture and language, may be publicly expressed and nurtured.

Promoting Equality

This particular justification relies on the moral imperative that all citizens be treated with
genuine equality. Most African constitutions prohibit discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and
provide for equal rights for individuals regardless of their ethnic identity. Such a vision of
equality is evidently sound, but it assumes that the state stands above and is benignly neutral
with respect to ethnicity. It is a common complaint in many African states, however,

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that one or two ethnic groups either so dominate the state or are so identified with it that other
ethnic groups feel excluded from the governing coalition. Equally important, the claim of state
neutrality is severely undercut in cases where an ethnic group receives no official support or
equal recognition for its language or culture.

For proponents, the major value of ethnic federalism lies in its sensitivity and responsiveness to
the volatile emotions associated with feelings of subordination that result from lack of esteem for
one's culture and language. An institutional framework that allows all ethnic groups to manifest
their cultures and languages publicly and equally will forestall this result and educe the feelings
of ethnic mistrust and suspicion that trouble ethnically divided societies.

The Democratic Argument

From a utilitarian perspective democracy is the form of government most likely to secure the
interests of the greatest number of persons subject to governmental authority. Accordingly,
democracy is not an end in itself but a means by which individuals maximize their interests by
aggregating their private preferences. Interest aggregation, however, is likely to prove difficult or
even unattainable if a polity is characterized by too much ethnic diversity and rivalry. Proponents
argue that ethnic federalism offers the best institutional framework, short of independent
statehood, for aggregating the interests of the members of an ethnic group and for promoting
democratic governance. This is the utilitarian view.

A second version of democracy-republicanism--offers a different argument in support of ethnic

federalism. This vision focuses on ethnic federalism's potential to create for citizens an enabling
environment in which they can consider the common good in their public deliberations and
political participation.

Deliberation promotes or achieves political outcomes that are supported by the consensus of the
community. Yet, the argument that too much diversity will strain citizens' ability to deliberate on
the common good is especially pertinent in the ethnic context. Under these circumstances, ethnic
federalism might provide a suitable framework for promoting

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deliberation and achieving consensus about the common good at the subunit level because the
group's members share broadly similar interests, culture, and traditions.

Ethnic federalism may also offer advantages in terms of citizen participation. In the republican
view, citizen involvement in the deliberative process is most easily accomplished in small and
decentralized political units. An individual is more likely to be involved in or concerned about
the affairs of his or her own immediate community than the affairs of the national community.

Economic Arguments

Ethnic federalism might be justified on economic grounds as well. A familiar economic

argument stresses federalism's potential for inducing or fostering competition among the
constituent subnational jurisdictions. Federal subunits could provide a necessary foundation for
fostering economic competition, expanding resources, and enhancing the efficiency of a nation
as a whole. In this view interstate competition provides incentives for jurisdictions to adopt
policies and strategies of economic development that are likely to retain or attract desirable firms
and individuals and that will replace poorly chosen strategies with variants of strategies that
appear to succeed elsewhere. As a result, jurisdictions that are reluctant or fail to adopt favorable
economic policies wi11 likely face declining economic activity.

If the national government has a monopoly of regulatory authority over the entire national
economy the positive effects of competition are unlikely to be realized. Where subnational
governments lack primary economic authority, the arrangement, though federal in name,
provides few or no incentives for subunits to compete among themselves. Ethiopia's federal
structure is illustrative. Ethiopia's federal government shares little of its political or economic
power with the subnational governments. Without access to these resources, the subnational
governments lack the freedom to experiment with different development strategies that an
appropriately nuanced federalism might otherwise allow.

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A properly structured and genuine federal system may offer additional economic benefits. Such a
system allows subnational governments to serve as semi-independent and entrepreneurial poles
of development, both for resource mobilization and for the provision of public goods and
services in a manner that is more responsive to citizens' needs and demands than provision by a
single central government. Being closer to the people, such governments have greater access to
information about the needs, preferences, and local conditions of particular groups of citizens
than a remote national government would have. The identity of interests between an ethnic group
and its state government also helps improve economic performance because it might be far easier
for a government to mobilize a people united by ethnic and linguistic loyalties than one which
are not.

Finally, such a form of government might offer ethnic groups greater opportunities for control
over local resources and revenues, and provide a basis for spreading some of the benefits of
development among subnational jurisdictions.

National Unity and Political Legitimacy

This is an argument for ethnic federalism that is derived from what John Rawls refers to as the
"fact of pluralism. By itself, pluralism is unremarkable. But when politicians imbue ethnic
differences with political salience, ethnic groups gradually come to entertain divergent
conceptions of citizenship based on such differences. The alternative option of federalism thus
constitutes a compromise between those favoring a unitary state and those favoring the
dissolution of the state or the separation of some portion of that state. Further, as a compromise,
ethnic federalism provides a sound strategy for promoting national unity and political legitimacy.
The creation of distinct ethnic homelands with cognate rights of language, culture, and self-
governance will help• to blunt the ethno-nationalist desire to possess one's own independent
state. The argument is that if an ethnic group can be convinced that their national state is already
a fact, secession becomes a logical extravagance. By thus constituting each ethnic group as a unit
of self-government, ethnic federalism might be said to guard against the problem of rule by
remote leaders having insufficient identification with or knowledge of subunits.

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Justifications/Arguments Against Ethnic Federalism

The dangers of ethnic federalism

Arguments against ethnic federalism can be approached through three fundamental and
inextricably linked problems: threats to national unity, lack of economic progress, and persistent
and pervasive abuse of human rights.

National Integration and Political Stability

Ethnic-based federalism is often a poor constitutional approach for the purpose of forging unity
among the variety of ethnic communities. Indeed, this form of government seems inherently at
odds with them. To begin with, federalism, even when it is not coupled with ethnicity, has
generally not had a distinguished record as a stable form of government. It is noteworthy that
virtually every federal state of any standing has had sooner or later to face a concerted bid for
secession by one or more of its component regions. This fact diminishes enthusiasm for such a
system of government especially when one considers that even a "philosophically and legally"
sophisticated federal system-that of the United States-has not been spared the tragedy of a costly
civil war due to separatist demands.

Federalism's track record as a source of instability and secession might well advice against
choosing this form of government for these states. Yet, it has not been shown that a unitary form
of government is immune to these dangers. In fact, the reason why a federal form of government
is chosen over a unitary form in the first place is to accommodate preexisting and divergent local
interests that cannot bear centralized rule.

Given that the government systems that are presently destabilizing most African states are
unitary and centralized, a well-considered and appropriately nuanced federal system may be the
only viable way to accommodate these divergent interests. The marriage of federalism with
ethnicity, however, invokes too many difficulties to be viable or workable. By its very nature,
such a system relies on dividing citizens along ethnic lines and institutionalizes their division.
Once reified in this way, ethnic differences have very little chance of fading away over time.

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Indeed, when the state deliberately uses ethnicity as a source of political identity, citizens who
might not have been aware of their ethnicity will regroup under its banners purporting to be a
distinct people. The formal division of a country into so many ethnic sub states is thus bound to
create "strong incentives for members of each ethnic community to live in what they will
perceive as their own sub-state.

Similarly, far from encouraging leaders from different ethnic groups to use the political process
to work together toward a shared national goal, ethnic federalism provides the leaders of each
ethnic group with incentives to separate themselves from other groups' leaders and to separate
their people from other ethnic groups. As a result, the various ethnic communities exist "side-by-
side, but will not integrate.

It is true that in many African states ethnic groups are already geographically concentrated in
separate regions of the country. Nonetheless, deliberately giving explicit constitutional
recognition to such division formalizes and exacerbates the physical and psychological
separation of the groups, thereby hindering efforts to promote their interaction and intermingling.

Where ethnic groups are too absorbed with the pursuit of their own interest it becomes difficult
for the national government to promote the common good, to forge national consensus, or to be
otherwise effective. Because such a system of government lacks any intrinsic bond that fosters
cooperation, sharing, and mutual solidarity. Far more serious, such a system remains vulnerable
to the threat of desertion by one or more of the constituent subunits. As a result, the continued
existence of the national community is always provisional and contingent. An ethnic based
autonomy for ethnic groups may simply fuel the ambitions of nationalist leaders who will be
satisfied with nothing short of their own nation-state. In the hands of ambitious ethnic leaders,
the existence of independent ethnic governments will serve as a means for "collating,"
articulating and disseminating ethnic demands and grievances against the central government. As
this identification solidifies, citizens will gradually withdraw their identification with and support
of the central government. These arguments suggest that ethnic-based federalism is seriously
flawed as a

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mode of governance because it necessarily gives rise to two very divergent and potentially
conflicting visions of citizenship: national and subnational.

The struggle between these two forms of citizenship has often resulted in disastrous civil wars,
economic dislocations, ethnic cleansing, and the internal displacement of large numbers of
people. These difficulties are not limited to authoritarian federal states. Even democratic states
have not succeeded in eliminating the risk of national fragmentation, economic dislocation, or
population transfer. For example, Canada and Belgium have been among the most prosperous,
benign, and socially just nations in the world, yet the separatist demands of their French-
speaking citizens have only increased in intensity.

Economic Development

From the standpoint of economic development, ethnic federalism appears an unsound

institutional arrangement. To begin with this form of governance is marred by its great tendency
to be a source of endemic political instability and constitutional insecurity. There are at least
three reasons why ethnic federalism may impede economic progress.

First, it has the potential to restrict the mobility of labor, goods, and capital across subnational
jurisdictions, and thus to undermine the notion of a common market. Emphasizing ethnicity leads
to an attitude of intolerance and exclusivism on the part of members of these communities. Such
an attitude negates the theory of interstate competition on which ethnic-based federalism might
otherwise be justified. According to this theory, a federal structure promotes gains in efficiency
as its constituent subunits compete with one another to attract mobile factors of production.
Consequently, a state that fails to offer an appeal in combination of low taxes and high quality
public services risks losing investors and productive labor to other parts of the federation.

But where subnational jurisdictions are deliberately made to coincide with and highlight ethnic
divisions in order to nurture the political aspirations of ethnic groups to become nation-states, the
theory of interstate competition loses its credibility. In such a polity, the

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emphasis given to ethnic identity and community generates such powerful ethnic allegiances and
rivalries that even capital, labor, political parties, and many other sectors of social life 'are often
organized along ethnic lines.

Second is the notion that because they are designed to be "ethnocratic" to the core, subnational
governments essentially view themselves as agents of their own ethnic communities. As agents,
ethnic leaders inevitably face incentives to create or enforce barriers to inter jurisdictional factor
mobility. They also face pressures to pander to their ethnic communities, or portray themselves
as strong advocates of their communities' interests. Thus, when an ethnic group controls or
otherwise becomes identified' with a particular substate, its agents will generally seek to define
distribution and control of economic assets including land, capital, credit, and licenses to operate
commercial and financial enterprises so as to benefit their own ethnic constituents. Process,
market rules of competition are either superseded or otherwise manipulated, with the result that
members of other ethnic communities are excluded from participation in the local economy.
Ethnic federalism exacerbate, rather than reduce, inter jurisdictional disparities in wealth. Vast
differences in human and natural resources separate ethnic groups. Some ethnic groups may be
well endowed with oil deposits, or other mineral resources; they may have large populations, or
may inhabit economically important regions, such as port cities. In contrast, other ethnic groups
may lack these attributes.

All ethnic groups may benefit by pooling together their respective resources in a federal
arrangement. But given the tendency of ethnic governments to view themselves primarily as
agents of their own ethnic groups, they have little or no incentive, much less any sense of
obligation, to share any of their resources with other ethnic groups. On the contrary, ownership
of important resources may foster in them an attitude of economic self-sufficiency, and a
willingness to go it alone politically. Thus, a federal structure that emphasizes ethnicity alone is
bound to lead to uneven economic development, or may fuel demands for political separation as
the central government attempts to redistribute resources among the subunits more equitably.

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Third ethnic federalism tends to encourage, even require, political leaders to view themselves
primarily, if not exclusively, as agents of their own ethnic communities. Preoccupation with
ethnic interests, however, will from time to time conflict with the interests of the nation as a
whole. An ethnic-federal system may similarly taint decisions by the central government.
Although the central government may more clearly and dispassionately perceive the benefits of
pursuing an economic policy aimed at enhancing national growth, it may nevertheless be
compelled to forego these benefits in an effort to thwart the danger of inflaming ethnic passion
that could destabilize the federation.

Even if the common national interest is not so frustrated, an ethnic- particularist view of
economic interests increases the costs of reaching agreement on important economic policies
affecting the whole nation. A genuinely ethnic-federal arrangement, by its very nature, requires
all important decisions to be made with the consent of all ethnic groups. Achieving consensus
among all ethnic groups, however, would be cumbersome because different ethnic groups have
different preferences for particular national policies. Consequently, polarized preferences lead
either to a deficit of public policies or to a delay in the implementation of such policies.

Human Rights

The third area of concern with the viability of ethnic federalism involves its impact on the
enjoyment of human rights by persons belonging to ethnic minorities. Ethnic federalism is
primarily concerned with devolving power to a set of subnational jurisdictions in which ethnic
and political boundaries are deliberately made to coincide. It is, of course, impossible to achieve
absolute coincidence of ethnic and political boundaries. As a result, subnational jurisdictions
necessarily contain ethnic minorities. The status and treatment of these minorities within the
jurisdiction present myriad opportunities for abuse and deprivation of rights.

From a human rights perspective, ethnic federalism is inherently problematic. First, reliance on
ethnicity as the sole basis for restructuring a state is fundamentally at odds with the universally
accepted principle of non-discrimination embodied in various U.N. instruments.

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By conferring sovereign powers on an ethnic group, ethnic federalism allows a group to control
the apparatus of government within the subunit and to put its own authority on the identity of the
sub-state to enhance its status as a political community and privilege its members as individuals.
Under this system, those who do not belong to the ethnic majority are considered "outsiders" and
are liable to be excluded or subordinated within their respective sub-states.

Finally, ethnic federalism infringes on international human rights norms that guarantee citizens
the right to move freely and to reside wherever they choose within their country. Because
employment opportunities, political power, and rights of political participation all depend on
belonging to the "right" ethnic group, those who do not belong have no incentive to move into
areas controlled by such a group. And those who are already in the "wrong" ethnic region face
the prospect of being expelled from their lands, fired from their jobs, and forced to return to their
"homelands." Ethiopia's experiences to date demonstrate as much.

In general by deliberately and openly highlighting ethnic differences that would otherwise fade
in time, ethnic federalism corrals citizens into ethnic enclaves, encourages aggressive ethnic
identification and separatism, and exacerbates ethnic distrust and social discord. The political
process is bound to be fractious and contentious as well, as every group tries to maximize its own
narrow interests, or as one or more of these groups strive to satiate its ultimate ethno-nationalist
desire-the creation of an autonomous nation-state.

Ethnic Federalism in Post 1991 Ethiopia: An Empirical Assessment

Introduction

It has now been nearly three decades since an ethnic based federal state structure was adopted in
Ethiopia following the 1994 Constitution. There has not been any change of government since
then and the system has been in operation with the blessing and support of its hegemonic power
bloc-the TPLF (Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front) led coalition of junior partners under the
umbrella of the EPRDF (Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front). The real strength
of any system of government is to be judged based on the system surviving its partisan creators
and enforcers. Can we say with

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certainty that this will be the case in Ethiopia? Some even ask the worrying question whether
Ethiopia itself, as we know her today, will survive the TPLF/EPRDF Coalition. This is a very
difficult question to which no one can give a definitive answer.

Some contest the idea that federalism was introduced into Ethiopia for the first time by the
EPRDF. Whether it was during the Axumites; the Zagwes; medieval Abyssinia or in the
territories of the various nations annexed into Abyssinia-there had always been a notion of
federalism or that of shared rule between the centre and its constituent territories. Ethiopian
emperors did not assume the title of “King of Kings” without a reason. The occasional incursions
of Abyssinian medieval kings into independent kingdoms in the South and East bordering their
empires never fully stripped the powers of the local rulers. This means regional autonomy has
always been a feature of Ethiopian system of government. Even Emperor Menilik II who is
known for his empire expansion role and annexation of tribes and nations bordering his
traditional boundaries, did leave some measure of self-rule to local kings who recognized him as
their emperor e.g. Jimma Abbajifar and Kingdoms in Wollega. This regional autonomy,
however, was not accompanied by individual rights and freedoms for the subjects of these
kingdoms, with the notable exception of the abolition of slavery.

The last blow to regional autonomy was Hailesselasse’s centralization policies which continued
unabated during the military rule of the Derg. One can conclude that EPRDF’s federal system of
government is a mere reversal of unitarism which took hold during the last two governments.
However, many critics would point out that such reversal has been a matter of form but not of
substance.

Thus, there is no doubt that the notion of regional autonomy is a desirable form of government
for a large and diverse country like Ethiopia as well as to hasten the country’s economic
development. The problem is not with the notion itself but with shortcomings in its design and
the assumptions underlying the system. These shortcomings and assumptions combined with
incompetent implementation results in making the end product a poisoned fruit. The following
sections will discuss these short-comings and misguided assumptions of ethnic federalism in post
1991 Ethiopia.

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Lack of full-hearted commitment to the project of a new federal Ethiopia

Commitment to a federalism project has to be full-hearted. However, the makers of the FDRE
constitution are not fully committed to the modern federal Ethiopia project. The Constitution is
based on the assumption that if this daring experiment succeeds, that is fine, if not we can pack
up the willing pieces and move on and establish our independent fragmented. One either wants to
be with Ethiopia or not, and that has to come out loud and clear in the constitution. It is
important to look at the history of the TPLF to understand this half-hearted modern federal
Ethiopia project. It is possible that political parties change their views over time and TPLF might
have shifted its position on paper, but this shift has not been decisive and its intermittent
nationalism is viewed suspiciously.

Lack of unwavering commitment to human rights and rule of law to counter the appeal of
secession

Those who promote ethnic federalism must make sure that human rights are respected to the
fullest. This is because federalism of the type we are practicing is competing with the very
tantalizing prospect of secession. In other words, the level of respect for human rights and rule of
law has to be strong enough to counter the new passion for nationalism made possible due to the
organization of regional states along ethnic lines.

Too big a regional state whose departure can threaten the viability of the federation

When a new federalism is designed from a scratch, especially of the ethnic federation type, no
member of the Federation should be allowed to be so big so as to threaten the viability of the
whole Federation. This problem is afflicting even mature federations such as the one in Belgium,
where the most prosperous Dutch speaking part has upped its intransigence to the extent of
paralyzing the government and threatening the very existence of the country. It has not always
been like this since in the past the French speaking part was more powerful.

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If this is happening at the very heart of the European Union, what guarantees do we have, here in
Africa, with lesser protection of human rights and respect for the rule of law?

Just assume that, the regional state discovers that it sits on one of the most lucrative natural
resources, such as a huge oil deposit that could last for generations, and then wait and see if the
state would want to continue to put up with and subsidize other whining members of the
federation which did not turn out to be as lucky.

Constitution is for generations and we cannot slice and dice States every now and then causing
further chaos. As things stand now, it seems that, we are simply grooming such big states for
independence. Before Menelik II there were no unified independent Amhara, Tigray or Oromo
states. All we had were semi autonomous Wag, Begemder, Yeju, Gojjam, Showa, Agame,
Axum, Temben, Raya, the five Gibe states, Qeleem, Wallagaa, Borana, Harrar, various gadaa led
states in central and south oromiya etc., not to mention others such as Kaffaa, Hadiyaa, or
Wolayita,.etc… Some of them were even at war with each other despite speaking the same
language, for example, the Muslim and non-Muslim Gibe States. If we want to go back to the
pre-Minilik era, which ones do we consider the original position of the current constituents of the
federation? do we get Amhara, Oromo and Tigray, the so called amalgam of Southern Nations,
Nationalities and Peoples regional state? Of course, all these should not be taken as a license to
reorganize them haphazardly without taking their wishes in to account.

The Constitutional adoption process was not fully consultative

Constitution is a holy scripture of federations, indeed for any country, except that it is made by
humans for humans. A document of such significance has to be carefully deliberated upon and
has to get a near unanimous support of its inhabitants and needs to adapt to changed
circumstances. Unfortunately, the FDRE Constitution of 1994 was adopted in haste without
getting the backing of the cross-section of the population and political groups.

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As a result, it is largely viewed as a political program of the EPRDF and a handful of other
armed groups repackaged as a constitution. Most of the political rancor of the past two decades
could have been avoided if the Constitution was adopted with the full backing of the Ethiopian
people and its sidelined political groups. It is hardly possible to expect such document to
command the obedience of those who were sidelined when the Constitution was adopted.
EPRDF has not done any fence mending job since its adoption to overcome this fatal blow to the
legitimacy of the constitution. It is intransigent as ever and too quick to charge those who
challenge the constitution with treason, and yet continues to flagrantly violate the terms of its
own constitution with impunity. It does not help to venerate the constitution when it serves the
interests of the EPRDF only. This helps to multiply the number of people who hold the
constitution in contempt.

The toxicity of ethnicity as an organizing principle

This is a radical departure from the past and it is the most daring political experiment attempted
anywhere in the world in recent decades. Not only does the constitution recognize (group)
identity rights of various ethnicities, which is the right thing to do, but it moves in to the
uncharted territory by putting them at the pinnacle of government power in their respective
regions and at the federal level. In the constitutional speak, the Nations, Nationalities and People
are the Sovereign. The problem is when ethnicity becomes a raison d’être for everything.
Glorifying ethnicity is toxic and a very volatile matter which could be exploited by agitators and
need not have such an overriding place in cosmopolitan societies. When Ethiopia sheds its
agrarian character for a cosmopolitan one, with strong economic activity in all its corners,
ethnicity can only serve as an unnecessary distraction. Also in difficult economic times, ethnicity
will readily serve as an escape route. One should get a lesson from an overwhelming defeat
which EPRDF was handed during the 2005 election in the cities and the opposition to its current
kind of federalism in such places. These parties ran on the platform of repealing certain
provisions of the current constitution. Cities are nothing but indications of what the country
would look like in the future.

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One proposal often made to diffuse this situation is to break up the existing regional states
geographically and organize them in a manner which reflects settlement pattern, existence of one
economic community etc...The credibility of such proposals is, however, put in to question due
to the fact that its protagonists are figures nostalgic of unitary Ethiopia, which had a history of
marginalization of most of its ethnic communities. Furthermore, there has not been any clear
articulation of whether regional states so broken down will or will not continue to enjoy the right
to choose their working language based on a free and fair vote of their inhabitants. For this
debate to progress and mature, protagonists of unitarism must swallow a bitter pill, accept the
fact that the genie is out of the bottle and return to the table with a view to reforming the existing
federal arrangement. As is being witnessed, EPRDF is using the uncompromising attitude of
unitarists as an example of how those with alternative views are apologists of the bygone era and
do not have the best interests of ethnic communities at heart.

The elephant in the house: people with mixed ancestry

Now that we have ethnicity as an overriding concept, the constitution, however, utterly failed to
take notice of one large group of Ethiopians. These are people with mixed ancestry, those who
are thorn between their various identities and simply prefer to identify themselves as Ethiopians.
There are many other, who for various reasons, want to be first recognized as Ethiopians
suppressing their ethnic identity. We do not even have a statistics on the number of people who
prefer to simply identify themselves as Ethiopians or simply feel unease about speaking about
their ethnic identity.

It is, of course, unwise and impractical to carve up a separate identity akin to ethnicity for such
group of people so as to fit them in to the constitution as was the case in Apartheid South Africa
in regards to the colored people with mixed white and black ancestry. The Constitution, even in
its own terms, had failed to address the interests of such category of people. People with such
background rightly feel anxious and excluded from the new mantra of the sovereign nation,
nationalities and peoples.

Where does ethnicity stop?

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The trouble in Somalia is sufficient to convince anyone that playing with ethnicity is like
opening Pandora’s Box. Clan, sub-clan, district, religious and denomination divisions will be the
next issues that will occupy the space vacated by ethnicity.

Ethnicity may appear tantalizing for marginalized ethnic groups in the short run, but the new
frame of thinking will most likely activate or exaggerate other existing differences between
people belonging to the same ethnic group. We are definitely better off focusing on the big
picture than what makes us different. It is not without reason that the most tolerant people in the
world are found in countries that are so diverse. The strength of the United States of America lies
in its diversity although it had come a long way recognizing and respecting its different
identities.

It is all about opportunities and being left out, isn’t it?

It is an alarming experience when a citizen of a country feels or perceives that he is unwelcome

to another part of the country or cannot partake in the economic and political affairs of that part
of the country where he was born and bred; or even when he feels entitled to be anywhere by
virtue of being a citizen but cannot. The Constitution does not exclude them literally but created
a suitable condition for an exclusion to take place. One can readily blame the affected person for
not putting an effort in to learning the language of the region but that cannot be a satisfactory
answer in Ethiopian context.

Over the past two decades, the standing of the Amharic language, the lingua franca, is
deteriorating and a decade or so down the line, if not already, there will be a new generation of
Ethiopians who will not be able to communicate with each other due to the neglect of not only
Amharic, but also due to failure to elevate other major languages such as Oromiffa as the Federal
government’s working language and as an optional second language in other regional states.
Opportunities to learn languages of their choice should be provided for those who feel alienated
because of language policies. Both the Federal and Regional Governments must make it their
responsibility to protect ethnic minorities within their boundaries and provide them with a safe
and fulfilling environment for them and their families. But we have so far failed to democratize
the country, reign in a privilege accorded

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to natives to the exclusion of the ‘outsiders’, and calm the nerves of vulnerable minorities in the
regional states.

The federal geographical division is not principle

The Constitution also failed to exercise even-handedness in its elevation of some ethnic groups
in to regional statehood by leaving equally (if not more) entitled ethnic groups in the cold.
Number clearly was not a factor since we have one of the smallest, Harari as a state, not the
Woliyta or Sidama who are much larger in number and size. Nor historical vulnerability a factor,
for we see the people of Agew swallowed up by the Amhara and Tigray regional States. They
have equal moral claim to statehood as that of the Harari. It is even difficult to understand the
principle behind lumping about 45 ethnic groups in to one regional state in the South. They have
every reason to be aggrieved by this lack of even-handedness.

The right to secede

Another issue is the right to secede by the regional states contained in Art 39 of the Constitution.
This is a rather unusual and corrupted right plucked out of context from Stalinist thought and put
in to the Ethiopian Constitution. If Stalin was alive he would have scoffed at the intellectual
fathers of the Ethiopian constitution for their subversion or perhaps misunderstanding of his
writings. It is out of context because Stalin and Lenin conceived the issue of national question
and secession in the context of colonial and capitalist domination. It was designed as a tool to
overthrow the bourgeois and the right to secede is subordinate to the cause of proletariat
revolution. These conditions are clearly absent in the Ethiopian context. It is in fact baffling that
this had to come following the overthrow of an openly Marxist-Leninist regime of Mengistu
Hailemariam by stealth Stalinists. Stalin believed that a ‘nation’ which is a definite community
of people “is not racial, nor is it tribal,” but a “historically constituted community of people.”
Thus, according to Stalin, “a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people,
formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up
manifested in a common culture.”

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If one strictly applies Stalin’s Nation theory, one would be hard-pressed to find an Ethiopian
ethnic group that fulfills all the requirements, such as, the existence of “an economic life or
economic cohesion” between them at the time of the adoption of the constitution or even before
Minilik. Was there an economic cohesion between Begemidir and Showa or between Borena and
Jimma? or even between Raya and Adowa, except that they spoke the same language? Even
among the fairly small group such as the Tigreans, isn’t the pan-Tigrean consciousness a creation
of the elites than the ordinary folks? There is the more pronounced Axum, Adowa, Agame,
Temben identity before that of a Tigrean. This has nothing to do with respecting the identity
rights of any group regardless of whether such group belongs to one nation instead of the other,
because it is possible for people speaking the same language to belong to different nations or
countries, unless we are engaging in an artificial nation building. But is it worth the effort to
engage in such grandiose national engineering by amplifying what makes groups different from
each other instead of focusing on their common interest and aspirations?

The constitution does not even define who Nations, Nationalities and Peoples are, so it seems out
of an attempt to escape from questions that arise as to the appropriateness of such definitions and
their applications to particular ethnic groups. It instead chose a catch-all-definition of what these
three terms mean collectively (art. 39(5)).

Considering the previous argument about commitment to the project of a modern federal
Ethiopia, what purpose does it serve to include such a wedge issue provision in the Constitution?
Unfortunately, one has to again look at the ulterior motives of the intellectual fathers of the
constitution instead of a long term purpose it was intended to serve. Personally, I fail to accept
the argument that it was included to guarantee freedom and solidify voluntary union. Therefore,
unless it is intended for use by the TPLF to allow its Tigray province to secede as it professed to
do so in its Greater Tigray Manifesto of 1976, I do not see any long term significance. If Tigray
goes, it is unlikely that Ethiopia would be able to stop secession by any of the remaining regional
states. On the other hand, if TPLF leaders have a change of heart and see their future with the
rest of Ethiopia, it is equally unlikely that they will allow others to secede as long as the power
balance remains in TPLF’s favor.

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Until then, Ethiopians will unnecessarily continue fighting in favor of or against a constitutional
right to secede, a provision which is superfluous and should not have been included in the first
place.

Contrary to the claims of the TPLF/EPRDF, this right will do nothing to advance Federalism. It
is anathema to the very idea of Federalism, an arrangement which was introduced in the first
place to create conditions of mutual trust and voluntary union. The choice of federalism is a
compromise already. One can only see the purpose of such arrangement as one intended to
groom members of the federation for eventual statehood. Unlike the coming together of
independent states, for example in the United States, the members of the Federation in Ethiopia
have not come together out of their complete free will. Contrary to what the constitution says,
there is too much appeal in becoming independent, especially for those regional states which are
large, resource rich and can become a viable state without any difficulty.

It is amusing how Stalin aptly observed in 1913 on how cultural autonomy superimposed on
federalism could lead to separatism. He wrote: “One may or may not dispute the existence of a
logical connection between organizational federalism and cultural-national autonomy. But one
cannot dispute the fact that the latter creates an atmosphere favouring unlimited federalism,
developing into complete rupture, into separatism.” This according to him is inevitably because
of the “nationalist atmosphere which is naturally generated by cultural-national autonomy.” It
seems that our leaders introduced this daring experiment without understanding him. Who would
have thought that one can find such an apt observation in Stalin’s own work?

Lack of unifying federal institutions and civil societies

Granted that we want to consolidate the kind of federalism we have and in concurrence to the
requisite reform recommended, there is a need for considering certain elements lacking in the
constitutional architecture. The underlying theme to the opposition of the current federal
arrangement is the decimation of the hitherto strong unifying sentiment prevalent in state

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institutions and structures. The constitutional design has not helped in countering that. Let us
look at some of these.

A) The presidency- Ethiopia has for the first time adopted a prime minster led executive
government and parliamentarian system. This is a rarity in Africa, which is accustomed to a
directly elected (rigged election or otherwise) strong President as the head of state. The head of
state in Ethiopia is the President, but it is one of the most powerless ceremonial presidencies
anywhere in the world. He is elected by the Parliament just like the Prime Minister and does not
have any meaningful power to speak of. Thus, neither the President nor the Prime Minister
(naturally) comes to office through a nation-wide election by the electorate. They are not
unifying figures as a matter of institutional design. In some parliamentarian and federal systems
like Canada and Australia, there is at least the institution of the monarchy that plays a unifying
role because of their historical tradition. In India, the President enjoys considerable power
compared to his Ethiopian counterpart. It is hard to figure out why such design, as opposed to the
most common models, was chosen except that it was perhaps tailor made to cater to the short
term power-jockeying needs of the senior partner of the governing coalition. Presidency
normally has term limits, but not that of the premiership. It is easy and in accordance with an
international standard for a prime minister to run the government as long as ‘the ruling party’ in
parliament elects him.
That serves the TPLF very well.

B) Unifying language- the existence of a unifying language is important for fostering unity,
nation building and for facilitating economic activities as discussed above.

C) Lack of strong nationwide trade unions, professional organizations and civil societies

It is no surprise that nationwide civil societies, trade unions and professional organizations are
practically non-existent in today’s Ethiopia thereby arresting the advancement of the rights of
their members and that of the community in general. It takes a long time for regional
independent civil societies to emerge. They also operate under very difficult environment
compared to their federal counterparts; and even if they have a space to operate, they tend to look
at issues from the narrow perspective of their regional interest. In

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the process the whole suffers. It is a classic divide and rule system in operation under the guise
of federalism. The Federal Government, which is given too many powers under the constitution,
can do anything it pleases without suffering the consequences. The war waged against the former
Federation of Ethiopian Labour Union and that of Teachers Association is an important example.
In the past two decades it has been rare to find workers or professionals coming from different
regional states to rally in solidarity for a common cause. Splitting of trade unions according to
nationality or ethnicity as was recognized by Stalin was a cause for aggravated national friction,
disorganization and demoralization. Such is the state of our trade unions, professional
organization and civil societies. As you can see already, one can simply quote from the
communists’ great playbook, which the young communists must have read from pages to pages,
to show how wrong they got it.

Lack of impartial arbiter of constitutional disputes

Ethiopia also made an unusual decision of not installing its judicial branch as the arbiter of its
constitutional disputes. Instead it has the House of Federation (HOF)- an unequal conjoined twin
to the House of Peoples Representatives, as the penultimate interpreter of constitutional disputes.
This is an ideologically driven, communist to be exact, choice which rests on the assumption that
the constitution is a pact between ‘nations’, ‘nationalities’ and ‘peoples’ of Ethiopia and it is the
representatives of these entities and not the judiciary which should interpret it. This assumption
forms the backbone of the apathy of the regime towards the judicial branch.

The HOF is supposed to be the upper house of parliament composed of representatives of nations
and nationalities who may be elected or appointed by regional states. HOF is not involved in law
making thereby distinguishing it from the likes of the United States Senate. Each ethnic group
will have one representative in the HOF with one more for each 1 million additional population.
It is not created to look after States rights per se, and the bigger the ethnic group is, the more
representatives it will have in the HOF. This does not inspire the feeling of equality among
member states of the Federation. Just as in the House of Peoples

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Representatives (the parliament) major ethnic groups can make decisions to the detriment of the
smaller regional states. There is no check on their power, considering that it is this body that sets
budget subsidy formula for budgetary allocation by the federal government to the regional states.

Even if the HOF is the best body to look after ethnic interests, it cannot be an impartial guardian
of individual human rights. At the end of the day ethnic groups are composed of individuals.
There are also instances where ethnic rights may conflict with individual rights and the HOF
should be excluded from being a judge in its own cause as a matter of elementary principle of
natural justice. The only role an institution of this kind should be allowed to have is only to
mediate and seek resolution to inter-state disputes.

Nations, Nationalities and Peoples are happy. What about individuals?

EPRDF paints a picture of a very happy and grateful ‘nations’, ‘nationalities’ and ‘peoples’ it
liberated. In a manner reminiscent of happy creatures in Jehovah Witnesses publications and
propaganda leaflets from North Korea, EPRDF propagandists effusively tell us daily of the
strides achieved in protecting ethnic rights as if they are some mythical entities not composed of
individuals. Yet, an unhappy individual whose rights are trampled upon on daily basis is excused
for believing that federalism has not made his destiny any better. Are individuals expected to
surrender thier other basic human rights simply because they are now guaranteed to use thier
God given right to use thier own language? These need not be mutually exclusive. EPRDF can
salvage its federalism by assiduously working towards respecting and protecting individual
human rights.

CONCLUSION
Post-EPRDF Ethiopia

As pointed out at the beginning of this note, the strength of any good system of government is to
be judged with its continued existence after its ‘founding fathers’ are long gone. We live in a real
world and we cannot undo what happened. But we can change the future if we can learn from
our past and change the way we do things. Imagine for a second an Ethiopia without EPRDF-a
deeply Marxist party in a liberal cloak which runs the affairs of the Federal government and the
regional States with a tight control. What do you see coming?

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To be optimistic, and even before we get there, to EPRDF’s credit, without EPRDF’s hands-on
approach on the implementation of Federalism, Ethiopia would have already fragmented in to
several independent states following the proclamation of the FDRE Constitution. We can simply
say that the problem itself is EPRDFs own making but that is now in the past. The fragmentation
did not happen because of EPRDF’s tight control over the regional states, but we cannot get
complacent. It is true that there is a common bond between peoples and there is no deep rooted
animosity that might push some to exit the Federation abruptly. But history is littered with
several examples of masses being taken for a ride by few of its misguided children. All it takes is
for a few dissenters to take up arms and for a stupid government to start harassing the population
for harboring the rebels.

The unexpected might happen and the EPRDF might lose power one way or another. Nothing
lasts forever. Under this scenario there is no guarantee that the Federation will continue as we
have not done our homework of building unifying institutions, protecting individual rights and
making federalism appealing to regions which are either resource rich or large in size. There is
no incentive for them to stay in the federation willingly. On top of it all, the Constitution has
made it extremely easy for any regional state to secede. The silver-lining to all of this, however,
is that we all want Ethiopia to prevail in the face of adversities. Our fates are so intertwined that
we cannot stand by and watch when one of us starts to get adrift.

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