‘Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’: The Ethnopolitics of Ethnofederalism in Ethiopia

Abstract

This introductory chapter to the collection on Ethiopian ethnofederalism takes stock of the last 20 years of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia and distils lessons and insights for a broader international/comparative readership. The aim is to set the Ethiopian case within the broader perspective of ethnic politics and federalism—both for scholars and practitioners. And in doing so, it is not the formal aspects of the 1995 federal constitution that take the centre-stage. Instead, what guides the chapters of the collection is the complex workings of ethnic federalism and ethnic politics; especially when the formal meets the uncodified.

Notes

1 Those studying the changes in the former Soviet Union and its allies rarely look at African cases that were unfolding around the same time. According to Prempeh (2007), ‘Compared to the cataclysmic events that swept eastern and central Europe at the end of the 1980s, Africa’s recent “constitutional moments” have attracted little notice or interest from comparative constitutionalists’ (p. 470).

2 The complexity of the conflict in fact requires separate volume unpacking the twists and turn that go back to imperial times, nineteenth-century Italian colonisation, and a short-lived UN-brokered Ethiopian–Eritrean federation between 1952 and 1962. At the moment, the Ethiopian–Eritrean conflict seems to be frozen, but Ethiopia’s woes concerning access to the sea remain.

3 The now defunct Soviet federation had a national secession clause – so did former Burma. For more on this, see Ducachek, (1970, p. 219).

4 It is important to qualify this statement as dozens of masters and doctoral theses dealing with various practical aspects of federalism have been written in English at Addis Ababa University in the recent years. These works should gradually help fill in the gaps of evidence and analysis.

5 As this volume goes to submission, Ethiopia is engulfed in protests in the Amhara regional-state and a heavy-handed security crackdown in response. This follows a similar of cycle of protest and security crackdown in Oromia a few months earlier. There are fears that these local protests could form into broader anti-government demonstrations different from the mostly local conflicts between ethnic groups that have periodically flared up in different rural areas of the country. For an overview of such past conflicts, see Abbink (2011, pp. 605–607).

6 In her work on decentralisation and territorial politics in Africa, Boone (2007) states: ‘yet as political actors and analysts have long been aware, there is often acute disjuncture between the formal rules that define institutional structure ad functions and the real politics of how government agencies and institutions work’ (pp. 355–356).

7 Citizenship in Switzerland also follows cantonal lines. That is, an individual’s ethno-cultural rights depend on whether one is indigenous to the canton of residence or whether one has settled there. Similarly, for many public policies Canadian provinces make a distinction between locals and those from outside of province.