Revolutionary democratic state-building: party, state and people in the EPRDF's Ethiopia

Abstract

An ideology of “revolutionary democracy” has driven the project of state building in Ethiopia over the last 20 years. This paper explores the relationships that the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government have sought to forge with the Ethiopian state and its people, by means of the various political organizations (parties, fronts, mass associations) that organize, represent or control them. It examines continuities and shifts across a series of iterations since the late 1970s: the Front's politico-administrative organization in 1980s Tigray; the party-led construction of the federation, civil service reform and political “gimgema” in the 1990s; the politicization of capacity building as the focus shifted to the developmental state following party splits and “renewal” from 2001; and the reconstruction of party structures distinct from those of the state in the wake of a strong electoral challenge in 2005, culminating in sweeping electoral wins in 2010.

Despite its imprecision, the notion of revolutionary democracy has anchored shifting constellations of party–state relations, and changing strategies of political mobilization and organization, in the all-encompassing and fundamentally non-liberal political aspiration characterized by the Prime Minister as forging a direct “coalition with the people”. Whilst the ruling party has been widely criticized for failing to compromise or collaborate with alternative sources of authority, the paper suggests that this reflects a set of deliberate political choices that are both ideologically and sociologically reinforced. Processes of state building are at root about power, and as such their assessment calls for a nuanced understanding of context. The paper traces the role of ideological, historical, institutional and cultural influences and continuities in the Ethiopian case.

Keywords:

• Ethiopia
• revolutionary democracy
• political ideology
• institutions
• mobilization
• ethnic federalism

Notes

1. Kidane, “New Approaches to State Building”; Kidane, “Idenity, Politics, Democratisation”; Mohammed, “Ethiopia: Missed Opportunities,” 233; Alemseged, “Diversity and State Building”; Merera, Ethiopia: Competing Ethnic Nationalisms.

2. Paulos, “The Challenges of the Civil Service Reform”; Paulos, “Clientelism.”

3. Ohashi, “Cruel Ethiopia: Letter in Response.”

4. Markakis, Ethiopia: Anatomy of a Traditional Polity.

5. Bahru, History of Modern Ethiopia.

6. Clapham, Continuity and Change.

7. Levy and Fukuyama, Development Strategies.

8. Vaughan and Tronvoll, The Culture of Power.

9. Abbink, “The Ethiopian Second Republic.”

10. Clapham, Continuity and Change, 241.

11. Levine, Wax and Gold.

12. Hoben, “Social Stratification.”

13. Teferi, “Decentralised here, Centralised here,” 626–7.

14. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections”; Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the post-2005 Interlude.”

15. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections,” 253.

16. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections,”, 256.

17. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections,”, 258.

18. Poluha, “Learning Political Behaviour,” 101–36; Poluha, “Prevailing over the Power of Continuity?,” 147–64.

19. Historical evidence of an “authoritarian political culture” extends beyond old “Abyssinia” – today's Amhara and Tigray (cf. Abbink, “The Ethiopia Second Republic,” 6, 9).

20. Personal communication, 1994.

21. Gebru, Ethiopia Power and Protest.

22. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections,” 261; Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the post-2005 Interlude.” See also an interesting internet discussion on this controversial issue at http://addisnegeronline.com/2010/07/all-eyes-on-leviathan-a-rejoinder-to-rene-lefort's-piece/

23. Cf. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the Post-2005 Interlude,” 439.

24. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 190.

25. Lenin, Theses on Bourgeois Democracy.

26. Meles, interview, June 1994.

27. Clapham, “Post-war Ethiopia,” 191.

28. Together with the Ethiopian Prime Minister and his Economic Adviser, these economists were members of Columbia University's Initiative for Policy Dialogue Africa Task Force, which met from 2006 to 2009. See http://policydialogue.org/programs/taskforces/africa/

29. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 249.

30. Interview, 1998: whilst these replaced government structures in some of the “liberated” larger towns, at the more local rural level there seems to have been little existing administration to replace.

31. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 97, 248.

32. Gebreab and Zwi, “Health Policy Development During Wartime.”

33. These councils (and the term baito) were first established by the Dergue.

34. Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia.

35. Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia., 173.

36. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 235.

37. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 236, 251.

38. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 250.

39. Bennett, “Tigray: Famine and National Resistance,” 101.

40. Interviews, 1998, 2010.

41. Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia.

42. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF, 230.

43. Interview 2010.

44. This is a long-standing Ethiopian strategy: Poluha, “Prevailing over the Power of Continuity,” gives an interesting account from Gojjam of peasant perceptions of the way in which successive governments delimited an initially united “we” with a series of inimical “they.”

45. These commitments were, at least nominally, widely shared amongst intellectuals in Ethiopia at the time, and reportedly provoked little debate or dissidence amongst members in Tigray: their reception in the TPLF's mass associations in Europe and North America was more ambivalent.

46. Interviews, 2008, 2010.

47. For instance, Hammond, Fire from the Ashes.

48. Interview 1989. This is an important and often overlooked point: whilst the content of Marxist ideology was undoubtedly influential at the time, the organizational sociology inspired by Leninist discipline was both highly effective in transforming the organization's fortunes, and if anything, of more lasting influence.

49. Despite recent controversy and much investigation (cf. Plaut, “Ethiopia Famine Aid”), evidence has extended little beyond the claims and counter-claims of TPLF politicians.

50. The Leninist prescription for party decision-making notionally combines “democracy” (the freedom of members to discuss issues), with “centralism” (the requirement to abide by party decisions once made) in order to achieve “freedom of discussion, unity of action” (Lenin, Report on the Unity Congress).

51. Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia.

52. Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia; Hammond, Fire from the Ashes.

53. Gebreab and Zwi, “Health Policy Development During Wartime.”

54. Aregawi, Political History of the TPLF; Kahsay, The National Movement in Tigray.

55. Gidey, “Has the EPRDF Really Changed?”

56. Interview, 1998. Although no formal decision was taken until 2001, it is not clear that the MLLT was at all active much after 1993 (cf. Abbink, “The Ethiopia Second Republic,” 10). This section draws on interviews and personal observation between 1992–1994 and 1997–2000.

57. The structures of the TPLF's partner in the EPRDF, the EPDM, were similarly reorganized in Amhara region.

58. Interview 1998.

59. Hicks, Tigray and North Wollo, 3, also cited by Young, “Development and Change,” 82.

60. Personal communication, 1997: the phrase has recently been used to discuss underemployed Egyptian graduates of higher education, Wickham, Mobilizing Islam. Here the reference is to a less well-educated or wealthy socio-economic group, who nevertheless distinguished themselves from the majority subsistence farming population.

61. Vaughan, “Responses to Ethnic Federalism.”

62. Larbi, “Assessing Infrastructures for Managing Ethics”; Young, “Ethnicity and Power.”

63. Interview 2010.

64. The virtues and potential of the system vis-à-vis the Japanese corporate management norms then in vogue were much discussed during the UK Open University's MBA programme for Ethiopian decision-makers, which ran through the period of the Transitional Government: personal communications, 1993, 1994.

65. Meheret, “Decentralisation in Ethiopia.”

66. Paulos, “The Challenges of the Civil Service Reform.”

67. World Bank, An Independent Review of the World Bank, 6.

68. Interview, 1998.

69. Federal and regional decision-makers in the four EPRDF-led states were still, of course, party members.

70. Interviews, 2009, 2010.

71. On Somali region see Markakis, “The Somali in Ethiopia”; on Benishangul Gumuz and Gambella see Young, “Along Ethiopia's Western Frontier”; Afar has seen a slightly different trajectory as several of its key ruling politicians are themeslves former fighters of the TPLF.

72. Medhane and Young, “TPLF: Reform or Die?”; Paulos, “Ethiopia, the TPLF, and the Roots.”

73. The speed with which the group was thus labelled is a function of the efficiency with which they were marginalized.

74. This section draws on research conducted in different parts of the country in 2002, 2003 and 2004 including interviews with civil servants and politicians conducted at wereda, regional and federal levels.

75. Vaughan and Tronvoll, The Culture of Power.

76. With an idiosyncratic mandate to pay attention to the developmental needs of two previously neglected constituencies: urban and pastoral communities.

77. Allen, “Understanding African Politics.”

78. Interviews, 2004.

79. Interviews, 2004.

80. Kassa, Storey, and Salaman, “Senior Managers' Business Knowledge,” 16.

81. Led by the World Bank, but also including a number of European bilaterals.

82. In the wake of contested elections in May 2005, DBS was replaced by PBS “protection of basic services” grants direct to federated States, designed to reduce central government discretion over the use of funds and promote transparency, in a context of concerns about the curtailment of human and political rights. Cf. Jones and Bladon, “Lessons Learned.”

83. See World Bank. Project Appraisal Document.

84. For a discussion of donor and government ideologies of development see Bevan, “The MDG-ing of Ethiopia's Rural Communities.” On the Ethiopian government's approach to donor engagement with policy see Furtado and Smith, “Ethiopia: Retaining Sovereignty.” On the limited efficacy of donor conditionality in Ethiopia see Borchgrevink, “Limits to Donor Influence.”

85. As researcher Teferi noted “I was struck by the sense of a fresh start in state–society relations that these changes brought locally,” “Decentralised there, Centralized here,” 621.

86. Interview, Mekelle, 2003.

87. Interviews, Tigray, 2003.

88. Peterson, Reforming Public Financial Management.

89. Whilst these structures were in place in Amhara and Tigray in 2003, they were established more slowly in Oromia (2004) and the Southern Region (2005). Cf. Aalen and Tronvoll, “The End of Democracy?,” 198.

90. Teferi, “Decentralised there, Centralised here,” 626.

91. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the Post-2005 Interlude.”

92. What Lefort describes as the period of “liberalization” experienced by elite farmers in North Shoa from late 2005 to 2009 reflects a post-electoral decision to remove some of the more onerous obligations initially placed on “model” farmers. It is also worth noting that, as far back as the mid-1980s, TPLF/REST agricultural rehabilitation programmes controversially targeted not the poorest of the poor, but those with the resources “to make best use of the inputs” (interview 1988).

93. See in particular Abbink, “Discomfiture of Democracy?”; Tronvoll, “Ambiguous Elections”; Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections.”

94. Tronvoll, War and the Politics of Identity.

95. Clapham, “Post-war Ethiopia,” 184.

96. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the May 2005 Elections.”

97. This section draws on personal observations and interviews, 2004–2008 and 2010.

98. Cf. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the Post-2005 Interlude.”

99. Interview, 2006.

100. Interviews, 2006, 2007.

101. Interviews, Dilla, Awassa, 2006.

102. It is perhaps a function of the disarray of the ruling party in 2005 that in Sidama zone it reportedly promised a referendum on a Sidama kilil separate from the Southern Region as part of its electoral mobilization strategy, apparently believing itself to have the endorsement of the EPRDF leadership at the centre; their support was not forthcoming. Interviews, Awassa and Addis Ababa, 2006.

103. Lefort, “Powers, Mengist – and Peasants … the Post-2005 Interlude.”

104. Aalen and Tronvoll, “The End of Democracy?,” 203.

105. Dom and Lister, An Analysis of Decentralisation in Ethiopia, 47.

106. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the Post-2005 Interlude.”

107. Brennan, “The Fallacy of Social Accountability”; Pankhurst, Social Accountability; Jones and Bladon, “Lessons Learnt.”

108. Figures for the Southern Region show a different evolution, because of zone level expenditure.

109. Cf. Aalen and Tronvoll, “The End of Democracy?.” A veteran TPLF member commented wryly in 2008: “we have elected more democratic representatives than the entire population of Eritrea.”

110. Cf. Lefort, “Powers – Mengist – and Peasants … the Post-2005 Interlude.”

111. Interview 2010.